I heard\u00c2\u00a0sermons on discipleship today and last Sunday.\u00c2\u00a0 Discipleship has become a very big emphasis at my church,\u00c2\u00a0but with all the emphasis on discipleship, a particular\u00c2\u00a0component has been strangely lacking: the\u00c2\u00a0discipleship of\u00c2\u00a0our children.<\/p>\n
I’m feeling more and more strongly about this all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s an often unspoken assumption that parents disciple their children, that a child’s spiritual formation begins at home.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m beginning to think more and more that although its assumed we do it, very few of us parents actually set aside a specific time each week to spend one on one time with our children to read the Bible and talk together about what it says.\u00c2\u00a0 I think that its far too easy in the midst of our very busy lives to not<\/strong> schedule time with our kids and when we don’t have time to do it, we think to ourselves, “They have Sunday school and youth group; its ok if I didn’t have time this week.”\u00c2\u00a0 And as that becomes a pattern, we don’t even give a thought to discipling our kids, and we believe they’re covered by what they get in church.<\/p>\n I think we’ve been lulled into believing a lie.\u00c2\u00a0 That our children don’t need us to disciple them because there are programs that cover that.\u00c2\u00a0 I had a big wake-up call a couple of weeks ago, which I posted about, when I had an ‘M-study’ with my 5 1\/2 year old.\u00c2\u00a0 We spent 45 minutes reading the Bible and talking and he wasn’t even getting bored.\u00c2\u00a0 It is so very important to disciple our children.\u00c2\u00a0 I need to take seriously what it says in Deuteronomy 6: “6<\/span>And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. 7<\/span>Repeat them again and again to your children<\/strong> (italics mine)<\/em>. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again.”<\/p>\n I think one of the roadblocks people encounter when it comes to discipleship is that they themselves have never been discipled and so don’t feel qualified to disciple someone else.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Maybe a person has not been discipled but don’t let our children say the same thing when they become adults.\u00c2\u00a0 I hope my kids will be able to say that their parents discipled them and so they don’t have to feel intimidated to disciple someone else.\u00c2\u00a0 The other roadblocks to discipleship (time, fear, etc.) should be the easiest to overcome when discipling our own children.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0This should be the least scary form of discipleship because\u00c2\u00a0we already have a relationship with our children; we live in the same house so we should be able to find time somewhere; we may not feel qualified, but how many of us feel qualified to parent and yet we do it anyway, trusting God to give us the wisdom we need to raise our kids up in His ways.<\/p>\n Lastly, if we disciple a number of people throughout our lifetimes, but didn’t disciple our own children, haven’t we missed the most important part?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I heard\u00c2\u00a0sermons on discipleship today and last Sunday.\u00c2\u00a0 Discipleship has become a very big emphasis at my church,\u00c2\u00a0but with all the emphasis on discipleship, a […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}