Children: Making The Right Impression

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7

After retiring ten years ago, Ed expected a low-key, quiet life. But his two daughters didn’t marry wisely, and he spends some of each day fretting over the unhappiness of his two girls, both with children of their own, one divorced and the other unhappily married.

No matter how unhappy you are today, it is nothing compared to how unhappy you will be if your children have unhappy lives later. No matter how happy you are today, if your children grow to be unhappy adults, you, too, will bear much grief.

Can you think of anything that matters to you more than the salvation and happiness of your children? What can we do to give our children the spiritual heritage we long for them to have?

When my wife was a teen-ager, she walked down the hall toward her room one evening past the slightly cracked door of her parents’ darkened bedroom. When she absently glanced inside, she saw her father kneeling next to the bed in prayer. Fifteen minutes later she skipped back up the hall and was astonished to see her dad still in the same position, kneeling in prayer. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times she has mentioned this experience; it made an indelible impression on her.

The Bible tells us to impress the commands of God upon our children—to inculcate His values. Teaching our children is not a collection of clever homilies, but a lifestyle—thousands of individual impressions that shape the values and beliefs of our children, like Patsy’s father on his knees.

When your children walk out the door that last time to establish their own household, what will they take with them? The only lasting possessions your children will take with them when they leave home are their value system and their belief system. Whatever else they have will wear out or rust away within a few brief years, but the values and beliefs you impress upon them will guide them, for better or for worse, until they rest in their graves. Based on how it has been going so far, with what heritage will your children begin their own families? And the conspicuous question, what can be done?

Availability Versus Structure

Availability is more important than structure. In other words, doing anything with your kids is more important than trying to devise a structured teaching moment. Let the activity provide the teaching opportunity.

My son wanted to help change a flat tire on my car. He couldn’t loosen the lug nuts. He ran out of energy to unscrew them all. He couldn’t lift the old tire off nor put the new one on. Once the new tire was on, he tried to get away with only putting on every other lug nut. It took twice as long with his help.

While he couldn’t help me as much as he thought he could, he went away thinking he had helped me more than he did. The experience made a large spiritual impression on him. His self-esteem grew by a mile, and now he understands the concepts of diligence and excellence in a deeper way. Those are Biblical values, and I impressed them upon my son in a way that was natural, not contrived. I wasn’t teaching him how to change a flat tire; I was teaching him how to be a man of God.

A Lifestyle

Impressing the way of the Lord is a lifestyle, not an event. “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:7-9).

Whether at home or at the mall, whether over breakfast or after dinner, talk about the Lord. In the home where Christ is reserved for Sunday, He is an event, not a lifestyle. Memorize Scripture, repeat it, teach it, put up plaques, read your Bible, pray in secret often enough that you are accidentally discovered.

Can you think of any earthly pain more devastating than for your children to be unhappy? To be godly parents is no guarantee that your children will turn out right; that they will follow the Lord and lead happy, productive lives. But to be ungodly parents is a virtual guarantee that they will turn out wrong. And if you don’t do your part and by God’s grace they turn out right, you will have had little to do with it.

Apathy Versus Error

Children are harmed more by our apathy than our error. It is not the mistakes we make with them that devastate their lives; it is the neglect. Have you impressed your children with the values necessary to lead a happy, productive life? Have you impressed them with the beliefs to lead them to eternal life? Make the decision to make a difference in the lives of your children now; it may be the source of your greatest joy later.

I SURRENDER

Father, I confess that I have not sensed the gravity of how I am to impress my children with Your ways. Teach me that I may teach them. Spare my children from the grief and pain of wrong values and beliefs. Equip me that I may equip them. Amen.