Teaching Your Children

The theme this week will be "Raising Children God's Way." Each day, I will post a new article covering a different aspect of parenting (i.e. discipline, training, teaching, etc). For those of you who are parents, I hope that you especially benefit from this series of articles. If you disagree with anything that I write, please comment below.

Monday and Tuesday, we looked at the issue of corporal punishment. Today, I'd like to focus on the importance of training and teaching your children. When I say teaching, the obvious implication is that something is being taught; that there is a teacher as well as a student (or students). As parents, we are to teach our children.

So often, parents do not teach their children. When it comes to spiritual training, they let the local church do the work, and when it comes to teaching our children secular knowledge and basic life-skills, they leave it to the public school system. Today, we can throw our kids into the public school system as early as four or five, and they stay there until they are legal adults at the age of eighteen. We see them very little during the day, usually just for a few minutes in the morning before school and a few hours later in the day between school and bedtime. Our evenings are sometimes hectic as well, and so we're ultimately left with very little personal interaction with our kids. But this is something that we need to avoid at all costs, for again, the Bible commands parents to train and teach their children. As parents, we need to take this work seriously and we need to take an active role in our children's spiritual growth.

Let's consider a few passages that emphasize the importance of training and teaching...

Of course, there is Deuteronomy 6:6-9..."And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." What I love about this passage is that it instructs parents to not only teach their children, but to surround their children with the word of God. It's not good enough that our children know that we're a "Christian family." They need to be engulfed in the word. Instead of having entertainment magazines strewn out everywhere, why not have Bibles and spiritual books? Instead of having posters of Britney Spears and other celebrities, why not have framed Bible verses? Instead of spending hours every evening watching TV and surfing the internet, why not have family Bible studies? I'm not saying that we can't watch TV or get online, nor am I saying that we need to spend hours every night studying the Bible with our kids, but what I am saying is that there needs to be a strong emphasis on spiritual things. What is being emphasized in your home?

Another passage to consider is Proverbs 22:6. Solomon says in this verse, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when is is old he will not depart from it." Now, we tend to focus on the last part of the verse a lot due to its controversial nature, but let's set that aside for now and focus on the first part of the verse. We're to train up our children in the way of truth. This implies a lot of hard work, but it is vitally important that we commit ourselves to this work. This kind of training is not limited to spiritual training. As we see in the book of Proverbs, it is also important that we teach our kids life skills, that we teach them wisdom and help them to be good people. We need to teach our kids how to use money, how to make wise financial decisions, how to be neighborly, how to resist sin and temptation, how to get along with others, how to be humble, etc. Parents need to look for opportunities to teach their children these kinds of things.

Paul adds in Ephesians 6:4, "And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." No commentary is necessary here.

Again, we cannot delegate these responsibilities to the local church and public school system. Yes, the church is a good source of spiritual edification, and yes, public schools may teach our children about U.S. history and algebra, and all of that is fine, but parents need to be the primary teachers in their children's lives.

Much, much more could be said, but let me close this article by issuing a few challenges:

1. Instead of turning on the TV tonight, sit down with your family for a few minutes to simply read God's word.
2. Have your kids draw a picture and put a Bible verse on it. Hang their artwork on the fridge for all to see.
3. Pick out a memory verse each week for the family. Test each other every night at dinner. Don't be too strict about it (otherwise your kids will hate it), but offer rewards and incentives for memorizing scripture. Encourage them.
4. Look for at least one opportunity to use some situation in society to teach your kids a valuable lesson.
5. Pray with your spouse before you go to bed tonight.

Expand this list yourself. Add to it. Set spiritual goals for your family. Take a more active role. In the end, your family will be so much stronger because of it. Solomon says in Psalm 127:1, "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it," and again in Proverbs 24:3-4, "Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches."