Our Goal in Parenting

Psalm 145:4

“One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts.”

We are called to proclaim the glory of our Lord to the next generation – and who would that be? Our children, our siblings, or simply anyone younger than us that we come in contact with! This should be our main goal and purpose in parenting. If we are purposeful in declaring often of His praises, they will grow to treasure what we treasure. Every moment is a teaching opportunity. If our time spent in conversation together is always centered around the latest movie, sport activity, social event, what do you think they are going to become passionate about? I believe this to be especially true about what we make our family hobbies.

We must always be looking for opportunities for reflecting and sharing how the Lord has changed our life, in addition to how He has worked throughout all the ages. That is why solid history resources are so important! As the saying goes, they who know history will not be doomed to repeat it.

I have been reflecting upon this lately as I have been studying the Scriptures and asking myself, how can I start making this a habit now, even while my baby is too young to understand?

Here are some thoughts:

- Sing truth together and have it playing in your home so they can learn to praise the Lord. I started posting different worship songs over my changing table and singing them to my baby. I want her to hear of the goodness of our God from her infancy.

- Be a worshiper at church for those little eyes are always watching. I have been blessed with parents who love to worship the Lord and you can see it now in the way my siblings worship. There are other families I have observed that the mother and father barely sing, neither were they raising their hands (not that this is necessary, but it is an outward sign of an inward attitude), and guess what? The children were the same way! This has stirred within me a passion to worship the Lord with my whole heart, so my children might see how much He means to me.

- Read the Word together - I am so thankful for the faithfulness of my parents from my youth in getting us up early on a regular basis and reading the Scriptures together. I remember many a time greatly hating this event, waking up early, reading together…boring! But then God transformed my life. I was a new creature! I had a fresh desire to study and know the truth, and I attribute this awakening to the mercy of God but also to the faithfulness of my parents.

- Be students of history! Have lots of good biographies, auto-biographies, history resources for your children. Be students together of the great works of God throughout history. For in fact, it is His Story!

RESOURCES:

Vision Forum supplies some wonderful resources on history. I have been blown away time and time again by their thorough coverage of history. Great resource!

Treasuring God in Our Traditions – by Noel Piper – an excellent resource! She defines a tradition as “a planned habit with significance. Tradition is the handing down of information, beliefs, and worldview from one generation to another by word of mouth and by regular repetition of example, of ceremony, and of celebration. For a Christian, tradition is laying up God’s words in our own hearts and passing his words to the next generation.” She supplies an abundance of ideas of incorporating God-centered traditions in your family life!

Some resources Noel Piper recommends:

My First Book of Questions and Answers by Carine MacKenzie – a resource they used for teaching the catechism to children.
Most of All, Jesus loves You – the story of a lovely bedtime tradition for toddlers and preschoolers.
Hide ‘Em in Your Heart, vols. 1 & 2 by Steve Green. Cassettes or CDs of songs for Bible memory. (We had these on avideo growing up…and I can still remember the verses!)
Leading Little Ones to God by Schooland – Devotional book for preschool and young school aged children (I used this with my younger siblings, a great resource!).
Word & Song Bible, books & CD ed. Steve Elkins – the Pipers used this resource with their children to train them to have their own devotion time when they were too young to read. They also had family devotions, but from their toddlerhood the children would sit down for a short period and use a Bible and audio tape/CD and have their own devotions. Wonderful idea!

Two excellent articles written by the Pipers:

The Family: Together in God Presence
Home-Grown World Christians

Do you have any resource recommendations to share?