Teaching Done Wrong

Dru's Sunday School teacher has offered a pretty nice reward to his class if they are able to memorize the Books of the Bible. If they do so by the end of the summer they get a trip to Carowinds. Cooper isn't in the class but I've got him in on the action as well. Each morning as I take my sons to my parent's house for the day, we go through and do as many as they can remember and we are currently at Jeremiah. Yesterday as we were doing this I mixed up Ezra and Esther, which both surround Nehemiah, respectively. I corrected them repeatedly, or so I thought. So as we get closer to my parent's house, I realize the error and commend the boys for being right when I was wrong. This morning as we were once again headed to my parent's house, Dru made the same error I had made the day before. I'm sure my continual misguided coaching from the day before had caused him to stumble today.

Our children put plenty of faith in the things we teach them. The problem is we sometimes teach them the wrong things. Sometimes its clearly a teaching moment, as with me teaching the boys the Books of the Bible. Other times our children learn from our example and the way we live our lives. If we teach them bad habits or ungodly traits through our actions, such as swearing, pride, lying, greed, or dishonesty, then they will perceive these traits or habits to be acceptable. I'm like any other parent that has watched their children growing and I've been horrified when I see my bad traits manifesting themselves in my children. Now I'm not saying we should be fake around our children and someone else when they are around. What I am saying is that we need to resolve to live lives worthy of the One who created us. That means we seek His guidance and help with living a life that avoids the unholy things of this life and pursues the holiness of the next. Our objective in this matter should be to make sure that the example observed by our kids, and even the kids we influence, is an example that points them to God and is an example God would want them to mimic.

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