Every committed Christian parent wants nothing more than to see their children follow the Lord. Some children do. Some don’t. It can leave us wondering, “What can I do to cause them to trust Jesus?”
First, understand that your responsibility is one of training, not programming. In short, there is nothing you can do to cause your children to follow the Lord. However, there are some clear instructions in the Word about our role as parents.
Training includes disciplining our children:
Pro 19:18 Discipline your son while there is hope, And do not desire his death.
Pro 22:15 Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.
Pro 13:24 He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.
Pro 23:13 Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you beat him with the rod, he will not die.
Pro 29:15 The rod and reproof give wisdom, But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.
Training will include not only discipline, but also instructing them in the things of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4 reads, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Titus 2:4 reads, …and so train the young women to love their husbands and children. Similarly, Deuteronomy 6:6-7 "And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
Additionally, training will include warning our children about the eternal danger of walking away from the Lord (Heb 6:1-8). We can and should make it clear to them that our faith will not save them. They must follow the Lord.
But such training is not programming. There are not a series of buttons we can push in any sense that will ensure our children go a certain way.
Second, we must embrace God as the One who saves. Judges 2:10 reads, And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.
In the context of Israel's history, this verse might as well be a flashing neon sign. It is the bridge between the faithfulness of the Joshua generation and the apostasy of the Judges generation. It explains how Israel’s outlook went from being one of promise and hope to being one of sin and despair. The depth of its ramifications is played out for the rest of the book of Judges, and in a sense, for the rest of Old Testament history.
Those of us who are parents might read such a verse and believe that our children's eternity depends upon our faithfulness as parents. We assume that if that new generation of Israelites did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel, the previous generation must not have told them. The parents dropped the ball, we think, so they bear great responsibility.
However, the knowledge mentioned in this verse is not mere awareness of information. It’s not that the new generation had never heard of the Lord or of the work that he had done for Israel. Certainly, they had. Caleb said in Judges 6, “If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’”
Additionally, in ch11, 14 verses are dedicated to Jephthah’s history lesson to the king of the Ammonites, recounting for him how God brought them from Egypt to their present inheritance. Clearly, the people knew about the LORD and His work. They knew it very well. Therefore, the preceding generation must have been faithful in communicating the promises and works of God.
The problem was that this new generation did not know God in the sense that they did not love and cling to God, they did not trust His work (Jos 23:1-13). Not even Joshua could make them do that (Joshua 24).
The storyline of Joshua and Judges illustrates a truth spoken by Moses all the way back in Deuteronomy 29:4, "But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear." Parents and leaders train, but the LORD alone changes hearts. All of us who believe are evidence that He delights to do this very thing.
So, Judges 2:10 does not indict us if our children do not come to faith in Christ. However, it is a good reminder of two things – first, we do have a responsibility to bring the gospel to our children, but second, our efforts are no guarantee that they will repent and believe. Salvation belongs to the Lord. As in all things, He is sovereign, good, and wise, therefore, we should rest in Him, even as we strive to faithful as parents. Let us remember that our hope is not in our kids' conversions, but in the God who saves.
Third, we must pray diligently and persistently. If God is the one who saves, we should wear out our knees praying for our children, not despairing as we wait. Both testaments testify to the reality that God works through the prayers of His people to accomplish His work. Moses prayed that the Lord would relent from His destruction of the Israelites, and He did (Exo 33:12-23). Joshua prayed that the sun would stand still, and it did (Jos 10). Samson prayed for strength to defeat the Philistines, and he received it (Jdg 16:28-30). James appealed to the prayer life of Elijah to make that point that "the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working" (Jas 5:13-19). Jesus dedicated Himself to prayer and instructed us to do so (Luke 5:16; 18:1-8). Therefore, let us pray, pray, pray for our kids.
I am encouraged as I do membership interviews at PBF. I frequently hear from committed believers whose story is a variation on this theme: "I was raised by believing parents. I prayed a prayer when I was little, but wandered in my teens and early adulthood. However, the Lord eventually called me to Himself and transformed me." The elders hear this so often that when I hear about a young person drifting from the Lord, while I am concerned, I don't despair. The church is filled with people who drifted and returned. While this is not everyone's story, it does coincide with the continuing story of Israel, and it fits a pattern of the Lord's work.
Let's be faithful in our work as parents and trust the Lord in His work in the heart.
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