40 Days of Prayer – Prayer Focus: Covenant Relationships – Raising Godly Children
Greetings Beloveds,
Being a parent is one of the most important tasks that God can give anyone. Children are a great blessing. Through parenting, the image of God is revealed in every new generation.
Godly Parenting is Like Arrows in the Hands of a Warrior
God created children to live in a perfect world, with perfect parents, perfect friends – in a constant state of perfection. Yet, due to the fall of Adam, we live in a fallen world. Our desire to live in perfection remains a part of our nature. We seek perfection, but we seldom find it. We seek a sweet life. However, this life will always have a little bitterness to it. This world is not our home.
However, your tasks as parents is to teach your children to hold onto and pursue their ideals while accepting, forgiving and redeeming the imperfections they encounter in themselves, others, and the world around them. Your children will need a strong character to face reality, to handle it with grace and to overcome the vicissitudes of life.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, your goal as a parent is to integrate grace and truth in the midst of a chaotic world that leans towards darkness rather than light.
Grace establishes and maintains godly virtues while truth adds direction for the growth and structure to a child’s behavior and performance. Grace lets a child know he/she is loved. Truth guides the child on what to do and what to become.
The Bible describes God characteristics of grace and truth, mercy and righteousness. God desires for us to walk in these qualities as well. These qualities sustain our relationships and guides us to safety and godly living. No one is born with these qualities fully developed. We are only born with the potential for these qualities.
Parents are called to cultivate, develop, and nurture godly potential. Godly potential can become reality. To develop means, “to cause to grow or expand.” It is the parents role to help children to grow and expand their capacities to walk in grace and live in truth.
Your child’s spiritual life is a fundamental part of a total character development. Children demand that life adapt to them, while mature adults adapt themselves to life.
God has designed your child – and reality – to operate in certain ways within certain parameters. Finding and responding to God’s statutes and ways becomes the key to growing up. The spiritual dimension of life is therefore the most important character capacity of all. Your job as a parent is to help your child to see his life as oriented around God’s realities and to live out those realities in daily existence.
You cannot separate your child’s spiritual life from the rest of his life. It was meant to be integrated into all the aspects of their relationships and tasks. Spiritual growth involves much more than religious training: it involves helping the child understand that they have a purpose and that the reason they exist is to glorify God. Life begins with a relationship, and spiritual life is no exception. Parents must help their children cultivate a relationship with God.
Raising great children is a goal that is both overwhelming and frightening for many parents. The responsibility of someone’s life in your hands, knowing your own failings, can make anyone anxious and unsure. However, remember that God chose you to be your child’s parent. God chose you to be His “hands and feet” in dispensing His grace and truth to your child.
You have been called with a holy calling. God is helping, guiding, and supporting you. God trusts you with the child that He has given you, and He has equipped you for the task. You are a warrior and your children are like arrows in your hands.
Scriptures:
Let’s Pray: Please Review These Awesome Resources – Spiritual Warfare For The Family: Click HERE
Worship Experience: “Bless Us And Keep Us” w/John Waller
Read Next Devotional – Day 30 – Spiritual Housekeeping
