Building Your Child’s Faith Foundation

As a parent, you are the first step toward your child’s faith development and trust in God. What you do, how you interact with your child, and the example you set will impact your child’s faith development.

The first step to shaping our children’s spiritual development is understanding that spiritual life is integrated with all of life. We cannot separate emotional, spiritual, and social development from other parts of life. If we do, we miss the message that God gave us about teaching His ways to our children:

“These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. 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 6:1-9).

Parents are often burdened because they know it is their responsibility to be their child’s primary spiritual leader, but they are not sure how to bridge the gap from knowing they need to fill that role and actually doing something about it. When parents can see that building the bridge to God is actually just communicating with their child and connecting God to daily living, the job becomes more doable and less frightening. So, how we can connect God to daily events and build strong spiritual foundations for our children?

Consider Your Walk with God
The first thing to remember is that you can’t give away something you don’t possess. To teach spiritual truths to your child, you must have a personal relationship with God. Then, as in the passage from Deuteronomy, when your child asks about spiritual matters, you’ll have your own faith story to tell. Telling one’s own story is the most natural thing in the world for people to do. If you are unsure about how to teach your child spiritual truths, work on your own spiritual life – and then share it with your child.

For example, if you have an active prayer life, then you can share from your own experience when your child has a problem: "I understand, Davie. I know what it is like to have a problem that you don’t know how to solve. You know what I do when that happens to me? I ask God to help me and show me the way. The other day at work I was really struggling, and…" In this way, you are doing what Moses said. You are talking about God and His truths as you sit at home or walk along the road. You don’t need to be a Bible scholar to teach your child about God. You just need to share your knowledge and your own spiritual experiences with your child.

Create Teachable Moments
Through various experiences, you have learned what is important in a relationship with God. To create opportunities for teaching your child spiritual truths, think in terms of three: you, your child, and God. For example, in the above illustration, if Davie is facing a problem at school, you can share your experience of asking God to help when you’ve faced problems. Then you can pray together. “Davie, let’s pray now. Let’s ask God to help you when you have to go back into that situation.” By doing this, you’re showing your child that your faith in God is real.

The same is true about the Bible. Show your child how the Bible applies to everyday life: “Let me show you what I read when I feel that way, Davie.” If we integrate Scripture into real life, then we are showing our children that living God’s ways are the ways to a prosperous life.

Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you,” takes on much more meaning in the context of a recent squabble with a playmate than it does in a Sunday School lesson. “Davie, here is what I have learned that helps us make and keep friends. If you want to have friends, you need to…"

Build Strong Spiritual Foundations
A child’s basic belief about who he is and how he fits into the world is developed during the first six years of life. By meeting your child’s basic developmental needs of love and guidance, you help your child learn important qualities about God.

Love — Show your child that love is the most important aspect of our lives with each other, as well as with God. Make sure your child feels your love, and make sure you communicate that God loves him more than anything. Then, when a teachable moment arrives, take time to ask, "How can you love Susie like God loves you?" Your child also need to hear often, "God loves you, and so do I."

Responsibility — Responsibility is taught repeatedly in the Bible, and parents feel that teaching responsibility is one of their greatest tasks. Teach it not with guilt and shame, but with reality consequences and discipline. Tie responsibility to real life. When you teach your child that if he doesn’t do his chores he will miss a ballgame or favorite television program, you are teaching him about responsibility. You can begin to let your child see that God expects right choices and also has consequences for disobedience.

Forgiveness — Teach your child to own her actions when she is wrong. Help her learn to say, "I am sorry." And when she is the one wronged, teach her to forgive.

Diligent use of talents and resources — In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), we are shown that no matter how much or how little we have, we must be responsible with our resources. Give your child opportunity to learn appropriate use of her abilities and talents. If your child gets an allowance, begin the teach the concept of the tithe by helping her set aside 10 percent as offering to the church. In doing this, you are teaching her the basics of becoming a "good and faithful servant."

Reverence for creation — A walk in the park, a full moon, twinkling stars, and sunny days are opportunities to remind a child that God is the Creator of all things. Spontaneously thanking God by saying, "Thank You, God, for the beautiful sunset" teaches a child that worshiping God is not limited to inside the church.

Laying a spiritual foundation is one of the most incredible responsibilities for parents. From research we know that if people are not reached for Jesus in childhood, they are much less likely to follow Jesus in adulthood. It is never too early to begin building your child’s faith foundation.

First, understand that you must possess a spiritual life of your own in order to pass one on to your child. Second, realize that faith must be authentic and real, lived out in daily life. Finally, remember to be loving and kind, not guild-laden, authoritarian, or heavy-handed. By focusing on these three things, you can give your child the best gift you could ever give him: a strong start to his faith development.


By Dr. Henry Cloud | Source: www.lifeway.com

Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist and the co-founder of Cloud-Townsend Communications in Southern California.