One Sunday morning, my ten-year-old daughter came running up to me right after Sunday school, panting and excited.
“Mommy, Daddy, something wonderful has happened. Today, for the first time in my life, I cried in prayer!”
I’ll be honest, I was a little skeptical, thinking, what’s the big deal about tears in prayer, but I listened closely to how the “first time in my life”. My daughter’s story went like this.
During the Sunday school service that day, the sermon was about repentance and the preacher asked the children to pray a prayer of repentance, so she prayed, and it brought tears to her eyes. She said that the other children seemed to be crying as well. As we continued to listen to the story, we realized that it wasn’t just an incident about tears during prayer. It was the moment of her life that resolved her inner struggles.
With excitement, she recounted her testimony, revealing that during the repentance prayer, she felt an enormous weight lifted from her heart! The sadness that had once clouded her heart was gone, and her heart was filled with a lightness and joy that she couldn’t quite explain.
I was overjoyed to hear this, as it made me think that God had truly answered my heartfelt prayers for my children—that they would have their own personal encounters with Him and learn to love God freely, without any nudging from their eager parents!
In fact, this prayer request began out of my own frustration teaching the Bible to my children. As I taught them the Bible, many times they were receptive to it, but when I found a huge gap between the Word and their lives, sometimes I found that they were unable to bridge the gap.
The more I taught them, the more I felt helpless, as if the Lord was showing me, it is only up to God Himself. But that helplessness led me to a place of prayer, and God, who is faithful, answered that prayer and personally touched our daughter’s heart. I am so grateful for that.
It also meant a lot to me that God had worked in my daughter’s heart through the church (community of faith).
The common belief that “if I go to church regularly on Sundays, my children will do the same” seems pretty convincing at first, but unfortunately, many of us have learned that this notion is quite naïve. While there are aspects where parents can lead by example, there are also areas where the church community plays a crucial role; both have important contributions to make. From the very beginning, God intended for humanity to exist in community, and our children are no exception.
Thus, it’s imperative that we help our children appreciate and fully immerse themselves in the church community so that they can grow up and mature within it. So how can we, as parents, facilitate this process?
The bottom line is that parents need to love the church community, and we need to show it to our children. I’m not just talking about loving the church community when it’s going well. Parents need to show their children that they still love the church community even when it’s not going well, even when it’s particularly disappointing to be part of a church community, so that they can still love the church community when they go through similar situations in the future.
Children rarely “do as they are told”; instead, they tend to “do as they see.” This is a well-recognized principle among educators: when parents live their faith with one foot in the church and the other in the secular world, balancing their commitment between the church and the secular world, their children may end up leaving their faith behind entirely. Regardless of how often we instruct them to trust in Jesus, it is unlikely to resonate, as they will follow the example set before them rather than the words we speak.
I saw this happen in a church where the father had been a faithful elder, and his son, a deacon, had been a faithful member of the church for generations, loving the Lord and serving the church. But it turned out that this was a rare occurrence in that church. What seemed to be more common was that the parents were longtime members of the church, but their children only attended services and went to church. I wondered.
“What on earth was causing these different outcomes?
So one day I asked the deacon, whose son was a good Christian, what was the secret of his parents’ faithfulness to their faith, and how did his family manage to brew a thick broth of faith for generations, when the children of other families’ faith was so watered down? And he gave me the answer.
I witnessed a poignant scene in a church where a devoted elder and his son, a dedicated deacon, had faithfully served for generations, nurturing their love for the Lord and the church community. Yet, this seemed to be an exception rather than the norm. More often, I noticed that while many parents were long-standing members, their children merely attended.
This left me pondering, “What could be the reason behind these contrasting experiences?”
Curiosity led me to approach the son the deacon, who exemplified strong Christian values. I inquired about the secret to his family’s enduring faith over generations and how they cultivated such a rich spiritual legacy, especially when so many parents tried but struggled to instill the same depth of belief in their children. His response was enlightening.
“I believe there are a couple of key reasons for this. First, my father made it a priority to hold family worship in our home, which drew me closer to the Bible and hymns. Second, my parents never spoke negatively about the church, the pastor, or other members in our presence. I honestly can’t recall a single negative conversation about our church between them. However, as I matured and served alongside my parents in our church, I came to understand that our church was far from perfect. I’m certain my parents had their critiques, yet they chose not to voice any negativity around us. If there’s a secret to our enduring faith, that might just be it.”
Hearing this made my hair stand on end. It struck me that many parents, myself included, often overlook this vital aspect.
I realized that if I truly want my children to develop a strong faith in Jesus, I must love our church more than ever and strive to make it better in every way possible, both in life and in death. This way, my children can be fully immersed in the body of Christ. Children who witness their parents loving and beautifying the church in this manner will grow up to be believers who cherish and uplift the body of Christ, just as they have observed in their homes.