God's Recipe for Godly Children

I like using a recipe because I know if I follow the steps that my food will turn out right.  When it comes to parenting, we as parents seek "recipes" to ensure our children will turn out to be wonderful, loving, godly people.  Unfortunately, we often leave it to chance or we hope that they will turn out right.  What if we knew of an actual recipe to turn out godly children? Would we follow it? Such a plan does exist and I didn't write it nor did any other person.  This plan is found in Scripture, the very plan of God Himself.  Let's examine this plan found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

The first ingredient is found in v. 5. We as parents are the key ingredient! We are instructed to be fully committed to the Lord.  You see we often tell our children that they should be living their life for Christ, when we do not do it ourselves.  They need to see wholehearted, genuine commitment to the Lord.  This means we keep our eyes solely on Christ.  This is difficult because we typically serve the Lord through a local church which is filled with imperfect people and when those imperfect people offend us we turn our backs on service altogether.  Our service to people is really for the Lord and we need to keep our focus on Him.   We need to show our children that Christ and His Kingdom has first priority in our lives.

The second ingredient is found in vv. 7-9.  We are to keep the Lord and His Word always before our children.  It says when they are at home, away from home, going to bed, and getting up.  We are to even write His Words on the walls of our house and tie them to the children's hands.  The key here is to put the Lord in every part of their lives!  A true disciple is made when they stop compartmentalizing their life.  We need to teach our children that Jesus permeates every part of our lives and He is NOT just reserved for church and Sunday school.

When we make Christ real in our lives and we stop playing games, then our children see that and want a part of it!  Children who see hypocritical parents grow up to want NOTHING to do with Christianity.  Two ingredients that seem simple yet they are so significant.  Let's stop offering our children as sacrifices on the altar of the world's agenda.