The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of our new book, Parenting in God’s Family.

When our first son was about six weeks old, I joined a ‘mother and baby’ group run by our local health service. After the formal education sessions ended, our group continued to meet until our babies were about two years old. That group was a great support to me. It was such a relief to meet some other new mothers and realise that most of my questions, concerns and struggles were perfectly normal.

It felt like I had so much in common with those other mothers—we seemed to have similar desires, hopes and worries for our children, and similar expectations and disappointments about motherhood. As time went on, I started to wonder what difference it made that I was a Christian. Was my approach to raising children any different to that of the other parents around me?

In my case, Christian parenting was a completely foreign territory. I grew up in a non-Christian family and came to Christ independently in late primary school. I had never seen or experienced ‘Christian parenting’ until I was trying to do it myself!

Our first son is now a teenager and has been joined by three younger brothers. For most of that time, I’ve been trying to work out what Christian parenting looks like by reading and reflecting on the Bible, getting to know our children, talking with my husband and connecting with other Christian parents. Like any new area of knowledge or skill, I think you only really get better at parenting as you practise and refine your approach over time. Christian parenting is not a set of detailed rules or instructions; it’s more like a set of principles that need to be applied with wisdom at each new stage of your child’s development.

If were to summarise it, I would say:

Christian parenting means receiving children as gifts from God, reflecting his fatherly love to them and taking responsibility for their apprenticeship in life and faith. At the same time, Christian parenting means acknowledging our human limitations and introducing our children to their perfect heavenly Father and his spiritual family.

Receiving children as gifts from God

Christian parenting begins with acknowledging that our children have been hand-crafted by God for his good purposes; ultimately, they belong to God, but he has entrusted them to us to care for and raise. Modern technologies might give the impression that children are ‘ours’ to be planned, expected, created and designed according to our desires, but Christians need to resist this kind of thinking. Every child, no matter how ‘unplanned’ or seemingly imperfect, is a good gift from the hand of God. In Chapter 3, Jodie McIver helps us to see how pregnancy and birth are also good gifts from God that can teach us profound truths about ourselves and about God and his work in the world.

Knowing that our children have been created by God reminds us that they have also been created for God and his purposes, not ours. In fact, when a child is conceived, an eternal soul has come into being. What a sobering thought! Our children were made by God to worship him and live his way, working in the world and doing good to those around them.

Seeing our children as gifts from God trains us to pay attention to them—to learn about what they need, how they are developing, their unique personalities, strengths and challenges. In the next chapter we will consider some broad stages of childhood development and how that impacts our approach to parenting.

In Chapter 21, Leisa Williams helps us to consider what Christian parenting might look like if we have a child with special needs.

Reflecting God’s fatherly love to our children

In the Bible, one of the primary metaphors that God uses to describe his relationship to his people is that of fatherhood (and occasionally, motherhood). In speaking of himself as Father, God emphasises his creation of his people and the unconditional love, commitment, provision, patience and forgiveness he shows them; he also emphasises the teaching and loving discipline that fatherhood entails. God expects his children to respond by honouring, trusting, listening to and imitating him, their heavenly Father. The relationship between human parents and their children is a signpost pointing to this relationship between God and his people.

Distinctively Christian parenting is done by men and women who know God as their heavenly Father and seek to reflect his loving fatherhood to their children. We seek to show our children unconditional love, while also teaching them to respond to us with trust, respect and obedience.

In Chapter 4, Yixin Jiang Xu explains how in the early years, loving like God means providing a safe, available and caring presence and promptly meeting our children’s needs. This allows children to form a strong bond or ‘attachment’ with their parents, which is vital for their development.

In Chapter 5, Tim Beilharz explores the significant role that earthly fathers play in children’s development and suggests some ways that churches can help to support children who find themselves ‘fatherless’.

Taking responsibility for our children’s apprenticeship

An apprenticeship in life

Children are on a gradual path to maturity, and parents are responsible for helping them grow towards that goal. Christian parents teach their children the meaning or purpose of life according to God. Rather than raising our children to seek happiness and self-fulfilment, we are teaching them to honour God, work in his world and do good to other people. Our children’s apprenticeship includes acquiring the knowledge, skills and values they will need to fulfil their God-given purpose. Importantly, an apprenticeship is not just classroom learning; it is an ongoing personal relationship in which a ‘master’ models and teaches all that the apprentice needs to know until the apprentice becomes competent to do things themself.

Our children’s apprenticeship includes developing Christian values such as respect, compassion, generosity, self-control and honesty. In Chapter 6, we consider a Christian view of discipline as discipleship, then explore how parents can encourage good behaviour and respond to bad behaviour in their children. In Chapter 7, Jocelyn Loane gives some practical advice for helping our children to put Christian values into practice in the context of their relationships with their siblings.

Our children’s apprenticeship in life includes learning about the world that God has made. In Chapter 8, Emily Cobb helps us think through how Christian families can partner with a variety of education providers to ensure that their children learn the basics of literacy, numeracy, the sciences and humanities, as well as understand how this knowledge fits into a Christian world view.

Teaching our children how to live in the world includes helping them to understand the beauty of God’s design for humanity. We are created to be male and female and relate to one another sexually within the context of marriage. In chapters 9 and 10, Patricia Weerakoon and Kamal Weerakoon advise parents on how to help their children avoid confusion and develop a healthy sexuality and gender identity.

An apprenticeship in faith

Christian parents are also responsible for giving our children an apprenticeship in faith: passing on the knowledge of God and the habits of a living faith. Wendy Lin helps us in Chapter 11 to get a big picture of how to grow our family in the faith, before sharing some practical advice for teaching children of different ages how to pray and read the Bible in Chapter 12. Then in Chapter 13, she explains how we can shape our days, weeks and years in a way that points our family to Jesus. In Chapter 14, we look at how to prioritise belonging to a local church community, even when it’s hard.

As our children become teenagers, they will have to decide for themselves whether they will continue on in the Christian faith as adults. In Chapter 15, Kat Ashton Israel reflects on the challenges of the teenage years, especially when our children may choose to opt out of the Christian faith.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where technology exposes our children to many competing influences and habits that are ‘discipling’ them towards other visions of maturity. In Chapter 16, Daniel Sih helps us to see how parents can ensure that technology is working for and not against our children’s apprenticeship in life and faith.

Acknowledging our human limitations

Introducing our children to their perfect heavenly Father

One of the major distinctives of Christian parenting is that we recognise the limits of being human. We know from the Bible that all of us fall short of God’s standards and need to be forgiven and washed clean by the blood of Jesus. So Christian parents don’t need to pretend to be perfect; we are free to admit when we have sinned and ask God and others, including our children, for forgiveness.

In our weakness, we can call out to God for help and, in the power of the Holy Spirit, find new ways to grow in godliness. In Chapter 17, Kat Ashton Israel shares some practical strategies to help parents avoid and manage feelings of overwhelm. In Chapter 18, Geoff Robson explores what the Bible says about sleep and how tired parents can still rest in God.

Christian parents also recognise that our children are not perfect and their life in this fallen world will never be perfect either. So, we need to keep pointing our children to Jesus, our Saviour and theirs, who is always willing to forgive and restore. We also need to equip our children to persevere through disappointments, failures and setbacks with resilience, trusting in God, who can use even the hard things for our good.

Introducing our children to their spiritual family

The final distinctive of Christian parenting is the awareness that raising children is beyond the capacity of two human parents. Christian parents are meant to bring their children into the wider family of God—a local church—where children can connect with a whole network of Christians of all ages and stages who can contribute to their growth in life and faith. Christian parents know that raising children is not meant to be a private, solitary affair, but something done in the context of community. And just as Christian parents need support from others, Christian parenting also looks beyond the nuclear family to welcome outsiders in. This is the focus of Chapter 14.

In our final section, ‘What if …’, we see how belonging to a church is particularly important for parents with non-Christian spouses (Chapter 19 by Karen Beilharz), single parents (Chapter 20 by Ruth Baker) and parents of children with special needs (Chapter 21 by Leisa Williams).

At the end of the day, Christian parenting is not about being perfect but about being faithful. When we stumble, we get back up and just keep going—doing our best to know, love and teach the children God has entrusted to us. And, knowing our human limitations, we are also ‘full of faith’. We keep lifting our eyes—and our children’s—to the only perfect Father who is always ready to forgive, guide and strengthen us for the responsibility of Christian parenting.

Order your copy of ‘Parenting in God’s family’ from Youthworks Media today! 

This excerpt originally appeared at Growing Faith.