Parenting Day 4: Two Rules Every Parent Must Teach Their Children

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Life Over Coffee Devotions

• 31-Day Marriage Devotion
• 31-Day Parenting Devotion
• 31-Day Young Adult Devotion

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40).

Biblical parenting incrementally releases children from your rules and authority while placing them under the most influential governing dynamic known to humanity—to love God and others supremely. If your child’s heart is motivated and governed by those two truths, and you help him to embrace that kind of affection for God and neighbor, you will serve your child well.

Your parenting objective is to lead your child to Christ so he can learn to love God and others as he loves himself. No other code of conduct or religious system could provide anything better. Living under God’s authority with a satiable love for Him is God-glorifying, soul-satisfying, and neighbor-affecting. The most remarkable thing about the two great commandments is that there are only two of them. Too many rules make one’s head swim. The rule-based life is a yoke of slavery that whittles you down to an awkward, out-of-step conservatism, or it exasperates you to the point of throwing the rules out the window and walking away from God.

Suppose you want to teach your child rules and show him how to love God and his neighbor as he loves himself. Let the Lord’s primary rules be your top two. Always remember that these rules have more to do with your child’s attitude than his behaviors. You cannot love God and others as you love yourself unless the Lord has transformed your inner being. This need makes shepherding a child’s heart important because all behaviors—good or bad—flow from his attitude. Isn’t that true for you? Your attitude about God determines how you respond to Him. And your attitude about (your neighbor) determines how you react to (your neighbor).

Because loving God and others is the end game, you must carefully consider how you motivate your child toward that God-glorifying goal. You have to determine if what you are doing as a parent is helping to facilitate that kind of change. If it is not, you must discard it. The first step in this transformative process is for your child to be born again (John 3:7), which you cannot make happen. Only the Lord can grant spiritual transformation to anyone (2 Timothy 2:24-25; 1 Corinthians 3:6).

Your job is to point your child to the gospel while pleading with God to implement this essential first step. The two ways you can cooperate with the Lord in this process are—in this order—model the gospel before your child and teach him about the gospel. Teaching the gospel is more evident to most Christians than modeling the gospel, which is why I’ve listed four ways you can model the gospel to your child, with the hope the Lord will regenerate him so he can experience the empowerment to love God and others supremely.

Time to Parent

1. Model Gratitude: If your child were free to speak the truth to you, would he say gratitude is what characterizes you? (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
2. Model Kindness: What does your child experience more from you: your kindness to him or your disappointment in him? (Romans 2:4)
3. Model Serving: Do you serve in such a way that your kid is motivated to emulate your servant’s heart? (Mark 10:45)
4. Model Repentance: Are you an active repenter, and is your child a regular recipient of your requests for forgiveness? (1 John 1:7-10)

Practicing these four Christ characteristics will motivate your child to love God and others more than himself.

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Rick Thomas

Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.

In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).