How Do I Raise My Children to Know God

Official answer 2026-08-22

The most specific passage in Scripture on this gives a method that may not be what you expect. It says: talk of these things when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Notice it does not say hold a class. It describes putting faith into ordinary conversation — at meals, in the car, in the ten minutes before sleep. The advantage of that method is that it creates no opposing side: a child does not experience it as something imposed, because it simply grows in the life they are already living. Practically. How you live matters far more than what you say. Children are acutely sensitive to inconsistency. How you speak to your spouse at home, how you react when things go wrong, whether you can apologise — that is the content they are actually reading. Let them ask questions, including hard and impolite ones. A child who cannot ask does God really exist at home will not stop asking; they will ask somewhere else, and you will not be there. Do not use shame or fear as fuel. Those two produce short-term compliance and long-term resentment, and that is the actual reason many of this generation left. Hand over the choice at the right age. Faith cannot be inherited, only accepted personally. You can provide sufficient exposure and an honest example; the final step is not yours to take for them. And pray for them, and let them know you do. Years later, many people remember not what their parents argued but that someone was praying for them. One last thing for anxious parents: a child not believing for now does not mean you failed. In Scripture God own children wander off and come back regularly. You are responsible for sowing and staying present; that other part was never assigned to you.