Raising Up Kids Who Have Faith Like a Child as They Grow
God designed worship as a means to connect you with His Spirit. He knew you’d need Him if you were going to survive, and thrive in this fallen world, but your children are even more spiritually vulnerable than you are. The enemy actively seeks to devour (1 Peter 5:8) and your children’s faith is at the top of his list because Satan knows that having faith like a child is one of the most powerful forces in heaven and on earth.
How do you protect your kids from the enemy and the fallen world where all who have rejected Christ are “under the sway of the wicked one”? (1 John 5:19) As parents, you can’t follow your kids around forever and at some point, they’ll be apart from you, whether at school, with their friends or relatives or anywhere else. You can’t control what evils the world is going to throw at them, but if you want to protect and strength the faith like a child they have now, you must show them how to protect and defend themselves.
Your Example of Faith Like a Child Will Teach Without Words
Even though Jesus Christ never had any genetic children, He did, of course, produce spiritual children of faith in the Lord once He died for sin. As Isaiah wrote, “If He made Himself as an offering for sin, He shall see His offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.” (Isaiah 53: 10)
From there, because of the influence of the “offspring” who took the message of salvation into the world, Jesus Christ had spiritual offspring into eternity.
However, even with the God-given blessing of having faith like a child early on, kids don’t just randomly turn out godly. In fact, quite the opposite! If you do nothing or don’t actively do something, the world will pick up the slack and teach them everything. Kids’ Church isn’t enough. Y
our consistent, faithful and personal example of godliness will influence your children for the rest of their lives and help maintain their faith like a child as they grow.
Worship is your living testimony of who God is, and of what He has done and it will resonate with your children forever. This is why you can’t simply show up to church and sing songs. Having faith like a child fades as it ages, but seeing your personal lifestyle of praise and worship and seeing you dwell in the secret place of God’s presence is a testimony will speak louder than any words you could ever speak.
Passing Faith onto the Next Generation is Both Spiritual and Natural
Psalm 44:1 says, “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work You did in their days, in the days of old…” Worship is a faith-building strategy no matter how old someone is, so you must instill a lifestyle of worship into your children by your example.
Psalm 78:4-7, says, “We will not hide [Your works] from the children, but will tell the coming generation the praises of the Lord, and His strength, and the wonderful works that He has done…that the generation to come might know them, even the children who are not yet born, who will arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God.”
The spiritual DNA and spiritual heritage your children carry will be put into them through you and it is something they will carry into the following generations as well.
~Alicia Purdy
Until their faith is strong enough to accept Jesus Christ on their own, your kids have the gift of having faith like a child and because of that, their roots will grow strong when they are young and they will live by your example of worship at home, in life, at church, around friends- your lifestyle of worship will be theirs.
Your Children Need Your Testimonies of God’s Power to Protect Them
Here’s what Lord said to Moses: “When your son asks you in time to come, saying, “What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the Lord our God has commanded you?” then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand...'” (Deuteronomy 6:20-21)
Many times people don’t realize the profound impact that an early knowledge of the Lord has on the trajectory or spiritual transformation of a person. Childhood is the time when most people receive the Lord because of the natural faith that God gave them. Even if they stray later on, people always carry with them the memories of their abandoned faith from childhood.
Satan is intentionally and actively coming for the next generation of Christians because he knows the best time to uproot a mighty oak tree is while it is still a little sapling.
~Alicia Purdy
That’s why Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me…” – He knew the faith of a child had to be nurtured, that children must be brought close to Him at an early age when their faith, by nature, is the most spiritually open. What you say matters. What you don’t say matters.
Satan is intentionally and actively coming for the next generation of Christians because he knows the best time to uproot a mighty oak tree is while it is still a little sapling.
Get faith rooted into your children when they’re young and they will grow up instinctively relying on Christ for their strength, knowing to run to Him when life gets hard, using worship as a weapon of spiritual warfare and singing and making melodies in their heart to the Lord, and knowing how find Him in His Word and how to connect with His Spirit in prayer.
Psalm 40:3 says, “…many will see it, and be in awe, and will trust in the Lord.” Many will put their trust in the Lord because of your worship! That is how the Kingdom grows and how faith is built from generation to generation. The world will be watching all that you do, but so will your children.
Thought for today: Develop Your Own Faith Like a Child
Even if you are not a parent, your influence as a godly adult in the life of a child is of great importance and is part of the spiritual heritage they will carry. You do have something to offer to the next generations that matters by your example. Maybe you don’t realize it or notice, but children are watching. They’re observing how you speak to others, the look on your face, even the clothes that you wear, how you pray, how you worship the Lord and more.
Just like with Jesus the Messiah, a spiritual heritage is being built through you. The spiritual DNA your children and spiritual “offspring” carry will be something they will pass onto the following generations as well.
Your example of worship today, your victories, the strength you find, the joy you possess that defies your circumstances, the peace that passes understanding, the inner light that shines out of you in the darkness- your children will never forget what they see in you.
Psalm 145:4 says, “One generation shall praise Your works to another and shall declare Your mighty acts,” and Psalm 102:18 says, “…Let this be written for the generation to come, that a people who shall be created shall praise the Lord.”
Psalm 22:30-31 says, “Posterity will serve Him; It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They will come and will declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has performed it.”
These are not parent-child connections – these actions are those that the generations in the “congregation” carry out to the next generation of physical and spiritual children. Young children are watching your example, yes, but so are young Christians – those immature or new in their faith – what are they seeing in you?
Even if all you every did was faithfully, vibrantly, passionately, wholeheartedly worship the Lord, you’ll “birth” generations of Christians who look back, remember you and do the same.
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