5 Ways to Model Spiritual Disciplines for Your Children

How do we break generational patterns in our families and teach our children intimacy with Jesus?

I grew up in a house where Jesus’ forgiveness and grace were rarely displayed. I can vividly remember the chaos that was in my household: lots of yelling, lots of criticizing, and lots of uncertainty. My family didn’t always model the healthiest ways to express emotions, but we were always aware of them. I remember feeling so hopeless as a child. I didn’t know who to trust or how to cope when life felt so unstable. I didn’t know about God’s goodness and faithfulness. I didn’t know He had a plan for me. I didn’t know you could pray to Him any time and go to Him with anything. Worship and praise and Bible study were something you only did at church when you went with grandma. 

My natural response is never holy. My first instinct is to avoid praying to God or praising him for His faithfulness when facing hardship. It is not to seek His Word, but to seek the counsel of my peers. Why? Because it’s what I know and how I grew up. But God, in His faithfulness, pursued me. He sought me out and changed my perspective. He has revealed to me the beauty of a life lived intimately with Him, and now I can't get enough of Him. Each discipline that makes me feel so known and loved as an adult was foreign to me as a child. 

As a wife and mom, I can’t tell you the strong desire in my heart to create an environment centered on Christ for my children. I have a very specific desire for my kids to know and love Jesus intimately. I picture them as adults with families centered in Christ and faithfully trusting His will for their lives. But how can we get there? How do I connect the dots and change the generational patterns in my family history? Am I even equipped to overcome such a monumental task? 

The answer is yes and no. Not by my power, but yes, in His. The best way I know how to love my children well is to model intimacy with Christ, and the best way I know how to do that is to show them a parent who is desperate for Jesus. 

Here are 5 ways to start:

1. Relationship, not religion: While spiritual disciplines are foundational to our intimacy with Jesus, we must always lean towards relationship over religion. I think of the Pharisees with their laws and practices. They were so focused on the rituals that they missed Jesus, even though He was right in front of them. We don’t want our children to simply check a box. We want them to desperately sit at Jesus’ feet. The best way to do that is not to count the times they open their Bible, raise their hands in worship, or go to a MDWK service. The best way we can encourage spiritual discipline is to faithfully place priority on our own relationship with Jesus. Sit at His feet, make Bible study a daily practice, pray even when you don’t feel like it, and wait. Wait for God to produce fruit in you, and then see how that inspires longing for Jesus in your children. 
2. Equip them with age-appropriate tools: When I was in 7th grade and was baptized, I received my first Bible. I cherished that Bible so much. I read it, studied it, highlighted it, and took notes in it, so hungry for what God wanted to teach me. God has something to teach your child, no matter what age they are. He meets us exactly where we are at. Encourage quiet time in your family and make it a regular practice in your household. Pick a day and time, a regular occurrence, and mark it on your calendar - whether it's daily or weekly. Don’t let anything come before your time with God. Reward your children for memorizing Scripture. Make bedtime a time to read His Word as a family. Buy your children journals, pens, and their own Bibles, and encourage them to read along and have their own time outside of the family Bible study time. It can look different in whatever season you are, but just make it a priority. If you wanted them to excel in baseball, you would buy them a bat and gloves to practice each day. Equipping your children for time with Him should be no different than that. 
3. Pray constantly: You cannot have a relationship with someone you don’t talk to. You just can’t. As a child, I never had prayer modeled in my home. I didn't know how to pray; the only prayers I ever heard were at church. They were always so long-winded, and the men would use such eloquent words I didn’t understand. It left me feeling like I would never measure up. God would never want to hear what I had to say because I could never sound so graceful. But here’s the truth. He doesn’t care about our perfect prayers. In fact, He actually warns against praying to showboat for others in Matthew 6. The best way I know to model prayer for my children is to do it constantly. Long prayers. Short prayers. Thankful prayers. Desperate prayers. Prayers from the scriptures. Prayers from uncertainty. Prayers in anger. Prayers constantly. Take the big things to Him. Take the small things to Him. Show your children that prayer is as easy as breathing. There's no magic formula. Just pray about everything and at all times throughout the day. When prayer is your first response, it’ll slowly become theirs. And repetition creates confidence. 
4. Seek forgiveness: Oh, how I wish I got this all right all the time. The reality is I am so far from perfection. I miss days in His Word. I forget to pray. I yell at my kids. I blame people when things don't go my way. I have times when I don’t trust God. I compare myself to others. I envy what others have. I hurt others. I fall short regularly, …but Jesus. Thank goodness for grace and mercy. Thank goodness that He wore my sin and died on my behalf. He knew He was my only hope, and we must parent like He is still our only hope. We can't expect perfection from our kids when we aren’t perfect ourselves. God has forgiven us for way more than we will ever have to forgive our children or others for. So, model forgiveness in your home. Surrender all bitterness towards others. Forgive quickly and discipline, extending grace. At the same time, ask for forgiveness. Admit when you are wrong to your children. Teach them humility and teach them to extend kindness to others by extending kindness to them. Ultimately, always remember God’s gift of salvation and His love poured out on us through the cross.
5. Be in community: God created us to be in community. When Jesus walked the earth, He surrounded Himself with the disciples. When He left us, He encouraged the disciples to build the Church. He knows the importance of community. We are called to be generous. We are called to serve. Church helps us to remain on mission. Make church a priority in your family. Attend regularly. Get your students involved with the youth. Get yourself into a small group. Model that community is essential for your walk with Jesus. When church is more than a place you attend and becomes a people you belong to, that’s where true growth can happen. That’s how the enemy can’t trick you with His lies. Being in community with the local church is how your children form friendships that point them back to Jesus. As much as we wish we had all the influence in our children’s lives, outside influences will often shape them more than we'd like. So pray for the community around you. Pray for your children’s friends. Pray for God to place other adults in their lives to lead them with godly counsel. Ultimately, we should trust Him and know that He loves our children more than we could ever imagine. 

We are not called to be perfect parents. We are not called to get our kids into the perfect school, get them playing on the best teams, or make sure they have the next best thing. Quite frankly, we can do everything “right,” and our children may still choose not to follow Jesus, but I think He gives us the wisdom to create an environment that makes time with the Lord a priority. At the end of the day, He cares more about our children and their relationship with Him than we do, so all we have to do is model intimacy with Christ and prayerfully surrender our children to the Lord and His plan.

To end, I want to pray two prayers from Scripture over you and your children:

Ephesians 1:17-19 and 3:16-21
"I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength. …I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through His Spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us— to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."