There is probably no greater responsibility given to us as human beings than the raising up of the generations of people who will follow us on to this world. The ability to procreate children is easy. God has given us the natural ability to produce other human beings from the time we hit adolescence. Teaching them and training them how to live in this world is not so easy. It is, however, the single most important job we will ever undertake as adults.
From the time God gave the Law to Moses and then Moses instructed the children of Israel in the Law, it was the task of every parent to teach their children the Laws and ways of God daily. In Deuteronomy 6 verses 6 and 7 Moses instructed the people regarding this task when he said:
“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your
sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and
when you rise up”.
Later Solomon instructed the people of Israel in the same way in Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he
should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it”.
In these passages we are given the blueprint for raising God followers. When we think about what we need to teach our children beyond reading writing and arithmetic, if we assume that all we need to teach them is that Jesus died for their sins so they can be forgiven and someday go to heaven after this life is over, then the teaching is fairly simple. But, if we are to teach them how to live in this world, with all of its debauchery, sin and evil, then it becomes a much more complex task, one which most parents today are failing in doing.
The instruction given in Deuteronomy is that we are to teach our children from the time they get up in the morning until they go to bed at night. Everything in this world and in this life is to be correlated back to God’s Laws and His ways as it is revealed in His word. When we think of the books of the Law we are taken back to the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In these books we have much more than just Laws given to us. We have stories of real life, lived out in worlds and cultures that were no better than ours. In those stories we find examples of people who held on to faith and some who threw away faith. We see the consequences of believing and the disasters that occur when we fail to believe.
When we come to believe in Jesus Christ as our savior, we are not joining a religious organization. We have become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. In Ephesians 2:19 Paul says of us: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household.” From the beginning people have been looking for a country, a kingdom, that they could not find. The writer of Hebrews said this about them: “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own”. (Hebrews 11: 13, 14) Then came John the Baptist proclaiming that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. Jesus continued the message throughout his time on earth letting us know that the Kingdom was here, even in our hearts.
As citizens of this Kingdom we have also been given a position of high authority and responsibility. Paul calls us “Ambassadors for Christ” in 2 Corinthians 5:20. As ambassadors the task we have been given is to disciple the nations, Matthew 28:19-20. This means that it is our task to challenge the cultures of the world and demonstrating the superiority of the culture of the Kingdom of Heaven. God tells us that we need to change the way we think (Romans 12:2). Our world has many cultures, from primitive natives in jungles to highly educated intellectuals, and yet their thinking is flawed and needs to be conformed to God’s way of thinking.
So, as parents, when we send our children out into the world they are being confronted with many different cultures through many means. Every avenue is being used to influence our children’s thinking. From the video games they play to the movies and Television shows they watch, the Internet sites they visit, to the books and magazines they read, the news reports they hear, and even the friends they make, they are being shaped and molded into patterns of thinking that are not in alignment with the ways of God. This means that every day we need to be discovering what they have heard and experienced and we need to counter the false teachings, concepts, ideas and behaviors that they have seen and heard. Everyday we need to be taking them back to the word of God and showing them how to confront the culture they live in so that they become the influencers not the influenced.
Far too many children have been lost to the cultures of this world and we are seeing the devastating results play out before us as these lost children have taken to the streets to proclaim their allegiance to false teachings that will never prosper them. Many of them may be lost for eternity unless someone is able to challenge their ideology and persuade them of the truth.
Raising our children to be God followers is a daunting task, but can we afford to shirk our responsibility to obey our Lord and train them properly?
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