Becoming Your Child's Spiritual Mentor

In today’s world of shrinking family sizes, parents face all kinds of pressures while juggling demanding careers — "a dragon at work, a worm by the time you get home" has become an almost daily reality. Parents once believed school was the safest place for a child’s education, but as times have changed, confused values have quietly crept onto campus, and the push for diverse family models has left an especially deep mark on children. How Christian parents face this daunting challenge — following the truth of Scripture to become their children’s spiritual mentors and faithfully steward the inheritance God has entrusted to us — is truly one of the most important questions of our time.

Scripture says, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6). Growing up in a Christian family of nine siblings, it was almost like living in a small society of my own. My parents often held family devotions, sharing God’s Word and teaching us to memorize Scripture. I didn’t always grasp the meaning of those verses at the time, but as I grew, the passages I had memorized kept surfacing in my mind, becoming a constant help in daily life. It gave me a deep, lived sense that the Bible isn’t some abstract book, but a living one — a book meant to be lived out and put into practice.

As a child, playing with my siblings, neighbors, and classmates, I inevitably picked up a bit of bad language. Whenever a curse word slipped out carelessly, my mother would hear it and send us to go brush our teeth and rinse our mouths. At first we thought she was joking, but she made it clear, with real firmness, that "no unwholesome word" should ever come out of our mouths — and if we didn’t obey, she’d simply refuse to speak to us. So we learned to submit to her teaching and never dared say those words again. She taught us that our mouths were made for praising God, not for cursing or foul language. It was only later, once I knew Scripture better, that I discovered where that had come from: "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear" (Ephesians 4:29). My parents constantly wove God’s Word into everyday moments of teaching, so that many verses were already etched into my young heart, becoming the standard I lived by.

A Faith Passed Down

By elementary school, I already knew clearly that God is everywhere and all-powerful. When I was alone or afraid of the dark, I learned to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and God gave me strength, sending His angels as my protectors. When I felt lonely or misunderstood, I knew that God, my Maker, understood my every thought — He was my truest friend.

Walking through life’s mountains and valleys, I learned to "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:18), whether in ease or hardship. Across thirty years of marriage, raising four children, my parents have remained the example I keep learning from. Through the faith they passed on to me, I’ve come to deeply feel that a child’s obedience is the surest path to God’s blessing. Through regular family devotions, we’ve passed that faith on to our own children — no bad language allowed from a young age, or off to brush your teeth; making the most of their teenage years to be baptized, easing the storms of adolescent rebellion; guiding them to build their own relationship with God; reading the Bible together as a family. Our two sons have told us they plan to do the same with their own children one day, reading Scripture together as a family — and hearing that brings me real comfort.

Let Home Be Where Children Come to Know God

I am truly grateful for my parents’ unwavering commitment to their faith, for giving me a blueprint for building a Christian family, and for bringing me to church from an early age — knowing God has become the greatest treasure of my life, and He has transformed it. Yet the crisis facing Christian parents today is this: valuing what others say more than what God says, caring more about how others see us than how God sees us, having no time to read Scripture, unable to hold fast to biblical truth, unable to clearly discern God’s leading, lacking a reverent fear of Him — and so unable to receive His wisdom to rightly guide our children in the way they should go. Drifting along with the world’s trends, growing ever more distant from God — this is the deadliest wound to building a Christian family.

In the end, family is where every person’s journey begins — the place where the truth of faith is passed on and the value of life is lived out. In the face of society’s rushing currents of change and its distorted values, parents must strengthen the foundations of their homes and commit themselves to becoming their children’s spiritual mentors, letting children see their parents’ example of faith and life, so that they willingly submit to the teaching of Scripture, live out their faith in everyday family life, and have their lives transformed to live for the Lord.