As a baby boomer, I’m part of a generation that believed that adulthood began at age eighteen, which usually coincided with the time a teenager graduated from high school and went into the work force or off to college. For generation z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – there’s the belief that adulthood doesn’t begin until sometime around the ages of twenty-seven to thirty. Researchers found that only eleven percent of Gen Z-ers say they feel like adults. One reason for this is that they don’t have the financial stability they believe they need to be considered adults, including being able to pay all their own bills, contributing to a retirement account, and having a life insurance policy. In fact, forty percent of those surveyed don’t think they’ll ever be financially stable. Perhaps we need to be more intentional about raising our kids to take on responsibility, coddling them less, requiring them to learn the value of work, and teaching them principles of biblical stewardship.

Today we conclude our week-long look at what it means to entrust our children to God. To entrust our children to God is to completely entrust our children to God! While yes, we have been given the aforementioned responsibilities to tend, teach, and train, we cannot drag, push, or pull our kids screaming and kicking into the Kingdom of God. There is no guarantee that we will see the results that we want, in the way that we want, or in the time that we want. No, “salvation belongs to the Lord!” It is only the Holy Spirit, working in His way and His time, who will call our children to faith. We need to constantly remind ourselves of what I heard R.C. Sproul say on many occasions: “God has entrusted the ministry of the Word to us, not its results.” Our high calling is to be faithful and obedient. . . and to leave the rest up to God. Let me remind you once again, that there is no higher parental calling or privilege than to focus your time, energy, and prayers on leading your kids to love and serve Jesus.

All this week we’re looking at what it means for us as Christian parents to entrust our children to God. In First Timothy four, six to ten we learn that to entrust your children to God is to train them in righteousness. Knowing sound doctrine is a worthless pursuit if that doctrine is not translated into everyday living. Our parenting should be directed to the end of not just honoring God with our lips, but glorifying Him with our lives, as we learn in Mark 7:6. One way parents can teach this is to look for those everyday opportunities to employ what I call the World-Word-Walk paradigm. It starts with keeping your ears and eyes open to the current cultural narrative. What is the world teaching our kids? We point these things out and then examine them with our children under the light of God’s Word. Finally, we think and pray with them about how God’s Word is calling them to walk obediently to God’s glory in the midst of a world that teaches them to live contrary to the Gospel.