Yesterday I listed seven ways I wrongfully provoke my kids to anger. Today’s list: seven things we emphasize in our family to fulfill the second part of Ephesians 6:4.
You only need to spend five minutes around our family to know we’re far from perfect, but here are some ways we’re trying harder to be.
- Teach them the Bible
With very small kids, you can read stories from age-appropriate books like the Jesus Storybook, which shows how every story in the Bible points to Jesus. But as soon as possible, we read to our kids from the actual Bible. We try to read a couple paragraphs together every morning at breakfast, but life is crazy and we’re not Nazis about it, so it usually ends up happening about 3 or 4 times a week. We’ll read the text, then we’ll spend 10 or 15 minutes talking about what it means for our lives. If there’s a really meaningful verse in there, we’ll memorize it together. Even a 3-year-old can memorize verses! - Pray with them and over them (we do both)
After we read the Bible together at breakfast, we pray about specific ways God can help us apply it to our lives. We also pray for other people, and encourage our kids to pray for their friends all the time. Then at bedtime, we pray over our kids. We lay hands on them (following the biblical example of dedicating others to the Lord), and we pray for God to keep drawing them closer to him and making them influential in the lives of the people around them. - Model godliness to them
Grace … when they see you get upset about dumb little things, they’re learning the opposite of grace. Humility … when I get upset and lash out at my kids, I apologize to them. When I lash out at Cyndi in front of them, I apologize to her and then to the kids, making sure they know that I was wrong. Honesty … Their hearts are naturally deceptive, but kids also learn dishonesty from you. When Grandma gives them underwear for their birthday, what do you force them to do? Get on the phone and tell her how much they love it. “I asked for a Wii, but this underwear is so much better, Grammie!” In my book, honesty is much more important than politeness. - Give them experiences caring for others
When Cyndi and I first got married 15 years ago, we sponsored a girl in Haiti through World Vision. Now that she’s old enough to have her own kids, we decided it was time to choose a new child. We sat down with the whole family around the computer, went on the Compassion International website, and chose a kid from Thailand to sponsor. None of us can pronounce his name, but it looks close to Johnny so that’s what we call him. We write him letters. We all go down to PriceBusters and find puzzles and toys and T-shirts to send him. Now all our kids are talking about Johnny all the time. Every time Micah prays, he prays for Johnny. We also want our kids to experience compassion up close, so we’ve taken them along for community-group barbecues with the homeless people who live in Old Stadium Park. They ride their scooters around the park and invite people to come join us for dinner, then they help serve the food. They love it every time, and they can’t wait to go back. - Be active in their education
We try to volunteer as room parents and for school activities as much as possible. We also take time every year to evaluate each of our kids’ schools – whether or not it’s a good environment, how well our kids are learning, and what our kids are learning. This past year, we had Talia in a Christian preschool at a church. At the end of the year we decided we’re not going to send any more of our kids to this school, because we noticed that besides the Christmas program they never talked about God once. It’s not that I think my kids need to learn about God at school – that’s primarily my job, not the school’s – but I don’t want my kids to get used to the idea of going to a church and not hearing about God! When they get old enough to choose their own church, I want them to feel very uncomfortable when they visit a congregation that talks about being a good person and never mentions that it’s only possible to be good through God’s grace. - Help them become responsible
We give them chores to do, and we try to hold them accountable to it (although we’re not always the best at it, since it’s always easier to just do the chore yourself than it is to get a kid to do it). We’re also starting to help them learn how to support themselves financially, by recycling cans. - Show them you love them just for being them
That’s why God loves us. Not for our ability to perform, succeed, or obey, but simply because of his sovereign grace. We take our kids out alone for date-nights, and we try to tell our kids we love them all the time. I probably say it to each of my kids 3 or 4 times a day.
Our goal is not to make perfectly polite and well-behaved kids, but kids who genuinely love Jesus and respond to his grace with joyful sacrifice and discipline.