Walking Baby Steps With Our Children

photo by foundphotoslj

Most of us would like to think we can protect our children from diving off the deep end of life by making sure we discuss the important stuff with them - don’t take candy from strangers, say ‘no’ to drugs, save sex for marriage - the big stuff. We’re usually pretty confident that our children are smart enough to do the right thing. They are, after all, our children.

Rarely, though, do our children take such huge steps in the wrong direction. It’s the tiny baby steps wrought by their immature perspective on things that causes an accumulative walk going the wrong way. One of the things we parents have to be aware of is how the subtle nuances of life have redefined even how we look at things. We can’t teach biblical truths to our children if our perspective on things has changed.

As an example, it is commonplace in our society to accept cohabitating couples as a normal lifestyle. Our children see it in movies and on television, read about it in magazines and probably even know people at church who are living together. As parents, however, we must be careful that we don’t teach tolerance of such behavior by ignoring it in our discussions.

I also am a firm believer in calling it for what it is: a sin. I think we’ve gotten away from teaching our children about sin because we’d rather focus on God’s love than His righteousness. It’s easier and more pleasant to talk about the good stuff than the not so good stuff.

It takes a passionate desire on our part to not dilute God’s truth as we teach it to our children. We must teach them to not only love God, but to love His laws as well. It was these laws He commanded us to impress upon our children in Deuteronomy 6:7-9.

We also must teach our children that following God’s law will probably set them apart from a good number of their friends. We’ll need to equip them with how to handle that. Not having a friend who shares a like-minded depth of faith can be a very isolating experience for a child.

Hopefully keeping our children from diving off the deep end is an easy thing to do. Helping them walk out the baby steps of their life is where the real challenge comes in. We need to be ever ready to give an answer for our faith, as well as to answer their questions for why something is wrong. Anything, anything that we can’t answer should be brought before our pastor for his guidance. A little more on this tomorrow.