Desiring Spiritual Growth in My Children

While I'm spending a few days visiting family, here are some thoughts I shared a couple of years ago that are still very important to me today.

One of the greatest desires of my life is to see our two daughters grow to know and love God. I feel that I was blessed by my parents with a strong spiritual heritage and long to pass that on to our children. The header of my blog says that I am "striving to rear two precious girls for God's glory." What does that look like? If that is my long-term goal, how do I get there?

As I began thinking this through, I realized that this encompasses several areas of their lives: not only the spiritual aspects, but also the physical, mental and emotional. Today I tried to put down what these spiritual goals would look like.

1. Salvation. The first step to having my girls become women who will bring glory to God is for them to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Praise the Lord, as best I can tell, both girls have prayed to receive Jesus as their Savior. However, since they became Christians at an early age, I want to be careful not to plant my memory of this in their heads or tell them that I know they are saved because I remember them praying about it. Should they ever have doubts, I want to take them seriously and make sure they have assurance in their own heart that they are saved.


2. Living in God's will or plan for their lives. I trust that as a parent I am always open to whatever avenues God may lead them into. I feel that it is part of my job to keep an eye out for areas of interest they may want to pursue and encourage them to follow that path. May I never allow the plans that I think would be good for them to supersede some way that God may be working in their lives. I want to pray alongside them for the career path they may choose, the spouse God provides, should He choose for them to be married, and any other decision, large or small, that they make along the way.


3. Actively serving God and others. Whatever their life's calling, I would hope that our daughters would be serving God in their local church. The very best use of their God-given talents would be using them to encourage other believers and reach out to the unsaved.

In reviewing these ideals, I wanted to develop some practical ways I can be working with my children each and every day to help them develop spiritually.

1. Talk frequently about salvation. Some of the devotional stories we read at bedtime involve someone coming to Christ and explain the plan of salvation.


2. Create an environment that makes it comfortable to talk about spiritual things. Anytime they raise a question about something in the Bible or from a lesson they heard at church, make sure I give them my full attention and answer to the best of my ability.


3. Expose them to preaching that gives the gospel and encourages them to live right before God.


4. As I see them develop certain interests, encourage them in those areas. Provide opportunities to learn and grow as they mature.


5. Pray for them!


6. As they get a little older, allow them to help me as I serve in the church. They can work with me in the nursery, help me prepare a lesson for the children's program, play an offertory on the piano as they're able and assist in preparing a meal for someone in the church who's sick.


7. Invite their friends outside the church to come with them to services or special events. Show a genuine interest in others.

Desiring these things for my girls means that I need to be setting an example for them in these areas. How I need daily help from the Holy Spirit to accomplish that!

Have you set spiritual goals for yourself or your children? Do you have practical steps in place for reaching them?