Reclaim Your Kids From Culture

SYNOPSIS: God-time with your kids is the most important investment you can make, so don’t surrender your ordained influence to your children’s culture. God has provided an amazing template for Christian parents to accomplish this most important task: early and often, talk to your kids about your wonderful, powerful, loving God! Like the people of old, write the law of God on the doorpost of your home, so to speak. That means when they come in, when they go out, and when they are in the home, God is to be the center of attention, the core of your family values, and the continual topic of conversation.

The Journey // Focus: Deuteronomy 6:6-8

You must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

As a Christian parent, grandparent, caregiver or mentor, who or what is training your kids? As an observer of current culture, my sense is that those whom God has charged with the primary training and discipling of children—the child’s parents—have abdicated their roles to others. Parents have passively left it up to the children’s director, the youth pastor, the coach, mentor, daycare workers, or school instructor, or worse, the TV (or whatever form of media is used these days) to do their job for them.

Of course, that is not something parents consciously do. It is just that they have gotten busy, or lazy, and have uncritically surrendered the most important role in the universe to others. Now the role others play is very important. But make no mistake: those “others” are only to be supportive of what the parent is responsible for—the training of the child in the ways of the Lord. Likewise, and make no mistake about this, some of those “others” are more harmful than helpful to the moral, spiritual and social development of the children. I think we are now at the stage where TV and other media are aggressive and intentionally fostering a godless agenda with our children. Pay close attention to public education these days: vain and empty philosophies directed at forming the child abound. Sit up and pay close attention Christian parents: there is an all out war for the hearts and minds of your children.

Now instead of bemoaning the reality that our culture has drifted from God and from the Judeo-Christian values that shaped our American culture, let’s simply realize that we are living in a time that Christians throughout history and around the rest of the world have always and currently face. And they were ruthlessly intentional about protecting their children from the influences of evil of that godless culture. They took responsibility for being the primary disciplers of their kids. They took seriously the call to inculcate their kids with the things of God. They told God-stories at bedtime, they prayed God-protection in the morning over their kids as they left the house and they taught God-values whenever they had a moment throughout the day. Early and often, God was the topic of conversation.

Throughout the history of God’s people—in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and for two thousand years of Christian history, believers have written the law of God on the doorpost of their homes, so to speak. That means when they came in, when they went out, and when they were in the home, God was the center of attention, the core of the family’s values and the continual topic of conversation.

It’s about time we reclaim our kids from culture, by any and all means necessary. And God has provided those means for Christian parents to accomplish this most important task: early and often, talk to them about our wonderful, powerful, loving God!

Do that and you will rescue your kids from an evil world, and leave a legacy that will be replicated in godly generations to come!