Family Driven Faith– Voddie Bauchman Jr.
Doing what it takes to raise sons and daughters who walk with God 222pages
- Modern American Christianity has a failure rate somewhere around eight (almost nine) out of ten when it comes to raising children who continue in the faith.
- Our children are falling away because we are asking the church to do what God designed the family to accomplish. Discipleship and multi-generational faithfulness begins and ends at home.
- God has designed your family—not the youth group, not the children’s ministry, not the Christian school, but your family—as the principal discipling agent in your children’s lives. The most important job you have as a parent is to train and disciple your children.
- If I teach my son to keep his eye on the ball but fail to teach him to keep his eyes on Christ, I have failed as a father. We must refuse to allow trivial, temporal pursuits to interfere with the main thing.
- Time is precious, and you only get one chance to raise your children. They are only young once, and they are only in your home for a short while. Your only hope is to make the most of the time you have.
- A worldview, according to Francis Schaeffer, is the “grid through which one sees the world.” In other words, a worldview is like a pair of glasses.
- Worldview: the sum total of our beliefs about the world, the big picture that directs our daily decisions and actions.
- We must be careful not to shift the responsibility for our children’s biblical training onto anyone else.
- We must get our kids into the Word of God if we intend to get the Word of God into our kids. It won’t happen by osmosis.
- Why is it that Christian families think nothing of a lifestyle that demands hours per week traipsing across town, blood, sweat, and tears from our children, and thousands of dollars each year from our bank accounts, but the idea of a twenty-minute daily commitment to family worship immediately strikes them as too much to ask? I fear we have lost our way. Christianity has become so marginal in our culture that even those who claim allegiance to Christ have very little to show for it in terms of time and commitment.
- It all comes down to a simple question: Why are we here? Does our family exist to prepare children for the Major Leagues? If so, then baseball will be the center of our family’s universe, and everything will bow to the whims and wishes of the baseball god. Does our family exist to produce socialites? If so, then our family must revolve around the social calendars of our overloaded teenagers and their hectic schedules. However, if our family exists to glorify and honor God and to lay a biblical foundation in the lives of our children, then we must not allow anything to interfere with our commitment to family worship, prayer, and Bible study.
- Many Christians live and work in this world, as if their Christianity was a low priority in life, and this world and its pleasures were all important; when indeed the things of this world are fleeting and Christianity is the one thing we need most. John Bunyan
- The ultimate question, however, is, “Are we both working because we have to or because we don’t think our house is big enough or our car new enough or our bank accounts fat enough?” If it is the latter, we have crossed the line. That is when our children have been sacrificed on the altar of prosperity.
- Revival is God’s invasion into the lives of one or more of His people in order to awaken them spiritually for kingdom ministry.
- It is not the job of the youth pastor to evangelize my child—that’s my job. It is not the youth pastor’s job to equip (disciple) my child—it’s mine.
- To find out if a man is qualified for leadership in the church, look first at his influence on his own children. John MacArthur
