In order to help our children grow in understanding God's grace and love, we have to grow in grace and allow God to love us into wholeness.
How does one do that?
Hearing the truth is key. (Rom 10:17 So faith comes by hearing, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.) Not all preaching is the truth and not even all preaching is good news.
Be very careful what you hear.
Is the message about Jesus and what He did for you, or is it about yourself and what you need to do, making you feel even more guilty and condemned than before because you are not doing enough?
Is it about learning about God’s good character or about a God one can never really know and trust as a Person?
Although I am still learning, I have come to realise that religion focuses on eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, implying that you can know right and wrong and try your best to live that way.
There is a better way however: eating from the tree of life, meaning to have a personal relationship with Jesus as He said (John 14:6 I am the way, the truth and the life), without so many rules and regulations as if things depend on you.
There is a way to grasp what He has done, to understand His love and just respond to His grace – this is what faith really is – just a response to God’s goodness.
Similar to human relationships where you can start to relax and be yourself in somebody’s presence when you know they love you unconditionally.
So how do you grow?
Start by listening to messages about God’s goodness. In my personal life I have benefited much by listening to sermons helping me understand God’s grace better.
As I have listened to these messages I came to realize that there is already much misunderstanding in my concept of God.
I have actually grown up with a lot of religion, misleading me in who I am and how I should live, but worse than that, misrepresenting God’s character.
I'd like to share some of these sermons, so you can also grow in understanding God’s character better. For a list of FREE grace teachings to download click here.
One of the most important aspects of discipleship is to help you children discover who they are in God.
If our identity in Him can be established at a young age we can really prevent a lot of time wasted in later years trying to discover who we are.
I have written more on this topic in this article called Discovering a life purpose.
God Idea Productions is a company in South Africa that has launched products helping children discover their life purpose and how special and differently unique they are. Read more here.