"Children are a heritage from the Lord,
and the fruit of the womb is His reward”( Psalms 127:3).
A family is never complete without a child. We are happy and
thankful when God blesses us with children. However we need to remember that
raising a child is a very serious responsibility. God entrusts us with the life
of a child to raise him or her to ultimately become a child of God. We are
caretakers for the children God grants us. We are expected to care and nourish them
physically and spiritually as per God’s will and commandments. We have a
responsibility towards God to bring up our children to know, love and obey their
heavenly Father.
Today more than ever, we need a Christ centered generation. The world at present is at the peak of evil, sorcery
and immorality. Our children are at the mercy of technological advances like
social media, entertainment, access to the world through the internet, peer
pressure etc. In order to protect them
from these harmful influences, we need to raise our children to equip them to
be strong when they face temptations, difficulties and struggles. We need to
inculcate the importance of Christian values and morals in them, beginning from
childhood itself, to help them put their trust and faith in God, to obey His teachings
and resist the frivolity of the world. It is our responsibility as parents to equip
our children to survive and face difficulties by turning to God, and not to
temporary worldly comforts, or the easy way out by ending their precious lives.
This is a dangerous trend now among the young generation.
The greatest blessing we can give our children is to enable
them to put their trust and faith in God, to stand firmly on the truth that God
is with them always and will never leave them nor forsake them. They need the
assurance that, when they face difficulties and problems, God will be with them
and will deliver them.
How can we develop this assurance and faith in our children?
First of all, we need to exert ourselves to be a good example
for leading a stable Christian life. Children need to understand that along
with academic excellence, they need to give more or at least equal importance
to living a life obeying God’s commandments.
We as parents are not perfect and cannot achieve this alone. This is
where the church also plays an important role. We need to ensure that children
when they are small attend church and Sunday school classes, where they learn
about the foundation of Christian faith and become familiar with the stories
and teachings in the Bible. It is through hearing the word that the seeds of
faith are sown in to their young minds. Later on in life, when they are on
their own in the midst of challenges and struggles, these seeds will bear fruit
of faith and trust in God and equip them to stand strong and overcome their
difficulties. The Christian values they learnt from home and church will come
back to them and help them to trust in God to sustain them through the
difficult seasons.
To give a child a strong Christ centered life, it would be also
helpful to focus on three important aspects.
The first and most important step is PRAYER.
We parents need to be constantly prayerful. We need to pray
for our children every day to enable them to lead and submit to a Christ
centered life. Our children need our
prayers to help them hold on to their faith and trust in God during their
school years, during the turbulence of adolescence, for their marriage to a
committed Christian partner and to lead a Christ centered family life. The
importance of prayer can be cultivated in the children by holding regular
family prayers at home every day. When parents and children sit together, sing
songs, read from the Bible and pray for each other, mutual love and respect
grows. There will be a bonding between parents and children with God at the
center. Family prayers will help
children to build a strong Christian foundation and a good relationship with
parents and siblings, which is very important for them to feel valued and
loved, so that they feel free to share their worries and difficulties with
their family, instead of listening to wrong advises and taking their own
decisions.
The second step is by our EXAMPLE.
The best way they can learn to believe and trust in God is
from our example at home. When we face difficulties, we need to show them that
we trust in God to help us, by our prayers and positive attitude and not by
being depressed or negative, complaining and grumbling about our situation.
They will learn from our behavior and attitude more than any sermon or advice.
The third step is by TRAINING.
We can train children to adopt Christian values by living out
a faith filled life along with them. In
such a family the children will be rooted and grounded in faith so that, even
if they waver for some time, they will ultimately fall back to the training of
Christian values and morals they received during their childhood.
The coming generation needs to understand the difference
between good and evil, to have the physical and spiritual strength to stand up
for the right things, to stand against the normal acceptable behavior of the
world. Parents along with the church, need to pay extra attention to bringing
up children, so that they will be conformed to living as per God’s standards
and not according to the world. We need to be on our knees and pray as never
before for the spiritual well being of our children. We can help our children
only by submitting ourselves to Christ as the head of our family. He alone is
the perfect Father. When Christ is at
the center of our family, even if we make mistakes in guiding our children,
ultimately He will correct them and bring them back to rest under His care and
protection
Only then can a generation be brought up to stand strong in the power and will of our Almighty God. Only then can this world become a safe place for the future of our children
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