How to raise Godly Children

Children are a precious gift from God, and yet too often they find themselves in an environment of neglect, or even abuse within their own homes.  As they learn and grow, they are constantly bombarded with worldly influences that conflict with God’s Word.  The strongest influence on our children can be our own character.  Modeling godly behavior and a love for the Lord are vital while providing direction, boundaries, correction, love and encouragement to our children.

Parents with PowerModeling Behavior for Children
Honoring Parents
(read more)
I’m Not Having Fun Yet!
Discipline with Love and Conviction
Setting Limits
The Truth about Consequences

The articles below will help teach you how to raise godly children.  (Note:  Each article will open in a new browser window.  To return to this page after reading it, simply close the new window.)

Ever wish you could make someone do the right thing? Parents often watch their children make bad decisions and feel powerless to do anything about it. Unfortunately, many just give in and put a “band-aid” on a situation by giving money instead of time, ignoring a situation instead of disciplining, or trying to be their child’s friend instead of their parent. The best way to love your child is to care enough to correct them when they need it. (read more)

How seriously do you take the Bible? If you read something about parent-child relations in the Bible that contradicts something you read in another book, which teaching do you accept as truth? (read more)

Do you and your partner agree on how to raise your children? If not, you may think you are experiencing a marriage problem because you can’t get together on this important issue. This can feel like a pretty hopeless situation. Often times your children have learned how to pit you against one another. By the time they get into their teens, those kids will be able to do what they please, because they will have learned how to manage you instead of you managing them.

Someone once said to me, “Don’t make parenting so difficult. Just relax and have fun! You don’t have to know everything in order to be a good parent.”

Being a parent starts out as a dream. Doting, expectant fathers and their pregnant wives dream about the sweet infant all cozy in pink or blue blankets with cute outfits and fun toys. With smiles in their eyes, they turn to each other and vow, “We’re going to be the best parents ever!”

Then the baby arrives. Suddenly the parents discover “the dream” yells. And smells. And spits. All at 3 a.m. (read more)

God’s Word instructs us to love one another (1 Peter 1:22). Nearly every parent wants to give his or her children tender, loving, and sacrificial care that flows out of a heart of love; but even the most dedicated mother or father cannot do this unless God is the source of that love. This is because God is love, and as we walk in His love, it will flow to our children through us.

God does not leave us without guidance. In fact, the biblical standard for love is described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. It has fifteen components: suffers long, is kind, does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, always bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.(read more)

In all athletic team competitions, the home and visiting teams and their corresponding fans all go by the same rules and boundaries. The rules are published in a book and knowledge of the rules is essential to understanding and playing the game. Making sure the players stay within the limits established by the rule book is the job of the officials. If a player breaks a rule, the referee penalizes the entire team. The player and his team must accept the consequences. The referee’s interpretation of the game is final.

The phrase football game tells us many things. The very name of the game determines the shape of the ball, the dimensions of the playing field, the rules of the game, and the type of clothes the players and officials wear.

The word family also tells us many things. Determined limits make a family unique. (read more)

We do our children a great favor if we help them understand there are consequences for their actions … good and bad.

Distraught parents often come to me because their children are suffering the consequences of not being adequately supervised. Of course, teenagers do not want to be supervised, but oftentimes dire consequences will be the result of parents adhering to their children’s complaints and demands for more personal freedom in areas where they are unable to cope with temptation. Setting consequences for a child’s choices and then making them happen is a crucial part of teaching children. They must learn the principles expressed in Galatians 6:7: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” (read more)

Congratulations!  If you have read through all of the sections of Heart Change, Personal Transformation and Healthy Relationships, you have now completed the Personal Life Change section of the Living God’s Way series.  Click here to proceed on to the Godly Leadership section, starting with “Lead by Biblical Principles.”

Is Jesus God?

Have you ever met a man who is the center of attention wherever he goes? Some mysterious, indefinable characteristic sets him apart from all other men. Well, that’s the way it was two thousand years ago with Jesus Christ. But it wasn’t merely Jesus’ personality that captivated those who heard him. Those who witnessed his words and life tell us that something about Jesus of Nazareth was different from all other men.

Jesus’ only credentials were himself. He never wrote a book, commanded an army, held a political office, or owned property. He mostly traveled within a hundred miles of his village, attracting crowds who were amazed at his provocative words and stunning deeds.

Yet Jesus’ greatness was obvious to all those who saw and heard him. And while most great people eventually fade into history books, Jesus is still the focus of thousands of books and unparalleled media controversy. And much of that controversy revolves around the radical claims Jesus made about himself—claims that astounded both his followers and his adversaries.

It was primarily Jesus’ unique claims that caused him to be viewed as a threat by both the Roman authorities and the Jewish hierarchy. Although he was an outsider with no credentials or political powerbase, within three years, Jesus changed the world for the next 20 centuries. Other moral and religious leaders have left an impact—but nothing like that unknown carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

What was it about Jesus Christ that made the difference? Was he merely a great man, or something more?

These questions get to the heart of who Jesus really was. Some believe he was merely a great moral teacher; others believe he was simply the leader of the world’s greatest religion. But many believe something far more. Christians believe that God has actually visited us in human form. And they believe the evidence backs that up.

After carefully examining Jesus’ life and words, former Cambridge professor and skeptic, C. S. Lewis, came to a startling conclusion about him that altered the course of his life. So who is the real Jesus? Many will answer that Jesus was a great moral teacher. As we take a deeper look at the world’s most controversial person, we begin by asking: could Jesus have been merely a great moral teacher?

Great Moral Teacher?

Even those from other religions acknowledge that Jesus was a great moral teacher. Indian leader, Mahatma Gandhi, spoke highly of Jesus’ righteous life and profound words.[1] Likewise, Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner wrote, “It is universally admitted … that Christ taught the purest and sublimest ethics … which throws the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade.”[2]

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has been called the most superlative teaching of human ethics ever uttered by an individual. In fact, much of what we know today as “equal rights” actually is the result of Jesus’ teaching. Historian Will Durant, a non-Christian, said of Jesus that “he lived and struggled unremittingly for ‘equal rights'; in modern times he would have been sent to Siberia. ‘He that is greatest among you, let him be your servant’—this is the inversion of all political wisdom, of all sanity.”[3]

Many, like Gandhi, have tried to separate Jesus’ teaching on ethics from his claims about himself, believing that he was simply a great man who taught lofty moral principles. This was the approach of one of America’s Founding Fathers, President Thomas Jefferson, who cut and pasted a copy of the New Testament, removing sections he thought referred to Jesus’ deity, while leaving in other passages regarding Jesus’ ethical and moral teaching.[4] Jefferson carried around his cut and pasted New Testament with him, revering Jesus as perhaps the greatest moral teacher of all time.

In fact, Jefferson’s memorable words in the Declaration of Independence were rooted in Jesus’ teaching that each person is of immense and equal importance to God, regardless of sex, race, or social status. The famous document sets forth, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …”

But one thing Jefferson didn’t answer: If Jesus falsely claimed to be God he couldn’t have been a good moral teacher. But did Jesus really claim deity? Before we look at what Jesus claimed, we need to examine the possibility that he was simply a great religious leader?