Guest article by Xara Lee.
My Bella is a worldly teen. Other children, whom I enjoy and whose parents I admire, are worldly children. That bit of truth right there crippled me for a few days. It was hard to accept but there it was, staring me in the face. God is nowhere in their vocabulary.
They don’t consider Christ when making life decisions. I know their parents love the Lord, but the Christianity they are presenting to their children is watered down as evidenced by how their children are tackling life. Children are great revealers. If you want to know what is taught behind closed doors, the children will tell you by their actions. That is what I am seeing now. There are bumper crops of teenagers raised by believers, who are worldly.
In 2012, Candice Cameron Bure wrote a piece about how she was failing her family. You can read it here. She candidly admitted how, over time, she stopped the good, godly habits she had with her children and turned over the spiritual responsibility for them to the church and Christian School.
I was awe struck by her candor and transparency. She wrote of something very real and it happens all too often in the Christian community.
The trap for believing parents is that we can think we have done enough. We have done enough teaching Jesus at home that we can focus on teaching other things. We entrust our children to the church and other Christian organizations (i.e. youth groups) to properly guide our children in their walk with Christ. We remove ourselves from the picture to focus on teaching them other important things like getting into college, excelling in a particular sport, building healthy friendships. Those things are good but should not be taught apart from Christ.
We often quote 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” in regards to how we want to leave this earth because that is the context that the verse is written. However, I contend that this verse can be applied to the rearing of our children.
I have noticed in my mommyhood journey that I start out well in many things. Reading stories before bedtime, making sure each meal is balanced, changing the sheets on the same day of every week, and the list is endless. Many things have changed with the new stages my daughter enters, as they should. However, there are other things that I have let go by the wayside. I don’t read stories before bedtime anymore. We wind down in different ways now. My definition of a balanced meal has gotten really lax. Before, I would never have considered applesauce as a suitable substitute for a vegetable in a pinch. Now, applesauce has saved me plenty of times. Washing the sheets every other week is more likely than getting to them every week. Those changes are okay, expected even.
But my sharing Christ with my child is NOT something that should EVER fall by the wayside or change over time.
I want to finish well in this mothering journey. It was easy to begin singing Jesus Loves Me every day when Jazmine was a toddler. It was easy to memorize verses when she was 2 and 3 years old. It was easy to go on walks and talk about how God made everything when she was four. Jaz is five now but with each new year comes a new Jazmine. Her interests always evolve and expand, as they should. As I keep up with her, I cannot allow myself to relax or ease up from telling her who God is and what He has done for us.
I want to finish well. I want 2 Timothy 4:7 to be said of me when Jazmine is 18.
I don’t want a worldly child. That is what I run from. I don’t want my daughter to know the stories of the Bible with no idea on how they apply to her daily life. I don’t want her to think my walk of faith as something to to be done only Sundays or whenever we are around church folk. I want to continue to do as Deuteronomy 6:7 says, not just when she is young and it is easier, but as she grows and our lifestyle as Jesus followers is in stark contrast to what the world believes.
Xara Lee lives on the East Coast of the USA and writes about being a blended family, a wife and mother (wifommy), and how God is working through her life.
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Xara, Thank you for the exhortation! Yes, I want to finish well in this journey of motherhood. As a mama to 5 ages 12-25, I have discovered a few gems of truth.
As my children grew to their teen years and young adulthood, all the teaching we had done in our home (Deut 6:7 is our parenting verse) was now being watched from the sidelines by my kids. They watched as I prayed over them, they watched as I cried with them and rejoiced with them, they drew into relationship with me as their mom and their mentor and greatest cheerleader. And, they wrestled with God. Each in their own way, they longed after worldly things, they walked into those things, embraced them sometimes as though they had to discover for themselves that what we had taught them about the world (be in it, not of it) was true and right and good. I couldn’t stop them from walking into that world, it wasn’t my responsibility that they walked into the world. My responsibility was to continue to live every day of my walk with Jesus as the daughter of the King, and to love my children, point them to Him as the holder of all answers to every question, to love them unconditionally, and pray for them without ceasing.
Does my mama story have a happy ending? A “I raised my children in the way they should go and they have not departed from it” Christian, church going, Bible believing, picture perfect, all in church together on Sunday morning kind of ending? Not yet. And maybe my family will never look like that, because something I have discovered in this journey to this point is that the grace of God is big and powerful and He is Sovereign in this world and His purposes for my children will be lived out. Pray lots, love lavishly, teach (mostly talk and application at this point) diligently and watch God work in the lives of your children. And if your children walk into the world, after “doing it all right” don’t blame yourself! Accept God’s grace for you, and love Him greatly.
This article really resonated with me. This is how I ‘think’. I blame myself for all the failings/worldliness I see in my now grown childrens’ lives. SOOOOOOOOOOOO many regrets! BUT… Could it be? that even if I HAD done ‘everything right’ that it was still ‘their choice’ about how they were going to live? or not? I don;t know. This seems to be hot topic in home school circles right now. Who to blame for all these kids who are jumping ship (either leaving the faith or just making more ‘worldly’ choices as believers… joining the main stream of church goers…..) I donn’t know the answer. There is a balance between ‘train them up in the way they SHOULD go’ and ‘it is not what goes into a man tha tmakes him unclean but what comes out of him.’ Sin is bound up in the heart. So it’s not about outside influenes as much about the heart. And, can we as parents REALLY STEER the heart, like maybe only God can, ultimately? I don’t know. It seems to me that even in the same family you can hve some of the kids who grow up to love the Lord and others who just don’t , really. Thoughts? thanks.