Family & Parenting
I want my kids to actually know God and I have no idea whether I am doing any of this right. Where do I start?
“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua is old, the conquest is over, and he gathers Israel together to make them choose. His famous line about his household is spoken publicly and it commits only what is genuinely his to commit: himself, and the way his house will be ordered. He does not claim to control what each person under his roof will end up believing. He declares a direction and lets everyone else answer.
“When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”
Paul, writing to Timothy from prison near the end of his life, traces his young colleague's faith backward through his mother and his grandmother. He names them both, which means Timothy's faith arrived by ordinary domestic transmission across two generations rather than through a program or a dramatic event. Neither woman lived to read the letter describing what their faith eventually produced.
A path forward
Pick one rhythm and keep it small enough to survive a bad week. A single prayer at dinner, or three minutes of a story at bedtime, kept up for a year, forms more than an ambitious plan abandoned in March.
Let your children watch you do the thing rather than only hearing you instruct them in it. Kids who see a parent actually praying, actually reading, actually apologizing, are learning the part that instruction cannot deliver.
Answer their questions honestly, including the ones where the honest answer is that you do not know. A child who learns that hard questions are welcome at home is far more likely to bring the hardest ones back at sixteen.
Closing verse
“One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.”
- Psalm 145:4
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