Teaching Your Child to Love God

Summer usually features the most beautiful weather of the year. Days are longer, and flowers are in bloom.

Like flowers, parenting impressionable young children takes tremendous care. Your great responsibility as a parent is to gently guide your kids and to remove obstacles that would harm them.

Encouraging open hearts to God

Each child is born with a tremendous capacity and drive to learn about the world, and children are sensitive to spiritual truths right from the start. You cannot make your child have an open heart to God and His Word, but you can create the right environment for him, building healthy habits like going to church and memorizing verses. Be aware that these things may never reach your child’s heart. Your child will eventually freely choose how she will respond to the truth.

Our job as parents is to “bring” our children to God and introduce them to His Word, which will teach them the truth about Him, themselves and others. Helping younger children understand spiritual truths might include reading them age-appropriate Bible stories, showing them God’s hand in their world, teaching them to pray, telling them of God’s great love and care for them and helping them to recognize the sinful bent of their own hearts.

Set the example

The BEST way your child learns these things is through YOU. She can’t SEE God, but she can see Mommy and Daddy and feel their love and care. She can see a home governed by love and respect and realize that God is a God of order and that human lives have value and dignity. As your child learns to trust your authority and hear and obey you, he can come to understand God is the ultimate authority and that biblical boundaries for life are for his own good.

If you consistently demonstrate a love for God and a devotion to His Word, your child will be left with a lasting impression that these things are important. She is always watching you. None of us is perfect. But you can model devotion to Christ every day. This is the best thing you can do to teach your child to learn to love Him, too.