One Generation Shall Praise His Works to the Next

Posted on October 7th, 2004 by hanfaith.
Categories: General.

Phil and I recently got back into John Piper’s radio messages that can be found online. Recently, he had a series on raising your children to hope in God. I like listening to these messages while doing housework - they’re short (only about 20-25 minutes or so) and bracketed by John commentating on his own message.

We were really convicted by our lack of focus in training our children in God’s way. Piper describes in his message “Educating for Hope” how he models out the all importance of the Bible to his children in their everyday lives. We were also challenged by John’s comments on how as soon as a child can be propped up, they can start having their own devotions and be a part of family devotions.

So now, here’s what we are attempting to do with our family. When she first gets up in the morning, we give Éva (our 23 month old) her cup of milk and a story Bible. She takes these and sits on her bed and “reads” while a tape with a reading of the psalms plays. When we are all up and dressed and ready for the day, we do a short morning family devotion - just a quick reading of a passage and a prayer. At night, before bedtime, we do an extended family time. First we read a passage of scripture. Then we ask Éva questions from her children’s catechism. Then we all pray - from youngest to oldest. Éva can say: Dear Jesus, thank you, amen. Sometimes after the thank you she throws in a couple of family names: Ammë, Nana, Ethan, Maggie, Poppy, Poppa, Aunt Sarah and so on.

These actions may just seem like “doing” but instead, we’d like to think more of them as “being” actions. We want to model out to our children abiding in Christ. Of course, this should naturally happen during the day as our children see us living out the Christian life in front of them, but we believe there should also be a focused time when we can teach our children God’s ways. Most likely we are going to slip-up. There will be days when we won’t be able to fit it in. There will be times when it seems like an inconvenience. But this is the most important thing that we can do as parents - prasie His works to the next generation. I pray that the glory of God would be our motivation as we strive to pass on a godly heritage to the next generation.

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