Teaching children to fear God

Deuteronomy 6:2 commands us to teach our children so "that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long." (ESV). There are several resources available to aid in what has been called family worship including one new one by Dr. Donald Whitney. Family worship is but one of scores of ways to teach your children intentionally to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of God.

Jerry Bridges writes in The Joy of Fearing God that children "need to be taught the primacy of loving their neighbor as themselves and how this is worked out in treating others as they want to be treated. They need to understand that obedience is possible only through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. Above all, they need to see that their only hope of acceptance by a holy God, both in this life and eternity, is through faith in the shed blood and righteous life of our Lord Jesus Christ."

May we as parents take up this God-given duty of teaching our children to obey God because they love Him and others and they fear Him.