Loving God by Teaching Our Children the Ways of Christ

Deuteronomy 6:5-7

5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. (NIV)

To express our love to the Lord, we must also impress upon our children the ways of Christ. We live in a day when guiding the spiritual direction of our children is often labeled as religious indoctrination and viewed as wrong. However, the Lord loves our children more than we do. His ways carry a wisdom higher than ours, higher than any human philosophy to produce a life that flourishes in love, peace, joy, prosperity, and fulfillment. If we abandon our children—whom God deeply loves—to the influence of a secular society, how can we claim to love God?

If we claim to love a friend but do nothing when we see their children walking into a dangerous situation, we do not really love our friend. To love our friend, we must love their children enough to protect them from harm. If we do not teach our children the ways of Christ, we fail to love God as we should—because they were His children first.

To not teach them the ways of Christ is to abandon them to the teaching and philosophy found all around them every day, with a curriculum shaped by a world that stands in opposition to God’s truth.

However, to teach the ways of Christ, we must use the techniques of Christ. The teaching technique is just as important as the curriculum. We cannot teach the concept of love without consistent loving behavior. If our love falls apart when our children do something we do not appreciate, our poor technique will eclipse the truth we are trying to teach. Our behavior must match the principles we teach.

Impressing the ways of God upon our children is more than an academic goal. We must live these lessons out in front of them, even with other people, in a way that His love for people and for them floods their souls. As they experience His love through us, they will learn to trust the principles we are teaching. Then, they will love His ways and teach them to their children.

Prayer: Lord, help me to be consistent in my behavior and the lessons I teach my children, and let me not be afraid to teach them the way of life that is best for them. Amen.