Three Important Things To Teach Your Children

I just came back from a Woman/Motherhood retreat this weekend and while there, I realized that I need to write more.  More for me than for anyone else but if it happens to bless someone else too than hallelujah!

            I believe that out of all the life skills to teach your children there are three that are more important than all the others.  Now I realize that I am a new mom and do not have credibility in that area yet, as one to dish out advice, but I am coming at this from a daughter's perspective.  Basically the three most important things that I believe my mom taught me and what I wish to teach my children.  Now, we can never teach our children everything they need to know, about God, history, math, friendship, scripture, politics, the world, health, nutrition, etc. we just can't. So what can we teach them that will enable them in the future to make up for an area in which we were lacking?  One, teach them how to learn. Two, teach them how to seek the Lord. And three, teach them to obey.

            I’ll begin with how to learn.  It is so important to know how to learn.  The older I get and the more I realize just how much I don't know, the more grateful I am that I know how to learn on my own.  From a spiritual perspective, know how to use a concordance, cross reference scripture, do word searches, etc.  If I don't know something in scripture, it is so empowering to know that I have the tools to go search it out and learn.  Right now we are making some major changes in our health and nutrition and I am having to read and reread, look stuff up, to talk to people who know more than me, to ask the right questions, to know or find out where good resources are located.   It is so important that our children learn how to learn, because, in those moments in life when they come to a place where they need to know something, it can be a place of growth instead of a place of deflation and defeat!

            Secondly, teach them to seek the Lord.  My mom didn't get saved until I was 5 or 6, and when she did, she fell head over heels in love with her Savior!  From that point on I ALWAYS knew she was seeking the Lord. Now don't get me wrong, she went through dry spells, and deserts, and hard times and times when maybe she didn't feel like seeking the Lord just like all the rest of us, but I always knew that was her ultimate desire.  Now honestly she didn't do right in front of us a lot of the time.  Matthew 6:6 says, "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." and you know what I JUST feel like God showed me when I read that verse.  Even though she spent a lot of her own walk in the secret, she would hide in her closet or get up early before everyone else, we always knew.  God rewarded her by showing her children what she was doing even though she didn't do it to be seen.  Now of course we did bible lessons and memory verses and she taught us about the Lord, but her personal walk with God, that was done in the secret places of our home and of her heart and yet I always knew my mom was seeking God.  It honestly made me mad sometimes when I was in those rebellious stages, not that any of you have EVER gone through anything like that!  So now as problems rise up in my own life, in my own marriage, in my own heart, with my children, I know to seek the Lord. Do I always do it? No of course not, but the course was set straight in my heart that I know that is where I need to turn!

            There were many talks and teachings at this retreat and they had several panels on marriage, parenting, and nutrition and what they would ALWAYS come back to was "Seek the Lord."  "Here are one or two practical pieces of advice but seek the Lord, see what He tells you to do."  It was so refreshing to be with other woman whom the Lord had mandated to pour themselves out for the women attending this retreat and they would give practical tips, advice, and resources, but so often, they would end what they were saying or suggesting with "seek the Lord."  If our children know how to seek the Lord, HE will protect and lead them through life.

            This last one may seem a little odd or maybe even mean, but the third thing and honestly this one might be the most important in my mind, is to obey.  My parents taught us to obey them.  I'm sure some people thought they were too strict and others wished they could be more like them, but either way, we were obedient children (for the most part). Now I could go on and on with reasons that is important, but the main one I want to focus on here is that because I knew how to obey my mom and dad, I easily transferred that into knowing how to obey the Lord.  There have been other things with the Lord that have been difficult for me to grasp or learn, but knowing that I needed to obey Him was easy.  Don't get me wrong, the actual action of obeying isn't always easy, but knowing the I should, that He is my Lord and I am under Him was simple, because I believe, my parents taught me to obey.  Now, is teaching them about grace important, absolutely! Faith? Forgiveness? Tithing? Giving? Love? Freedom? Yes, yes, and yes! But guess what, you can't teach them everything they need to know! But who can? The Lord! And if they know how to obey Him, they can learn those things when HE decides to teach them!  Now this is not about method, spanking, not spanking, time out, grounding, etc, that is between you and the Lord and if I'm hearing correctly from my mom and other "older" mom friends, what works on one child won't on another and what works when they're five won't when they're seven and on and on!  HA!

            Because my parents taught me to obey them, when I begin to grow in my own relationship with the Lord it was an easy transference to know that I had to obey Him.  So when He is telling you to forgive yourself, if you know that you know that you are to listen and obey Him and even though it feels stupid and dumb or scary, you choose to obey Him and forgive yourself, what will happen? You will walk in freedom and grace in a way that you might have missed if you didn't know how to obey the Lord.  What about when He tells you to forgive your husband?  You can think of ALL kinds of reasons you shouldn't forgive him and yet you know how to obey the Lord and suddenly He brings breakthrough in your marriage because you chose to put away your feelings, trust God and obey!   The Lord desires the very best for us and our children so if we teach our children to obey us as their spiritual leaders and they learn to obey the Lord, their lives will be blessed because of it!

            So in my own short journey into motherhood I know that these three life skills have already served me so well.  A child or teen does something that they shouldn't have and you as the mom go to the Lord and He tells you, "Forgive them, and extend grace this time, no punishment." And you argue and reason about how that is not what such and such parenting book advises and that is not what so and so told you about consistency and that goes against what you told the child would happen if they did that and yet you come to a place where you chose to obey what the Lord told you to do.  Are we willing to do that as mothers, fathers, spouses, bosses, or children?  If we are, and we allow Him to teach us, to direct our path, we learn and find out what the truth is, we will live our lives in a way that we will thrive instead of survive.

            So that's my two cents on the matter of raising children and how I was raised.  I am so grateful that I was taught those three things and I hope and pray to teach them to our children.  I'm sure five years from now my perspective might be different, and I might not think that these three things are the most important but I do know, regardless of how they are ranked, that these life skills are so important to me and in how a child is raised!