An essential item on your daily prayer list is to pray for your children (and grandchildren, if you’re as old as me)! A simple prayer that I saw posted today was, “Lord, please surround my kids with friends and adults who point them toward you.” As parents or grandparents, you are on the list of key adults that should be pointing them toward Christ. Pray that other adults are surrounding them that point them towards Him as well. Hanging out with the right crowd is critical to your child’s Christian walk, so pray that their friends would be a positive influence on them.
The words that none of us want to hear is, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” We want to do everything in our power to keep our children from hearing those words, too. In fact, it is our responsibility to give them every chance, when we raise them, to not hear those words. Lead them in the way they should go, so that when they are old, they will not depart from it.
Each of us are held accountable for our own salvation. We have to make a decision for Christ. Our parents and friends didn’t make the decision for us. But when we were children, before we were old enough to understand, it was our parents’ responsibility to point us toward Christ so we could be informed enough to make that right decision to accept Him as our Lord and Savior. Letting a child flounder about and pick from a basket of “religious” choices, to follow whatever form of a god they want to choose, is irresponsible and has eternal consequences for their souls. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through the Son. Point them to Christ!
Matthew 7:23 (ESV) - “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”