Faith Filled Family Magazine Fall 2011

out their faith. Having family devotions which drive home the importance of our authority in Christ can help our children put on the full armor of God before they go out to face the world each day. Certainly parents and grandparents are to model their own humble Christian walk for their progeny. The most important lessons in life are more easily caught than taught.

When our kids come to us with tough questions, are we prepared to answer from a Biblical perspective? Nothing focuses us on our own lives and keeps us on our toes scripturally like being concerned for our children’s spiritual growth.

“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).

That’s where we begin and end.

We can offer our children good, faith-based reading materials at their level to supplement our own teaching and that of the Bible. Encourage them to read biographies of faith heroes and to keep a devotional journal, writing down meaningful quotes from Christian leaders. Memorize scripture together. Get them around other godly role models.

We ought never to be afraid of sharing with our children stories from our own youth that demonstrate our folly or how we learned to overcome and grow. They need to hear that we were once just like they are and that we made mistakes. David prayed in the Psalms that God would “not remember the sins of my youth.”

Ideally, Christians are to stand as bridges between two worlds — the Word and the culture. We need enough familiarity with the Bible to grasp its timeless truths, but we also need to be acquainted enough with the culture to offer timely, relevant teaching to our children, who are bombarded with the world’s dangerous influences daily. Discuss current events in your household and look for meaningful lessons to share from them.

When our homes are places of refuge and of truth-based learning, we can more easily carry that authoritative foundation with us into the world. Our churches, likewise, will be repositories of truth as we stand on the authoritative word of God in our discipleship and teaching.