How to Lead Your Child to Christ
Luis Palau
The Lord longs to welcome children into His family. “Let
the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them,
for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14, NIV). Through
our prayers and encouragement, we can have an active part in leading our sons and
daughters to faith in Christ.
Leading your child to Jesus Christ may not happen all in one
day, of course. As parents, we may have the privilege of introducing the
Lord to our children over a period of several years. There’s so much to
talk about and discover together.
Telling the Gospel Story
One of the most important ways we can communicate our faith to
our children is by leading them in family worship. Time for Bible
reading, memorization, discussion, prayer, and singing should be a natural, enjoyable,
and daily part of family life.
God has designed the home as the place where His Word is to
be taught, lived, and passed on from generation to generation. Deuteronomy
6:6-7 says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon
your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at
home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get
up.”
Covering the Basics
Our
emphasis in presenting the Gospel to our children
should be that God is our
heavenly Father. That is essential. Instead of
initially focusing on sin—“We hurt the
Lord when we do wrong things”—we should
major on the fact that our heavenly
Father, who is perfect, loves us with an everlasting
love. But the issue of sin also
needs to be addressed.
To
experience God’s love, our children must own up
to those things in their lives
that hurt Him—selfishness, pride, deceit, and
all the rest. They need to see that
“the wages of sin is death” (Romans
6:23). They need to learn that “all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
(Romans 3:23). That includes everyone,
young and old alike.
Your child
may not completely understand how God places the
penalty for his or
her sin on His Son. That’s okay. God simply
asks us to respond to Him based on
what we do know.
Leading in a Prayer of
Commitment
If your son
or daughter asks, “Well, how do I become a
Christian?” turn to
Scripture for the answer. We like to use Romans
10:9-10 with children, inserting
their names in the blanks. “If you, _____,
confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’
and believe in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you, _____, will be
saved. For it is with your heart that you, _____,
believe and are justified, and it is
with your mouth that you, _____, confess and are
saved.”
The best
way we know for an individual to make Jesus the Lord
of his or her life is
to bow his or her head in prayer, confess his or her
sins to God, by faith open his
or her heart to Christ, believe in Him, and receive
Him.
Pray
together with your child, and after you finish
praying together, ask several
questions to help your child clarify the decision he
or she just made. Then celebrate
that decision! Give your child opportunities to share
the joy of his or her decision
with family members and Christian friends. To help
your child look back on that
decision, encourage him or her to write it down in a
Bible or New Testament.
The Need for
Assurance
If we hear
a child make the statement, “I asked Jesus into
my heart again today,”
wait for a good, teachable moment when the subject
comes up naturally and then
say, “When we come to Jesus, we belong to Him
forever. Nothing can separate us
from God’s love.”
Lack of
assurance is a sign of immaturity. Children need
reassurance. Parents can
move alongside a child and say, “Aren’t
you glad that Jesus will never, ever let you
out of His hands? He’s never going to let you
go. You’re part of His family forever.”
It’s also helpful to memorize biblical promises
about assurance, such as John
10:28, with a child. That’s where we need to go
when doubts come.
Discipleship in the
Home
Our goal as
Christian parents is to lead our children into a
personal relationship with
the Lord Jesus Christ and then spend the rest of
their childhood years discipling
them. We need to keep those two concepts separate in
our thinking. First, we’re
born into God’s family; then the lifelong
process of discipleship begins.
As parents,
we often see things in our children’s lives
that are inconsistent with
Christianity, and we sometimes fail to handle the
situation with care. In the home,
where we have the privilege of saying anything that
crosses our mind, our worst
side often comes out. But it’s helpful when
you’re looking at your child and
wondering “Is this kid really a
Christian?” to remember when we were born
again.
We didn’t grow up in Christ overnight. We need
to have long memories.
In
Philippians 1:6, Paul speaks of “being
confident of this, that he who began a
good work in you will carry it on to completion until
the day of Christ Jesus.” Every
Christian can enjoy this same confidence. As soon as
a child accepts Jesus Christ
as Savior, he or she is saved. God has begun a good
work in that child’s life, even if
we can’t always see it.
Tragically,
some people resist the idea of evangelizing children.
In our evangelistic
campaigns, we’ve seen men and women holding
back their children from going
forward to confess the Lord Jesus as their Savior.
Other parents don’t talk about
the issue of salvation with their children, as if it
were just a theological matter for
adults to discuss at church. The message many
children are picking up is: “Wait
until you grow up, and then you can make your
decision.” But it’s really the other
way around.
Unless we
become like little children, we can’t enter the
kingdom of heaven. “The
kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,”
said Jesus. Let’s actively, prayerfully
encourage our children to come to
Him.
Taken from
Your New Life with Christ, by Luis Palau.
Copyright ©1996. Used by permission of
Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers,
Wheaton, Illinois, 60187. This material is not
to be electronically transferred. Down-load for
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