9 Powerful Ways to Influence Your Children for Christ

If you want to see your children come to know the Lord, you have a golden opportunity before you, my precious sisters.

There is no greater convincing proof of the power of the Gospel of Jesus to transform lives than the godly example of someone who is Spirit-filled in the middle of a difficult trial.

But no matter what season it may be in life, there are always solid ways to share Jesus with our precious children (and others in our lives).

9 Powerful Ways to Share the Gospel with Your Children

  1. Explain the gospel in your own words in age-appropriate ways your kids can understand every so often. One of the easiest methods is the ABC’s of Salvation, but there are many ways to share. (I’ll share it at the end of this post.)
  2. Memorize Bible verses together about the truth of the Gospel and about God. Make the Bible a priority as the foundation for your lives and the only source of absolute truth. Hide the Word of God in your heart and help your children to do the same. The Spirit will help them to remember those verses later in life when they need them.
  3. Talk about God frequently in everyday conversation when something comes up about death, heaven, nature, relationships, or other important topics. Teach them His truth diligently. When you hear lies from the world, talk about what is wrong with them and what God’s Word says. Be sure you are studying God’s Word for yourself so that you have truth, wisdom, and God’s perspective to share with your children. (Deut. 6:1-9)
  4. Teach your kids songs about Jesus and the Gospel and let them listen to music that explains the Gospel and praises God (Eph. 5:19). Make it a habit to sing praises together to God in the car, when on a walk, or at home. There are CDs that put Scripture to music. I also love a lot of the LifeWay VBS songs about God and salvation. (You can Google them.)
  5. Pray with your kids and for your kids. Take time to pray for the needs your children have currently, and for God’s protection over them, for their hearts to be drawn to Christ, and for their spiritual growth, as well as for godly friends and spouses one day. Bring everyday needs, big and small, to the Lord in prayer with your children. (Phil. 4:6-7) Model praying for them out loud so they get comfortable with prayer. Be sure to include praises to God, thanksgiving, repentance, petitions for yourself, requests for others.
  6. Take your kids to a Bible-teaching church where the message of God’s Word can be reinforced (when there is not a quarantine). Being around godly teachers, biblical preaching, biblical teaching, and other strong believers in Christ helps your kids grow spiritually. (Heb. 10:24-25)
  7. Love your kids. If you speak lots of eloquent words but don’t have love, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says you are just a clanging gong or noisy cymbal. Jesus says that men will know us by our love for others. Love on your kids with God’s 1 Cor. 13:4-8 kind of divine agape love. Be affectionate with them. Listen to them. Be patient. Give grace. But also give proper correction with right motives so that you are training your children in righteousness and holiness. Ignoring sin is not a loving gift, it is harmful. Love does no harm (Rom. 12:10) Speak the truth in love. Nurture them well. Care about their precious souls. See them with God’s eyes. Seek to honor the Lord in the way you think, speak, and act toward them.
  8. Love and honor their dad. God designed marriage to be a picture of the Gospel where the husband is to represent the selfless love, leadership, and sacrifice of Christ for the church. He helps the kids understand what God is like, that is His job. The wife represents the adoration, respect, devotion, and love of the church for Jesus. When your children see your genuine respect, honor, and cooperation with your husband’s leadership, they receive a really important puzzle piece to help them understand how to properly relate to God. You and your husband don’t have to be perfect. Your husband doesn’t even have to be on board for you to be able to make a difference in their lives. But if you are honoring the Lord and honoring your husband according to God’s design, your children will be primed and so much more ready for the Gospel. (Eph. 5:22-33, Titus 2:3-5)
  9. Live the Gospel message in front of them! If you do all of the first 6 things, but you don’t live for Christ yourself, kids see right through that. You don’t have to be perfect! I promise! The key is love for God and love for people. Kids are always watching and they are quick to sniff out hypocrisy. They know if you are a woman of fervent prayer, deep faith, and love who cherishes the Bible by the fruit of your life and the priorities you make each day. If they realize that what you say doesn’t match what you live, they are a lot more likely to discard church, the Bible, and the gospel. But if they see the supernatural power of God changing you and helping you grow more and more over time, they will never forget that, and they will be drawn to Jesus, themselves.

When Jesus is your greatest Treasure and priority in life and you love Him more than anything or anyone, your life will be different. Your love will be different. You will have the power of God to interact in healthy ways, rather than dysfunctional ways.

I talk about how to put your spiritual “oxygen mask” on first in The Peaceful Mom book. You can’t give away what you don’t have!

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Prov. 22:6

Trials and Difficulties Showcase the Gospel

Most people will react to economic, health, or other trials by panicking, stressing out, and getting upset. They react in fear, and, unfortunately, when people make fear-based decisions, they tend to act destructively.

But when you have the supernatural power, peace, joy, and presence of Jesus flaming in your own soul, you respond in the power of His Spirit. You react with His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. You can have faith instead of being paralyzed by fear.

When your children see you humbly ask for forgiveness when you mess up, when they see you respond with kindness when you are running late, when they see you beaming with the radiant joy of Christ, and when they see you not freaking out when things are hard—they see the Gospel in you.

Again, it is not that you have to be the perfect woman, wife, and mom. This isn’t about perfection. We won’t be completely perfect until heaven. But when you are yielded to the Lordship of Jesus and allow Him to change and control your life, His love and power will pour through you and your children will see Jesus in you in miraculous ways.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Matt. 19:14

Pray with Me

Lord,

Please help us use each day to love You and love others. Help us see what really matters in light of eternity and let go of things that won’t be a big deal in the end. Transform us by Your love and power and pour out Your incredible love and Gospel through us to everyone around us.

Be glorified in each of our homes and lives. We trust You and invite You to do exceedingly more than we could ask for or imagine.

Amen!

The ABC’s of Salvation

  • A = Admit you are a sinner and you can’t be perfect and holy enough in God’s eyes to be right with Him on your own. Turn away from your sin to God. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Rom. 3:23
  • B = Believe that Jesus died on your behalf to pay the price for your sin and to give you a way to be right with God – to be forgiven. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord.” Rom. 6:23
  • C = Confess that Jesus is your Lord – this means, Jesus is now your Master and you live your life for Him and His glory rather than for yourself. You say it out loud to others and you live it from now on. “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved.” Rom. 10:9-10

God’s Incredible Plan for You!

How to Influence an Unbelieving Husband for Christ.

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What are some ways you have found to share the gospel with your family? We’d love to hear about it!

Any resources you would recommend?

10 comments

  1. Thanks for this. We just had our first baby so this is especially relevant. I hope you are doing well and in good health! Thanks for the reminders to stay grateful even in these troubling times. God bless.

  2. Thanks April. I am passionate about raising Kids who fear the Lord. I also want to add that replacing what they watch for example having them watch family Christian movie is one of the things the Holy Spirit has laid in my heart to start recently. Their minds work around what they feed on and I do watch with them so we can all learn the lessons together and afterwards I pray with them at the end of the movie.
    But the above message has really blessed me. Thanks

  3. I hope this is a not an inappropriate comment so I will leave it to you, April, to judge whether it ought to be shared. My life experience is different than that of young marrieds raising families, obviously as you know from our correspondence with each other. Some of us have adult children whose lives are scarred by sinful choices we as parents have made. No parent is perfect. We all do things that hurt or even scar our children on occasion. And some of us came from such disordered backgrounds that despite our desire to do the opposite, we carried that disorder on into the next generation.

    Perhaps we were a mess and self absorbed and so spent all our time looking for something to address our pain and misery while our child felt pushed to the edges, and sensed that we were not all that interested in them beyond getting them fed, off to school, hugged and tucked into bed. Perhaps their little hearts yearned to be cherished, wanted in terms of relationship and not just nuts and bolts functional parenting and we either knew it not or just couldn’t or wouldn’t go there. Now they are adults with some glaring gaps in their emotional maturity and life skills and still hurting.

    Perhaps our own sin and dysfunction was responsible for making our home a battleground and we like the foolish woman, cherished our hurt, hates, angers and rights and our desire for happiness more than anyone else even God and so, like the foolish woman, we tore our house down with our own hands and theirs too. Perhaps in fits of temper and miserableness, we were harsh, even abusive at times. Perhaps we professed faith but the truth was that our lives did not match up with our claims and everyone knows it including us.

    One thing that most certainly influences our kids even adult kids, is when we get down to the nitty gritty and take our beliefs seriously. We demonstrate that by ceasing from our sin justifying ways and demonstrating repentance and honesty about our failures and disobedience to God where that has been the case. We do some deep heart examination as to our motives and we ask God to show us, direct us and speak to us . Our earnest prayer is | Deal with me now God, arrest me from going the wrong direction and show me my true estate. We realize that while everyone wants to have a good and happy, satisfying life, this present life is temporary and what comes after is eternal/forever.

    We fall in with God and what His word actually says, and out with the world and with preachers and churches in bed with the world who sidestep what the word truly says to please people and justify and excuse sin/disobedience. We wake up and realize these are heaven and hell issues; that living a lawless and disobedient life is not something we can expect Jesus to wink at, and make a deep down heart decision to live on that basis. We take responsibility and if possible make restitution. We admit our guilt and show genuine grief and sorrow . We realize, with appropriate horror, that if WE have been living as if obedience is optional, and we expect God to justify us when we are disobedient, we are risking our own soul as well as those of others.

    Our children, even adult children see all these things and are definitely impacted for Christ, whether for or against, by whether they see truth in our lives or not.

    1. SevenTimes,

      There is always power in a parent’s repentance. It would be great to happen as early as possible. But a true heart and life transformation can bless adult children, too.

      Great point!

      ❤️????❤️

    2. Hi SevenTimes,
      My dad lived a sinful lifestyle for years, which caused us lots of pain and heartache. About 10 years ago, he repented and gave his life to Christ and transformed before our eyes. It was very inspiring and amazing. Jesus paid the debt for his sins and I know that Jesus also paid the debt for my sins. It’s never too late to repent and such repentance can bless adult children immensely.

      1. Nikki,

        PRAISE GOD!

        A father of a relative in my family was an alcoholic and finally repented in his 60s just three weeks before he passed away. He had the chance to say he regretted the way he had treated his wife and his kids. It was very healing for them all.

        Obviously, the sooner one can repent, the better! But even when repentance happens later, it is such a blessing to everyone.

        Thank you for sharing!

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