Teaching Your Children in the Faith

“Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.” Joel 1:3

In this simple way, by God’s grace, a living testimony for truth is always kept alive in the world. The beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness of the gospel and the covenant to their heirs. And these heirs will pass it along to their next descendants.

This is our first duty. We are to begin in our own family homes. A person who does not start his ministry at home is an inadequate witness. Now, all people who do not know Christ are to be sought by all means, and all the highways and hedges are to be searched. But home has a greater priority, and woe to those who reverse the order of the Lord’s appointments.

To teach our children is a personal duty. We cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers, or other friendly aids. These can assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation. Any substitutes are evil and insufficient. Mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High. Parental teaching is a natural duty. Who are more fit to look after a child’s well-being as those who are the authors of his actual being?

To neglect the instruction of our children is worse than wicked. Education in the faith is necessary for the world, for the family itself, and for the church of God. In a thousand ways insidious false teaching is covertly advancing in the world, and one of the most effective means for resisting it is almost always neglected, namely, the instruction of children in the faith.

I pray that parents would awaken to the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk about Jesus with our sons and daughters, and all the more so because God has saved children through their parents’ prayers and patient instruction. May every house into which this devotional is read honor the Lord and receive His smile.

Questions: What makes it difficult to instruct children in the Christian faith? What nevertheless makes that effort so necessary and worthwhile?

Originally written by Charles H. Spurgeon.
Updated to modern English by Darren Hewer
Used by Permission

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