Jeryn is your typical 9-year-old: lively, fun and with enough energy to get three of me going for an entire day. As she sits around while her mom and I talk, I would never imagine that she paid attention to me.
So I was surprised when she handed me a small gift bag for my birthday. Inside was something she had picked herself: a beautiful, tiny sculpture of a flying eagle coming back to her nest, where eaglets anxiously wait for their food.
My little friend looked up at me, her face beaming with pride. I honestly was surprised that busy little Jeryn had watched long enough to know that her mom's friend loves eagles so much.
Yes, Jeryn may be busy playing hide-and-seek with my children, but she is certainly watching. And so are my two little girls. And so are your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Their little eyes and ears are watching. And their little feet are eager to follow you.
"Do what I say, but not as I do."
I know that there are exceptions to this, but I believe that, for the most part, one of the reasons so many teenagers and young adults who were raised in church later rebel against God, is because they lived in a home filled with hypocrisy.
I have witnessed it in lives around me: many of us, who go to church every week and are highly involved in church activities, are not always teaching God's principles with our actions. Because we are human, it is natural that at times we fail to present a godly character to our children and people in our lives.
The problem is when our entire lives are the opposite of what we preach. If you tell your children that they must cultivate love, respect and self-control, but on that same day they witness you lose your temper over something small (for the fifth time that week), guess which lesson they learned? Yep! They just learned that mommy does not apply what she says she believes to her life.
If you are at church each time the door is open, have time to take on one more responsibility in ministry, but have no time to listen to your pre-teen share her struggles at school, I can almost guarantee you that she will resent church and possibly God.
My prayer is that we will hold fast to the truth that, no matter how much we proclaim our faith, if we are not allowing our lives to be transformed by its power, we are failing. Moreover, if we serve God in whatever ministry he has called us to do, but are pushing the children in our lives away from him because of our hypocrisy, we have certainly failed.
Our ministry is first at home with our families and very especially, with our children. Because they are the next generation to further God's kingdom and inherit his promises ... or not.
Patricia Holbrook is a Bible teacher and the author of a series of devotionals that she shares on her blog, www.soaringwithHim.com. Email: pholbrook@soaringwithHim.com.
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