3 Ways to Help Your Children's Faith Grow This Summer

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Step One: Open Up Your Heart

 If you are a parent, which I assume you are because you’re still reading this article, you have an opportunity to meet your child on their terms. We’ve already discussed all the factors that adolescents are currently facing, but the reality is that we just don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know what young people today are internalizing. We likely don’t know what it’s like to be challenged with worldviews antithetical to a Christian worldview. We don’t know what it’s like to have LGBTQ+ literature in our middle school libraries (if your child is in public school), we don’t know what it’s like to have gender-neutral bathrooms in our school or to have to compete against trans-athletes or forfeit, and we don’t know what it’s like to our gender challenged by our own peers at such a critical time of physical and cognitive development. Sure, we had our own challenges in our upbringing, but the challenges our children face are almost incomprehensible to us. Given these factors and more, our hearts must be incredibly tender towards our children and their friends. Keeping a tender heart opens us up in empathy to pray over the intricate aspects of our children’s lives. It helps us orient ourselves towards prayer, not just for our children but for their friends, the other children in their schools—and by extension—families in our communities. 

This summer, consider starting a prayer journal in which you record your prayers over your children and all of their friends. Next, model this for your children. Engage your children in prayer, praying with them, over them, and for their friends. Modeling an active prayer life for your children may have a massive ripple effect.

Step Two: Open Up Your Home

I’ll be completely transparent when I tell you that this part is hard for me. Opening up my home means that I’m inviting loud, messy, stinky and sometimes crude teenage boys into my home. And when I say stinky, I really mean it. I love a clean house. I love order. I really love quiet. Becoming “the house” means that my house is going to get messy, disorderly, and very loud, but becoming “the house” also means that I get to walk out my Christian faith right in front of my children. Through meals and conversation the gospel is shared. My children observe that a life dedicated to Christ is a life lived in action. We do not close ourselves off from the rest of the world, instead we dig in, get messy and become as inclusive as possible.

Step Three: Open Up Your Head

Okay, so you’ve become “the house,” now what? Now, you listen, serve, and attend to the needs of your children and their friends. You feed them, stay engaged, invite them (youth group or Bible study), and create an environment where your children and their friends can ask the hard questions.

This part may feel somewhat tedious, but creating a safe environment in which young people can ask questions about faith will be fundamental in their spiritual development. Now, this part might make you feel nervous. “What if I don’t have all the answers?” “What if my own child stumps me?” My 10-year-old daughter stumps me all the time, but I’m willing to engage in a conversation with her. Sometimes the best response is, “I don’t know the answer, but I’d love to research and pursue that with you.” The reality is that we don’t have to know it all, but Christian responsibility means being open to learning and wrestling. Don’t be in a rush to answer questions; instead be humble and willing to grow alongside your children. Who knows, their questions might actually drive you to a deeper faith.

Bonus Step: Open Up Your Wallet

In opening up my heart, home, and head, I quickly learned that a fourth step was necessary. I had to open my wallet, because snacks and tacos are expensive. Gas money for driving all the kids everywhere they want to go is expensive. Engaging our children and facilitating spiritual growth will always come at a cost, and, more often than not, that cost is monetary. Additionally, the cost can be our time, or our preferences when we make choices that benefit our children and their friends more than ourselves. As Scripture reminds us time and time again, walking in faith is costly, but hopefully, when it comes to our children’s spiritual growth, we count that cost as gain.