Transforming Stories Wk 2
Transforming Stories of the Next Generation!
Raise up the Children!
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
RAISE UP CHILDREN TO BE:
LOVERS of God and people! The home is the greatest training grounds for faith because it is where the rubber meets the road for love. Let us never forget Matthew 22:37-40, the Greatest Commandment.
WITNESSES! The home is the first and most intimate place of living out the Great Commission, the family is your first mission team, while on Earth, and your eternal worship team in Heaven (4 kids / 3 kids). You first witness the love of Jesus to one another before you witness to anyone else and when we get that opposite, we have distorted God’s design of creation – stewardship must start in the most intimate of places.
DISCIPLES! Households are the organic small groups of every congregation. HOME is where discipleship first happens, but the parents must accept the call that Christian parenting is first and foremost disciple-making, built upon the reality that is a place of love and witnessing to the first love of God.
CHILDREN AND PARENTS HAVE THEIR OWN RESPONSIBILITIES:
CHILDREN have one primary lesson to learn: Faith, to trust and obey, to respond to godly authority in love. And that comes with the ancient promise of the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:12, the 5th Commandment specifically). Children learn reverence for the Lord by first learning to respect and honor their parents. When kids don’t learn this at home, then we end up with a distorted understanding of fear, authority, love, and other crucial components of a healthy person’s life.
PARENTS have three responsibilities to fulfill:
- Don’t provoke your children to anger; don’t exasperate them! Never forget that without love and respect you will only manifest rebellion in your child’s heart. There must be a focus on relationship! It is your first task, from before you even have children, to cultivate a culture of love and respect in your home, which is what Ephesians 5:21-33 teaches for biblical marriage. God designed marriage to provide a firm foundation.
- Bring them up in the Discipline of the Lord! While this will look differently at different developmental stages of the child’s life, it must always fulfill the purpose of God’s discipline, found in Hebrews 12:4-11.
- Bring them up in the Instruction of the Lord! We conclude where we began, the job of parents is to live before their children in such a way that they walk in the manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus – to raise up children who are 1) whole and holy in Christ, 2) learning how to be great lovers of God and people, and 3) living on mission as members of the body of Christ because the church is only as healthy (= effectiveness and fruitfulness) as each household is bearing good fruit according to John 15:16.