Luke Scallon
Pastor, Faith Baptist Church of Danville

Published in The Des Moines County News on May 26, 2016.

The kitchen – one of the few places that perhaps everyone in your family intersects lives during the day. Or perhaps you don’t even have that anymore. What once used to be a family is now a group of related people doing life simultaneously.

And where does the time go? I can remember having just one child, and he was just an infant. Life keeps moving forward, blurred by busyness, distraction, the mundane details of life. We are part of a society that is becoming busier and busier, spreading ourselves thin from one thing to the next. Blink, and it will all be gone. Children will have grown up and moved out.

How well do you know your kids?

Yes, you may live with them, feed them, discipline them, and of course, you’ve known them since they were infants, crying in your arms… but how well do you really know your kids? What makes them excited, what scares them most, who are their friends, why did they choose those friends, what upsets them most, what makes them most self-conscious, why do they respond to things the way they do, and so much more.

Parents have an awesome privilege of knowing our children in a way that nobody else ever will. We have the privilege of investing in our children in a way that nobody else ever can. Parenting isn’t always convenient or easy. It is perhaps the hardest job we will ever do. But you cannot parent on accident. Our children need us!

There are thousands of books on parenting; if only we could discover which method was the perfect way to raise our children. However, the Bible tells us how to know and love Jesus, who knows and loves us. If we are growing in love with Jesus, we will be showing our kids how to grow in love with Him too.

Here’s the catch: you have to spend time with your kids in order to train them. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says, “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” You can find teaching moments in the midst of any circumstances. As you are “doing life” with your kids, rather than just doing life simultaneously, you get to discuss and demonstrate how to make good choices, how to tackle tough projects, and how to respond in various situations… all the while pointing to Jesus.

Parenting is like an apprenticeship. We get a hands-on, life-on opportunity to learn our kids’ personalities, build them up in love, and teach them all about life. Our kids are our life “apprentices,” and we can make a lasting impact. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).