Your kids are not dumb. Depraved, yes, but not dumb. They have the ability to absorb vast amounts of information, especially when they are young. Chinese is one of the most complex languages in all the world to learn, but walk up to any three year old Chinese child and you will find that they have an incredible grasp of it. Why is that? It’s because they have been born into the language. What language have your children been born into? What’s the language in your home?
God has given our minds the ability to learn vast amounts of information and store it in the squishy stuff between our ears. What we learn when we are young effects the rest of our life. Whoever teaches a child how to talk, teaches them how to think. I submit, the language in our homes must be Scripture.
Pride is one of the most dangerous sins a person can have and God hates it, so the purpose for writing about my son is discipleship and encouragement, not for boasting. See Galatians 6:14
It is by the grace of God that Jack is what he is right now and even then he is still a little sinner, but let me tell you, he knows more theology than most adults I know. There are a few reasons for this and a lot of it has nothing to do with me. Amanda and I do take a lot of time reading and talking with Jack, but it is God the Holy Spirit’s working in him that causes him to remember spiritual things and more importantly, understand them. I don’t want to leave Evie out of this because we do read to and pray with her a lot, but she is at a different stage than Jack, so I am going to focus on him in this post.
There are steps we have taken and decisions we have made in order to train up Jack and Evie in the way they should go. I’ll just list them out and explain them at a later time. Everyday we try to:
-Read Scripture multiple times a day, mostly at meal times and before bed.
-Pray with them multiple times a day; in the morning, before bed and at meals. We are training Jack to start saying prayers by himself.
-We read all kinds of kids books to them throughout the day, not just bible stories. This is so important. Giving them a love of books and reading will teach them to listen to the reading of the Bible and how to sit through church.
-We catechize our kids. Don’t worry, we’re not Catholic. A catechism is just a list of questions that you teach you kids the answers to, so that they learn right theology. This has been one of the best things in the spiritual development of Jack. More on this in another post.
-Thankfully, we don’t have TV service anymore. When Amanda came home, we had to cut expenses. This is one of the best things we have done and we didn’t even want to.
These things have not been easy. In fact, it has been very hard and there are times when I don’t want to do them, but I thank God for his grace in keeping me accountable through my wife or most often my son. Yes, now that we have been doing these things for a while, Jack actually asks for it. I will elaborate more on some of these things later, but I just wanted you to be encouraged and have hope on knowing that, by God’s grace, we can do this. It will be very hard and you will have to sacrifice things, but it will be eternally worth it and you will find see that God is changing you in the process as well.
Tip: Be encouraged. You can do this. You can be a dad that changes the world for the glory of Christ through your faithfulness. Start praying and thinking about the vision you have for your family and everything you desire them to become, including yourself.
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