Daily Devotions
Why Teaching Our Children Faithfulness to "the Church" Is Misguided
Reading for March 27th: 1 Samuel 1-3
Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant hears.'"
1 Samuel 3:9
What is our primary objective as parents?
To some, it is to prepare their children to be successful. They want their children to be happy, make a lot of money, and possess a lot of stuff. All of their training is directed toward giving their children the best shot at accomplishing these goal.
To those of us who are Christians, we recognize that this is a shallow goal. We know there is more to life than this. We want to prepare our children for eternity. We want their lives to have eternal significance.
But how do we do this?
There are a couple of routes parents take. One way is to train children to be faithful to "the church." We are horrified when we hear of children who leave "the church" and so we impress upon our children the importance of being faithful to "the church."
Other parents, however, realize that faithfulness to "the church" means nothing. It is not "the church" that saves. Jesus saves. So these parents train their children to be faithful to the Lord. They don't want their kids to merely be copies of themselves, but to be like Jesus. They do not encourage their children to blindly follow whatever "the church" does, but to look diligently for a "book, chapter, and verse" to answer any spiritual question or problem in their life.
The primary objective we have as parents is to teach our children to say what Eli taught Samuel to say over 3000 years ago:
"Speak, LORD, for your servant hears!"
Father, help us give our children the courage to follow you and your Word whatever the cost.
