How do we raise up our children in the Lord? | Word First

when it comes to raising children and the knowledge of the Lord I think the first thing we do is really plan what are we going to do what do we want to do often we don't do what we think is most important because we never take the time to plan how do we want to get the Scriptures into their lives what verses do we want to memorize sometimes just taking one hour to really plan what we want to do with them can set us up for a lifetime of really helping them to know the Lord the second thing I always encourage is to pray pray with all your might because the reality is we can plan we can do all these wonderful things with our children but unless the Lord changes their hearts they they can't understand what we're bringing them to so I really encourage prayer the third thing and yes these are all peace the third thing is to participate in the life of the church we need our children to not just see that we believe the gospel but we need them to be part of this community that really embraces gospel teaching and that they see it lived out in a beautiful way so we need to participate in the life of the church the fourth thing I think that's really important is to purge from our schedules that which does not meet our ultimate goal so if my ultimate goal is to raise children who know about Christ and in my greatest hope is that they would come to know him I may have to not do certain things that other people in my community are doing my greatest goal for them is not that they get a college sports scholarship so I may purge certain activities from our lives so that I can make sure we're concentrating on what is most important and the last thing I would encourage is to persevere it's hard I like to think of life as what are the patterns of our home then what did just today look like and so you'll have moments when you're having family devotions and everyone is looking every which way and no one seems interested and you will think is anything we are doing getting through I believe by God's grace it is so we persevere we continue to do what God has called us to do in hopes that he will use our works to hopefully and our words to our children to bring them to Christ so when it comes to our family is what I would just encourage all of us to do is to plan to pray to participate to purge and to persevere as we try to love them well