Teaching Our Children To Live An Authentic Christian Life

Teaching our Children how to live authentically as a Christian!

If we want our kids to live an authentic Christian life, seeking and serving God not the world, shouldn't we teach them how including: the good, the hard and the inbetween? And instead of shielding them from our failures and feelings, shouldn't those be part of our teaching moments to help them succeed? Letting them know it's hard for us to, but God is bigger, and he always brings us through.

We need to teach them how to talk to God & when to talk to God.

Teach them that when they feel hurt by their friend, they should talk to God in silence before running to a different friend to gossip & validate their feelings. BUT then again, is this how WE live? Do we run to God first? I can definitely say I fail at this more than I want to.

My deepest wish, as a mother is to teach my children to run to God, and his ways first and not the worlds. The world is challenging for kids these days, & offers so many distractions to take them down a path that won't bring them anything other than anxiety, people pleasing and constant need for reassurance.

...but also while I feel strongly about teaching them how to navigate the world correctly, I feel that I'm still trying to figure that out myself.

For example...

There are days I feel like an all around failure.

Days I see glimpses of the person from the past, I don't like, & I'm honestly ashamed and almost always on those nights the negative self talk eats me alive, tells me I suck, and I am unworthy of any good.

Somtimes I entertain it and spiral, but almost always, after a good spiral, I feel God tell me to talk to him, because I am loved and worthy.

That this is why Jesus died, so I don't have to feel this. I spend time in prayer, and I feel peace.

THESE are the moments I think I SHOULD be sharing with my kids.

My moments of weakness, raw sadness and shame, and what helped me to get out of it...bc the world around our kids is always waiting to tell them they are not worthy, could never succeed, aren't skilled enough, pretty enough etc.

If we don't teach them how to run to God, they WILL run to the world. Our kids need to see our moments of weakness, know that we feel like we fail too, but also be told about how God helped us out of it, and how we felt when we ran to him, allowing him to help us navigate the situation...however it all worked out.

I write this as a mom that fails daily, but as an encouragement for myself to lean in on teaching the real moments in life that we personally feel and how we've seen God bring us out.

To be real and raw with our children about how it IS hard, how we have friendship problems too, and we certainly mess up, but nothing is bigger than God

Teaching them to pray real prayers in real moments of weakness with them, and then ask them how they've seen God work in their life through the little "coincidences" that happened and were definitely God.

Let me know if you have any ideas to add or advice! The world is hard but together we could make it better!

My instagram video on this!