Kids are smarter than us adults in many ways. Where adults are content to live in hypocrisy and empty religious practices, our kids see right through such facades. I have realized over the years that it is difficult to pass on to my children a passion for Jesus if I myself am not walking in and living with such passion. How do I expect them to live for God more zealous than I, when as the leader of the home I live out a lukewarm, compromising lifestyle?
I can tell when I am not hungry for God. When my heart isn't burning for Him. When I try to teach or encourage my kids in the things of God in those times, it's like my words have no life in them, they are empty, because Daddy isn't living what he is preaching.
How do I encourage them to make Jesus everything, when He isn't everything to me? How do I exhort them to have one love, one passion, when my heart is is in love with the allurements of the world or caught up in the distractions of life?
Kids will see right through such illusions. Give it time - a lifestyle of hypocritical living, I believe, will be exposed to our children. And thank God for that. It should concern me that if my life doesn't match up with my words, my kids will see through it, and their walk with God could be and most likely will be negatively affected as a result of my hypocrisy. And at the same time, it should challenge me to the core of my being to live a life of integrity and passion before the Lord, as I well should.
A pastor friend of mine said that integrity is when our thoughts, words and actions all line up as one. And ultimately, they should line up with the Word of God. And so it is with us... Are we living lives of integrity and godly character before our children? Are we modeling for them lives of passion and love for Jesus? Or are our words falling on closed ears because they cant hear us over the noise our hypocritical actions?
And so we must repent, resolving to keep the fire for God burning in our hearts, forsaking the world and it's allurements, for the sake of our children, and His great Name.
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