Dads: Day Twenty One
God wants you as a father to get involved in the nitty gritty details of your children's lives and help them learn how to honor God in each and every area.
That's a privilege!
It's also a little overwhelming. You might be wondering where exactly do I begin?
“I know I need to bring my children up, but where do I even start?”
The good news is that the Bible gives us an example of a father doing this in the book of Proverbs. Since the writer of that book was the wisest man who ever lived, you don’t need to try to improve on it much, instead you can just follow in his footsteps.
Over the next several days, I want us to look several of the lessons Solomon believed it was important for a father to teach his children.
First, you need to teach your children the fear of the Lord.
This may be one of the most important things you can teach your children, because Solomon says in Proverbs 1:7 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
If your children are going to know anything about this world truly, they have to start here with a proper perspective towards God.
Now I think some might hear I need to teach my children to fear God and think it sounds funny to say you need to teach them this because we think of fear first as an attitude and obviously you can’t make your child have an attitude of reverence towards God. However, the fear of the Lord is not only an attitude, it’s also knowledge, it’s truth about God.
In fact in Psalm 34:11, the Psalmist says, come and I will teach you the fear of God and he can say that because in places like Psalm 19, the fear of the Lord is a term that is synonymous with the law of God and the statutes of God and the commandments of God.
You may not be able to get in your child's heart and change it to feel a certain way about God, what you can do and must do as a parent is teach your children who God is and what God demands of them! You need to show them that God is king and you need to teach them God’s laws. You need to teach them what a right attitude toward God looks like. You need to teach them to take God seriously.
How do you do that?
By making sure that you fear God yourself, and not just at church, but throughout the week, that you know who God is and you are in awe of Him yourself.
By teaching them God’s law, and by taking God’s law seriously, and showing them the consequences of disobedience and even continually holding up God as the final authority in your home.
By as your children grow, talking to your children even about the wrath of God. This is a serious subject and you want to talk about it in the right way, but it is real.
By helping your children understand what was happening at the cross and by showing your children the great love of God as He poured out His punishment on His son.
As a father, you are going to teach your children many things. But there is nothing more important that you can teach them than the fear of God. So take some time and think about how you can help your children see how awesome God is today!