Chapter 1 Christian Parenting vs. Worldly Parenting

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1 Chapter 1 Christian Parenting vs. Worldly Parenting B eing a mom is tough. It s a non-stop, 24-hour, 7- day-a-week job that requires you to be as smart as an astrophysicist, as creative as Pablo Picasso and as efficient as four people. If you re like me, there are days when you drop into a chair at the end of the day and wonder if anything you did that day has any lasting meaning for you or your kids. I have two little girls one plays hockey and the other plays soccer. Between sports, church and school, we spend a lot of time on the go. Sometimes I wonder if the important things are getting left behind as we race around living our lives. How am I, as a parent, supposed to Raise up a child in the way he should go when we re so busy just doing life? We all want our kids to fit in with their friends. Heck, we all want to fit in with our kids friends parents, so we drive ourselves nutty focusing on what sport the kids should play, what clothes they should wear and what playdates they should go on. There s nothing inherently wrong with any of those things, but when they become the focus of our parenting that s a problem.

2 As Christians, we are called to be holy, which means set apart. That means our parenting should be a holy calling as well. Think about that. If everything in our lives is to be holy and different from the rest of the world, then shouldn t our parenting look different from the rest of the world as well? How do we parent in a manner that makes our parenting different from non-christian parents? Two things should set our parenting apart from the rest of the world: the goal and the model. The Goal From the time we bring our babies home from the hospital, we re told that our job is to help mold them into independent, productive people. While we don t want our kids to live at home with us for the rest of our lives, complete independence should not be the goal for Christian parents. Someone once told me that our job as parents is to move our children from being completely dependent on us as parents to being completely dependent on God. When you look at parenting in that light, it changes the way you view your primary responsibilities as a parent. Let s look at what the Bible tells us our responsibilities are. Look up these verses and write down what you learn about the goal of being a Christian parent. Proverbs 22:6

3 Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Psalm 78:4-7 The goal of a Christian parent is to raise Godly children so they become Godly men and women. We, as their parents, are to teach them the word of God so that they will carry it with them wherever they go. The Israelites were charged with teaching their children the words of God, but they didn t do that, and the entire nation of Israel was captured because they failed to teach their children about the covenant God had made with them. They decided they would rather be like the rest of the world and ignore their responsibility to raise up their children to know and love God.

4 I once read a book called Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters. It was an interesting look at the Christian themes found in the Star Wars movies. The idea from that book that made the biggest impression on me was the idea that Christianity like the Jedi is always just one generation from dying out. Each generation has to teach the next one about the saving grace found in Christ there is no legacy admittance into heaven. Your children won t be Christ-followers simply because you are. You have to instill in them a need for Christ, a yearning to know Him better, so that they seek Him throughout their lives. The tough thing about being a Christian parent is the fact that our kids can choose to follow Christ or they can choose to turn away from Him. We have no control over that choice. Our job is simply to take every opportunity to teach them about Jesus and to do our best to mold their character to be more like Christ. The Model The other thing that should set our parenting apart from the rest of the world is the model we use for parenting. Walk into any bookstore and you ll find hundreds of books on parenting, many of them offering the opposite advice of that in the next book over. With all the contradictory opinions on how to parent a child, what s a parent to do? As a Christian parent, the first place we should look for parenting advice is the Bible. While some of the

5 methods in the self-help parenting books work well and can make our lives easier, the basis for our parenting should come from God. As a matter of fact, God our heavenly father should be the model for how we parent. The way God deals with us as our heavenly father is the way we should deal with our children. But that brings up the question of how well do we, as moms, know our heavenly father? Do we know Him well enough to be able to model ourselves on His character? The best way to improve your parenting is to get to know God better. The more like Him we become, the better we will be able to parent our children. Spending time with God each day helps us, as moms, to be filled with God s grace and love, which we can then pour out onto our children. But, to model ourselves on God, we have to know His character. The only way to do that is to spend time in prayer and in God s word. Study the character of God. Nearly every passage in the Bible will tell you something about who God is and how He interacts with us. These are the things that you want to use as a model for your interactions with your children. Let s look at just a few of God s character qualities that we want to model ourselves after. Remember, though, that no amount of trying on your own will ever help you to be more like God. We can t sustain that constant effort. It is only through our total reliance on God that we are ever able to move toward being more like Him.

6 Write down what you learn in these verses about each of these character qualities of God. Love John 3:16 Nehemiah 9:16-17 Psalm 17:7 Grace Romans 3:22-24

7 Ephesians 2:8-9 Patience Nehemiah 9: Peter 3:8-9 Just a quick glimpse at these verses and character qualities shows us something of the character of God. If you want to be a better parent and raise Godly kids, start modeling yourself on the ultimate parent God. What Does a Christian Parent Look Like?

8 So, now that we have the goal in mind and the model to follow, what do we do? How do we make our parenting look different from the rest of the world? When the goal is to raise children to be dependent on God, then our actions and words should revolve around God. We don t have to send our kids to Christian schools and make them attend only Christian events to raise Godly kids. Those things can help, but there are plenty of ungodly kids attending those schools and events as well. The difference comes in how we approach things. With God at the top of our parenting mind, simple conversations become teachable moments. The rules we lay down for our kids get based on God s rules for His people. We teach our kids that the ultimate authority is not mom or dad but God. As we go through our weeks together, we will look at practical ways to teach our kids truths about God and how they should live their lives without adding 10 hours of Bible teaching to your life. God didn t say stop your life and teach your kids about me. He said teach them as you walk. So, as you walk through life with your kids make the most of every opportunity that God presents to you to talk to your kids about God. If God is at the top of your mind and at the center of your life, then your kids will see that and begin to model that as well.