I say instruct and model because of what Jesus says about the kind of people that God seeks. He seeks those that would “worship Him in spirit and in truth” (Jn. 4). What God wants from us is what we want for ourselves, a life of loving Him with all that we have mind, heart, and will. And what we want for ourselves is what we want for our children. We, all of us, have nothing better that we could possibly pass down to the next generation, than to be loved by and to love Jesus. And whatever we give them, and spoil them with, we have denied them the single greatest thing in life if we have not helped them know the living God. So we must instruct with good materials that help them understand truth from a young age. But more than that, we do not want to build big knowledgeable Pharisees in our adults, and we don’t want to put children on the path to being little knowledgeable Pharisites either.

We have one great gift to give them in this regard, that would help them see that the Christian life is not just about do’s, don’ts, and gold stars for answering Bible trivia. We can, and we must, give them ourselves. We must give them our love, our passion, our joy in Jesus. If we are bored when we talk about the God who paints the night sky with stars and calls forth the dawning sun, they will learn from us that God is boring. If there is never trembling at the God whose footsteps shake the earth and whose voice stills the waves, they will learn from us that the Almighty is not all mighty. If we are unmoved when we talk about Christ and the cross, a sinless Innocent—God’s beloved child—who was cut through by nails and thorns for our sake—they will not learn from us that grace, is in fact, amazing. And, if they do not feel from us love, we enfeeble and endanger their understanding of a God that would catch them up in His arms and love them with all His holy heart, if they would but let Him. So you must be careful teachers, the eyes that watch you are as yet unclouded with doubts, the little hands stretched out are longing for something real to hold onto, the little soul is as soft and pliable as potter’s clay, and the little heart that flutters like a bird in their ribcage, is waiting to fly to Jesus. How dare we touch them if we would not be instruments in the Hands of He who made them, He who loves them more than we could ever imagine.

Pastor Edward Kim

So care for, with tenderness and wisdom, this thing that God has put in your hands. It is a gift, precious, fragile, miraculous: the heart of a child.

“Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your children and your children’s children might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. “O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.“

Deuteronomy 6.1-4

May you feel God’s love for you as His child, as you love them.