Tag: parents
More Resources for Parents Seeking to Raise Godly Kids in a Sinful World
Posted on November 2, 2016 in Family, Theology by Nathan Cherry
Last week I posted a few resources for Christian parents to help in raising their kids in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.” I found those resources very helpful for me, personally, as I seek to raise my kids in the Gospel. So, when I came across more resources to help with this holy task, I wanted to share them as well.
Take a look at some of the articles below to learn more about cultivating the Gospel in your kids, the importance of your presence, and how to avoid “provoking your children to wrath.” There’s even a couple of videos at the end of the list that I think are very helpful (the first video is a beautiful animated YouTube song depicting the Gospel.) I hope these are a blessing and encouragement to you as you seek to impart your faith to your children.
10 Tips for Leading Kids to Christ
“This is definitely not an article about “success, and how we have achieved it.” Rather, as the old adage goes, we are beggars telling other beggars where we have found some bread. If you are seeking to influence little ones toward Christ, you might find these ten tips helpful…
Resources for Christian Parents Seeking to Raise Kids in a Sinful World
Posted on October 25, 2016 in Family, Theology by Nathan Cherry
As a parent that is deeply committee to imparting my faith to my children, I am always looking for resources to help. I am often overwhelmed by the task of sharing my faith with my kids, teaching them, and training them. I fail daily and need the wise counsel of those who have gone before me.
With that in mind, the following list is some helpful resources for everything from praying for your kids to taking them to church. There’s insight on answering kids’ biblical questions and tips for raising Godly kids. And, at the end is a list of books and other resources that can provide further support in your task as a parent of bringing the Gospel to your children. I hope this is a helpful list of resources that provide encouragement and support for you, mom and dad.
Why Require Unregenerate Children to Act Like They’re Good?
“Here are at least three reasons why Christian parents should require their small children (regenerate or unregenerate) to behave in ways that conform externally to God’s revealed will. I say “small children” because as a child gets older, there are certain external conformities to God’s revealed will that should be required and others that should not. It seems to me, for example, while parents should require drug-free, respectful decency from a 15-year-old, it would do little good to require an unbelieving and indifferent 15-year-old to read his Bible every day. But it would be wise to require that of a 6-year-old, while doing all we can to help him enjoy it and see the benefit in it.”
What If Kids Don’t Want to Go to Church Because of Their Parents?
Posted on July 28, 2016 in Family, Theology by Nathan Cherry
I watched a short clip recently with Carl Trueman in which the scholar made the observation that one likely reason we are seeing a drop in church attendance is that parents are simply not teaching their kids that it is a priority. Trueman said:
“The church is losing its young people because the parents never taught their children that it was important. I think that applies across the board. It applies to family worship, and it also applies to whether you are in church every Sunday and what priority you demonstrate to your children church has on a Sunday. If the sun shines out and their friends are going to the beach, do you decide to skip church and go to the beach? In which case, you send signals to your children that it is not important.”
Why I’m Moving My Family to Maryland: A Discussion of Honoring Parents
Posted on June 1, 2016 in Family, Theology by Nathan Cherry
I came to West Virginia from the great state of Ohio. I’d spent most of my life in Ohio and considered Ohio my “home state.” I was not thrilled about moving to West Virginia in 2001 because all I knew about the Mountaineer state was redneck and hillbilly jokes. A “city boy” like me was bound to be out of place and have little in common with people that considered “giggin frogs” a viable weekend recreation. But I came here for family.
My dad is a pastor. He had just accepted a position with a church in West Virginia and moved when I was at a place of transition in my life. We talked about working together at this new church as a family; my brother, dad, mom, and myself. The thought of working with family was something that I would not fully appreciate until many years after it was over. But for now I was excited to be living and working around my family.
Fast-forward 15 years and I’m now pensive as I leave West Virginia.
Can Someone Please Tell Me Why Fourth-Graders Need a NSFW Book in Their School Library?
Posted on April 26, 2016 in Public Policy, Sexuality by Nathan Cherry
The Oregon school principal is apologizing after angry parents demanded to know why their kids had access to the book; especially when they were told it had been pulled from school shelves. Perhaps a better question is why has such a book been approved for 10 year olds in the first place?
Let’s do a very simple review: any image depicting people engaging in sexual activity is considered “explicit” and/or pornographic (depends on who you talk to). To view any such image a person is supposed to be at least 18 years old; as every pornographic website makes perfectly clear. So why is a school allowed to show explicit/pornographic imaged to our children and call it “health class”?
According to one article, some of the images in the book include:
What is the Most Important Lesson My Kids Can Learn from Me?
Posted on March 9, 2016 in Family, Theology by Nathan Cherry
As parents we spend a lot of time teaching our kids. Over the years I have helped teach my kids to:
tie a shoe,
ride a bike,
dress,
brush their teeth,
vacuum the floor,
and eat with a fork.
These “lessons” were often informal, not something planned with a manual and graded when we were done.
I’m sure you can recall many “lessons” you taught your kids as they were growing up (or maybe you’re still teaching because your kids are young; or hard-headed.) We often teach our kids without even realizing that we are doing so; a truth that is both interesting and somewhat frightening.
We’ve all been told that kids watch our every move and will learn by watching; they will imitate us. So we do our best as parents to be polite, use our manners, and refrain from burping at the dinner table. We want our kids to learn good habits so we try each day to set an example for them. But what about the lessons that can’t be learned by simply watching and observing someone else?
These 5 Tips for Christian Parents Will Help Teach Our Faith to Our Children
Posted on December 9, 2015 in Family, Theology by Nathan Cherry
Once upon a time people thought it was the church’s job to instill faith into their children. Now only the naïve and mistaken parent adheres to that misguided idea. The faith of my children is primarily my responsibility; the church is there to supplement what I am doing to grow my children in the “nurture and admonition” of the Lord. Knowing that I have such a great responsibility means placing a priority on their spiritual development. Before anything else, musical development, athletic development, or even vocational development, comes their spiritual development.
I’m not arrogant enough to think I can do it alone. I constantly search for resources to aid in my teaching and training. To that end I recently read an article at Monergism that stood out. It was a very simple reminder to Christian parents about what it takes to raise godly kids. One striking feature of the article is that it nowhere mentions the church. Now, this doesn’t mean the author is suggesting the church holds no importance in our children’s faith formation. To the contrary this article is merely giving some practical tips to parents with a deep burden to grow faith in their kids.
Another feature of the article is that every tip given was directly aimed at parents. This reiterates that the responsibility for my kids’ faith development is primarily my responsibility. At least for a while I must lead in instilling those seeds of faith that I want to see grow. It is a very dangerous thing to try and unload this responsibility on someone else; or even the church. Not only are we risking that those seeds won’t be planted at all; we are risking that the wrong seeds will be planted or that they won’t be properly watered and will die.
Take a look at some of the useful advice from the article that can help us instill a life-long faith in our children:
Why Is No One Celebrating Rachel Dolezal’s Trans-Racialism?
Posted on July 8, 2015 in Sexuality by Nathan Cherry
find the story of Rachel Dolezal very interesting. What I find most interesting is that none of the liberal media or politicians are coming to her aid. As she is scrutinized and criticized for pretending to be black when, in fact, she is white, no one is jumping to her defense and championing her cause of “trans-racialism.”
The story seems to have broken as a result of an image Dolezal posted to her Facebook page of a black man she claimed was her father. Her white family took exception to the photo and called her out. Next thing you know we’re all learning that this “black” NAACP chapter president is actually a white girl pretending.
So the usual media circus ensued as Dolezal tried to explain her reasons for lying about her racial identity. The next thing you know, she’s resigning as president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP amidst much protesting for her dishonesty. What I find interesting about the whole situation is that no one really came to her defense.
There doesn’t really seem to be a strong vocal proponent of “trans-racialism” even though our society seems bent on encouraging all sorts of alternate reality lifestyles. After all, if someone can be trans-gender, why can’t they be trans-racial? Of course Dolezal’s family finds the whole thing curious, if not disturbing. Her mother recently said in an interview:
Famous Atheist Richard Dawkins Wants to Keep Parents from Imposing Religion On Kids – While Imposing His Religion
Posted on April 1, 2015 in Family, Theology by Nathan Cherry
Richard Dawkins recently made one of the most ironic statements I’ve heard this week. During an interview for The Irish Times Dawkins, speaking about children, said:
“Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.”
The irony of the statement is found in the fact that Dawkins is one of the world’s foremost atheists, which is just another “religious” ideology.
I suppose people don’t often consider atheism a religion, but rather than absence of or rejection of religion. But that is a misnomer. Religion, at its core, is a framework of convictions and beliefs that are intended to guide ones thinking and give direction to one’s life. It’s a sort of roadmap for living each day. Considering this simple but fundamental definition of religion it is easy to conclude that atheism is just another religion.
If I were to ask Dawkins if he thought children should be brought up Christian, or Jewish, or Mormon, he would probably say no. Dawkins would tell me that they should be allowed to make their own decision and that parents should not force their religion on their kids. However, if I asked Dawkins if he would encourage atheism via scientific exploration, philosophy, and thinking critically and logically with his own kids, he would almost certainly say yes.
Video: An Unborn Baby Claps While His Parents Sing
Posted on March 30, 2015 in Life by Nathan Cherry
A recent post at LifeNews.com shares a really cool ultra-sound video of an unborn child seemingly clapping his hands as his parents sing. The article states:
“On March 26th, Jen Cardinal posted a YouTube video of her 14-week-old unborn baby clapping and it has already received over 100,000 views. Cardinal told the Daily Mail that she began singing ‘If You’re Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands’ after she saw her baby clapping for the first time. She said, ‘At our 14 week ultrasound our baby was clapping, so I sang a song with our doctor as my husband filmed. The experience is one I’ll never forget. The baby clapped three times, then the doctor rewound and scrubbed it while we sang. No mystery. It was amazing.'”
Amazing indeed. Then again, unborn children have been shown to have some amazing capabilities while they are in the womb. LifeNews goes on to share a couple of newly discovered facts about unborn children:
“As LifeNews previously reported, a recent study published in Infant Behavior and Development revealed that babies in the womb are able to recognize words and even remember nursery rhymes if their mom repeats them between weeks 28 and 34. Another study published in the February 2014 Pediatrics suggested that the more words a preterm baby hears while in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the more they respond with sounds of their own. This means that preemies could be developing speech patterns in the NICU. Additionally, the study found that an increased amount of parent talk was linked to higher language and thinking scores when the babies were older.”
While Planned Parenthood tries to convince us that unborn children are just a “blob of tissue,” science continues showing us just how human and amazing they are. Who’s anti-science now?
Watch the video for yourself and see if the baby isn’t clapping. If the video doesn’t appear automatically, please refresh your browser.