Friday, January 23, 2015

The critical importance of Christian parenting.

We bring our children to church because we as a family choose to serve God and because it has a decisive impact on the rest of their lives!

Joshua 24: 14 – 18:  "Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness….  But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served… or the gods… in whose land you are living.
But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
Then the people answered, "….. We too will serve the LORD, because he is our God."

Children copy what takes place around them. This is how they learn to speak, to smile, to walk, to believe in God and they will display the behaviours and values that are characteristic of the family they have been born into.
If we, like Joshua, choose to serve the Lord, we practically make it possible for our children to learn to love God.
Parents choose, through their example, faith and participation in Church, to make it possible for their children to love Jesus, or to sideline Christ!

Humans are the most complicated of all creatures but have the most poorly developed reflexes at birth, and has very little instinctive behaviour. Human behaviour is learned behaviour. Just about everything we know, everything we do, and everything we believe is the result of the processes of learning.
The first learning behaviours that children exhibit are the results of imitation –Learning takes place on the basis of what the young children hear and especially what he or she sees and experiences at home.

Christian parenting is therefore of critical importance.   From an early age they imitate us.  Parents are in a child’s life the most important influence.

That is why God in his great wisdom ordained parenting in order for our children, whom he loves, to also love him back.

When we presented our children for baptism we vowed to work in partnership with the church that we and our children may effectively know how to choose life! And how to choose Christ!


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