The idea that real people will spend a real eternity in Heaven or Hell based in part upon my action or inaction to give them the gospel ought to grip every one of us as believers.
It’s a very sobering thought that the future fate of the souls of people rests in our hands and in our ability to equip the next generations to carry on the baton of faith and the gospel.
2 Timothy 2:2 And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.
How easy it is to forget that all it takes is one broken link in the chain to derail our faith off course. All it takes is one generation that fails to understand the imperative to boldly proclaim the gospel for it’s life-changing power to be lost in the lives of those who never hear it.
If the future fate of the world rests in the hands of our children, then the current fate of the world rests in our hands as parents.
How will our children be prepared and equipped to carry on the baton of faith and pass it on to future generations as well?
Here are a few ideas for helping your children to become faithful witnesses of the gospel:
1. Be a Witness Yourself
Nothing speaks the value of sharing your faith greater than your kids seeing you do it. They may hear about it taught at church and they may even know that it’s the right thing to do, but actions always speak louder than words.
Psalm 96:2-3 Shew forth His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the heathen, His wonders among all people.
If they don’t see you taking it seriously, what practical reason do they have for taking it seriously themselves? If we’re not actively sharing our faith with others in front of them, do we truly think they are going to intentionally share their faith in front of others themselves?
A burden for lost people around you can become very contagious in the life of your children. Biblically, being a witness ought to be a hereditary characteristic.
2. Create Opportunities for Them to Witness
One of the things that I love doing together as a family is handing out gospel tracts.
The day we left on vacation this past summer, I presented our family with a challenge to hand out as many tracts as possible throughout the week by leaving them in restaurants, restrooms, and giving them personally to people we would meet.
What was exciting was to see how conscious our kids were of the need to give out the gospel. When we would talk to people while sitting on a plane or waiting in line for a ride, our kids would ask, “Daddy, can we give them a tract?”
We left tracts in the waiting areas of airports, in the back of plane seats, on restaurant tables, and in the hands of many people that we would never meet again. And the best part of all – our kids loved it!
Kids want to know that they’re making a difference for God, and they can be witnesses if they’re just encouraged and given opportunities.
3. Pray for the Lost as a Family
There’s something amazingly powerful about praying together as a family for other people, especially people that you as a family are striving to reach with the gospel.
Pray as a family for your unsaved neighbors, your kids’ unsaved school teachers, and other people God has put into your lives. Pray for opportunities to witness to those people and invite them to church.
If you intentionally pray about it together, your children will be consciously aware of what they need to do when the opportunity presents itself. I recently read this statement, that “people who pray for the lost, see the lost.” How true. We often don’t see souls, because we’re not praying for souls.
If our children don’t get a burden for the lost from us, it’s unlikely they’ll get it from anywhere else. Every investment you make into helping your child become a witness is an eternal investment that you have made into future souls that you may never meet until Heaven.
Just as we would invest our money into missions for the gospel to go around the world, we equally need to invest our time into our children for the gospel to reach into future generations.
In what ways could you better encourage or provide opportunities for your children to share their faith? And who could you be praying for together as a family?
