Sharing the Gospel with Your Children

I want my boys to be whole, healthy, joyful. I want to shape great husbands for my two  future daughter-in-laws. I want my boys to grow to become passionate preachers of the word. I want them to educated. I want them to look back on their childhood fondly. I always say that I want their childhood to be magical. But the truth is that if I knew I could only accomplish one thing in parenting it wouldn't be a difficult decision. My main parenting objective is to share the gospel with my children.

Most Christian parents would agree that we should live in such a way that our children learn the love of God and see us live out the gospel in our daily lives. 

But we also need to be intentional about sharing the gospel of Jesus with our children. After all, they are our most important mission field and the Word is filled with promises for the next generations. 

So, what is the gospel? One of my favorite verses is John 16:8. It says "and when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment." In this verse the He is referring to the Holy Spirit, and since Jesus has returned to Heaven the Holy Spirit is who we have walking out life with us. And He wants to talk to us (and have us tell others) about three things: sin, righteousness, and judgment.

It looks like this: 

We have sinned. 

But God is righteous and His righteousness is our standard.

And because our righteous God cannot live in communion with our sin, He will judge us.

But thankfully Jesus came, died a gruesome death to impart His righteousness to us, because our own is like filthy rags. That is, if we would decide to forsake ourselves and follow Him.

Four simple truths but if when our children finally comprehend them it changes their world. 

But how do you actually do that? 

Here is what you do first: Teach them God's law. God has written His law on our hearts. We have a conscience and even young children know when they have sinned. 

So here is this kid:

He was five when he learned the ten commandments. And that turned into one of the most beautiful events in my life as a mommy. After memorizing the ten commandments he came to me one day and said, "Mommy, I have broken some of God's law. I have taken things that aren't mine, I have lied, and I have disobeyed  you and Daddy." To which I responded with a resounding, "yep." 

This is important, please remember this. Everyone sins, and everyone makes mistakes, but that doesn't make our sin any less offensive to God. Do not excuse your child's sin. Do not tell them that everyone does it so it's okay. Don't justify it. Don't dismiss it. If they are old enough to understand sin, the are old enough to understand that they are responsible for the choices they make. 

Then what he said to me next will stick with me forever. He said, "Because I have broken God's law, I deserve to go to Hell." To which I responded with a resounding, "yep."

Now here is the hard part. I just left him in this place for a few days. He pondered it, and took time to process what it really meant to deserve hell. There can be no salvation if we don't believe and understand that we need redemption. A brokenness over our sins has to come before fully understanding the gift of Jesus gave us in His death on the cross. If we are not broken over our sin then we cannot repent and if we cannot repent Jesus says we will perish. Repentance and a turning from sin and towards God is the only condition for our salvation. God doesn't save people simply because the prayed a prayer, God in His great mercy saves us when we repent and turn to Him. 

After thinking about this few days he came to me and said one last thing, "Mommy, do you think that Jesus could save someone like me?" To which I responded with a resounding, "yep." This was one of the best moments of my life. A genuine conviction of their sins in one of the signs in understanding when children are ready to really receive and comprehend the gospel. To understand the magnitude of what Jesus did for us is amazing, and to see that same understanding in our children is beautiful. 

And now there is this kid:

Just looking at his picture makes my heart skip a beat. He is a creature unlike anything else I have ever come in contact with. He can be the most charismatic person you have ever met. He can also be a tad manipulative. But mostly he is just a stinker. He has this ability to make anyone give him anything he wants. And it is sometimes hard to be his mommy. He will do something disobedient, get in trouble, and then ask "do you really feel in your heart that you should spank me? Maybe we should just take sometime to cuddle." He usually needs the spanking though. And sometimes he actually gets one. 

And I should have known that because he is so vastly different from his brother that learning God's law wouldn't look the same in him than it did in his older brother. So here is what the law looked like with this kid. He memorized the 10 commandments, I ask him what he thinks about these laws, to which he responds to me, "oh man, I have broken lots of those laws. It is a good thing Jesus is going to forgive all my sins."

My heart sank. This kid is a going to be a little different than the first. And I hate to admit it, but comes by this naturally... from his mother.

Before I was saved I was fully aware of who Jesus was, and what He had done for me. People would tell me all the time that the Father loved me and had created me to love Him and fulfill the purpose He made me for. To which I would respond with a resounding, "yep."

I heard the gospel ten thousand times before surrendering my life to the Lord. I certainly wasn't not immediately broken over my sin. And it wasn't actually the love of the Father that sent me seeking after Jesus. (Not that I want to diminish that amazing love in any way.) One day someone was telling me about Jesus. And he started the normal ABC spiel  (you know, admit, believe, commit thing that you hear 105492463 times in your Southern Baptist youth group). At one point, when I just knew that he was going to tell me that Jesus loved me I stopped him and said. "I know Jesus loves me, I get it, I just don't really care." Then he said, "actually I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say that God has rejected you because you are proud, and because He is so good, and so just, He is going to send you to hell, and that will be the right thing for Him to do."

I was struck to my core. It was the first time that I had no clue what to say. I carried this for days. I began to ponder how it would be a demonstration of God's goodness to fling my soul into hell. It was after hearing about both the great love of God and the great wrath of God that I began to finally think about who God was in comparison to who I had thought He was. It was His righteousness in comparison to my sin that finally led to a receptiveness of the message of Christ.  It was then that I began to seek Him, and when I did, I found Him. 

The gospel is something that is going to be preached over and over again in my home. I need to hear it on a daily basis, so I know my children do as well. So we live it out, but we also talk about it, a lot. Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with saying "Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words." And while I appreciate the sentiment the Bible says in Romans 10:14 "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" 

Use your words and preach the gospel, to everyone, but especially to your children. Some children are receptive and have a spiritual understanding at a young age, some don't. Either way, we need to be in the practice of telling our children about sin (both theirs and ours) and how that compares to God's righteousness, and ultimately what judgement we deserve for that. But we also get the great pleasure and privilege of sharing the redemptive work of the cross with them. 

So, have your children heard the gospel? From you? I hope so, but whether your answer is yes or no to that question, what you do next doesn't change. If you children understand the gospel, good, preach it again. If you children don't understand yet, that's okay too, just keep sharing... If Paul can resolve to know nothing but Christ crucified then surely we can press on and be consistent about sharing the gospel with those precious little souls that the Father entrusted us with. 

But, please let me leave you with one last thing. Do not ever tell anyone, especially your children, that they are saved. If your child comes to you, at any age, and expresses doubt in their salvation, trust them and trust the work of the Holy Spirit in them. Since we knowing praying "the" prayer is as effective as saying abracadabra if you are not truly repentant, it is very difficult to KNOW if someone is saved. Many children also have an innate desire to please so they will do something that is expected of them, and often this can look like a salvation experience, but not actually be the work of the Lord in a repentant heart. I prayed the prayer at various times in my life dozens of times before I was reborn. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was not repentant during those times and had I died in my sin I would have gone to hell. The word tells us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. If our child has a doubt about his salvation then the Holy Spirit could very likely NOT be testifying in their spirit that they are children of God. It is serious, more serious than any other decision they will ever make in their lives, so if they are not sure, keep preaching the gospel and pray that they seek the Lord until they truly understand their sin, God's righteousness, and the judgment they deserve, and of course, the redemptive work of Christ crucified.