Many parents today believe that pushing “religion” on children is wrong. They want their children to have the right to choose what “religion” they want to follow when they are old enough to decide. That’s fine for the world because they don’t know God, and no religion will save them anyway. But for Believers, it’s not an option. The Bible is clear that we are to teach our children about God.

Sadly, many so-called “Christians” also believe that it’s wrong to push the Bible at their children. They don’t want to force the Old Testament God onto them because the new age “Christianity” says that God has changed and that He loves them no matter what they do. This is a deception that just may put many parents at the judgment seat of Christ one day.

Teaching our children about God, His laws and the salvation He gave us through Christ Jesus is not an option: it is mandatory! It’s essential that our children learn the truth from the get-go. This has nothing to do with opinion or preference. It’s a truth that we must teach our children.

• Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.—Proverbs 22:6

God wants us to raise our children to know Him, and we begin the day they are born. Even though they are born with the inherited sin in them, each child’s mind and heart is pure and open to being taught. They are hungry to learn and they will learn, be it the things of this world or the things of God. Either way, their hearts and minds will be filled with something.

By the time a child is five years old, he or she will have developed habits, opinions, mannerisms, likes and dislikes, attitudes, reactions, body and verbal language, reflexes, behavioral approaches, joys, fears, and feelings about everything and everyone in their lives. These will mold their future lives because they have been embedded in their hearts since birth; they have become the memories that they will draw on during good times and bad.

• Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.—Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Many children stray from God when they become adults because the devil is out there like a roaring lion trying to steal them. He is sly, deceitful and conniving, and he makes sin look good. He lures them in and convinces them that we are old fashioned, that God has changed, that sin is okay, and that repentance isn’t necessary.

These children leave behind their memories of Sunday school and Bible verses to serve the world. But not all stay lost because the truth is still buried deep in their hearts. Through praying parents, that truth will rise up and God will give those children opportunities to turn from the world, to seek His forgiveness and to repent of those sins and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

If we don’t teach our children to love and worship God, then the world will teach them not to! When that happens, their hearts become hard just as Pharaoh’s did in the time of Moses, and a hardened heart cannot receive anything from God. We need to be wise! We need to teach our children the truth about God, and we need to pray for them every day.

• And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.—Ephesians 6:4

The story of the Protocol’s son tells it all. The son was trained in the ways of God. He knew about God and about God’s laws and His love, and yet, the world was able to lure him away. But when he was deep into sin, he began to realize how far he’d fallen from the life of his childhood. He remembered the things of his youth, and how good life was, and how righteous and caring his father was. That’s because the truth was in his heart for him to draw on. Then he realized that he wanted that life back, and he wanted to go home. So he humbled himself and returned home to his father who welcomed him back with open arms.

 

We can give our children the opportunity to know Him when they are very young so that if they stray, they have Scriptures in their heart and the memories of God’s love to draw on. And through our prayers, God will bring it to the surface and they can be saved! We need to teach them about salvation, and about repentance and forgiveness. We need them to know that Jesus is the only way to God.

 

• Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: 3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”—Ephesians 6:1-3

If we teach our children the truth and they deliberately reject it, then we have done all we can do besides continually pray for them and be a testimony of God’s love and forgiveness. But if we don’t teach them the truth and our children die not being saved, then we will stand accountable before God for our disobedience. Training up a child in the way of the Lord is a commandment, not a choice, and that’s because our children’s lives depend on it!

 

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Thanks for stopping by, and have a really blessed day! … ronnie