This is Who You Are, Day 6

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15

I have been talking about parenting for a long time, not because I have it down, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the older I get and the older my kids get, I realize how much I really don’t know and how very dependent on the Lord I am.

It’s easy for me to get tired and busy and neglect my own time with the Lord. Maybe you can relate. If you are parenting your children from a spiritually dry place yourself, remember this: you can’t give them what you don’t have. If you don’t have a walk with the Lord, if you don’t have a clear understanding of God’s Word, or a love for His will, or a clear method of reasoning with Biblical convictions, your children won’t have that either.

I want to encourage you today to spend time with God. Read His Word for yourself. Often times, we do not know how to use the Bible to guide us in matters of everyday living, and our own lack of knowledge is keeping us from teaching our children to live in a Biblically wise way. Our job is to teach them to develop their own set of internalized Biblical convictions: a set of standards that they derive from the Bible, so that when we are not around them, they are capable of making good, moral, and wise decisions.

We should be teaching our children to love, serve, and follow the Lord, so that they can stay away from the two spectrums that the world defines as religion. There’s a ditch on either side. We always tell our kids; the one ditch is legalism–where everything is bound by law and things done by rote. The other side of that is moral relativism where truth is undefined.

Neither of those are Biblical boundaries. A true believer decides that the Lord is in charge of his life and willingly lives inside those boundaries, he does not live testing them. Often times we find our children testing them and I’ve noticed some things in the life of our own children, and, frankly, in my own life, that our convictions are based on the truth of God’s word. We must have those convictions in our hearts, and in order for me to impart those to my children, and to do what the Bible says in Deuteronomy, to train my children to love and follow the Lord, I have to be doing that in my own life.

Jay and I wrote a Bible Study series because we are seeing so many families who are giving their kids rules but they are not directing them to Scripture. It’s easy to parent our children out of fear and not even realize we’re doing it. Older kids, especially, need to understand the boundaries that God has set for us in Scripture. As parents, we have to know God’s word.

When you think about what the most important thing is you can do for your children, think of it in the context of how you can help them walk with the Lord. I am convinced that it is so important to define the concept of conviction and personal responsibility in our children within the framework of God’s Word.

So, take them back to His Word–over and over again. If they have a question that you don’t have an answer to, it’s okay to say, “You know what? I don’t have the answer to that. But God does. Let’s pray about it.”

Be a place where your kids can be a sounding board and get to know God’s word yourself in a personal way, because you can’t give your kids what you don’t have yourself. You can do it, because God will give you what you need. Just ask!

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About Heidi St. John

Heidi has been married to her husband Jay since 1989. Together they have seven children and three grandchildren! The St. Johns homeschooled their kids all the way through high school. Heidi is the the author of seven books, host of the popular podcast "Off the Bench," and the founder of MomStrong International, an online community of women learning God's Word and how to apply it to every day life. She and her husband Jay are also the founders of Firmly Planted Family and the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center, located in Vancouver, Washington.

One thought on “This is Who You Are, Day 6

  1. Carol M.

    God’s Word is just so amazing and so many times my answers to my daughters’ questions come straight from His Word. Without it, I wouldn’t know how to correctly answer them. We’ve done some casual Bible studies in the past, but I really feel impressed to go deeper. I want to give them all the tools to search the Scriptures for themselves. Thanks for today’s devotional reminder of just how important this is.

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