How to Raise Children for Christ: A Guide for Excellent Christian Parenting

by Andrew Murray

Abide in Christ, and let the child feel that to be near you is to be near Christ; live in the power of the love and the redemption and the life of Christ.

The spirit of modern so-called liberty has penetrated into our family life, and some parents, from a mistaken view of duty or from want of thought as to their sacred calling or from love of ease, have no place for such a word as command, which God here uses. They have not seen the heavenly harmony between authority and love, between obedience and liberty. Parents are more than friends and advisers; they have been clothed by God with a holy authority to be exercised in leading their children in the way of the Lord. There is an age when the will of the child is in their hands, and the quiet, loving exercise of that authority will have mighty influence.

Be very full of faith and be very faithful. Very full of faith: let faith in the living God, His covenant with you and your seed, His promises for your children, and His faithfulness fill your soul. Take God’s Word as the only measure of your faith. And then, be very faithful: take God’s Word as the only measure of your life, especially in the family. Be a parent such as God would have you be. Let it be your one desire to live and rule your home that your household may walk in the ways of the Lord. You may depend upon it that the blessing will be large and full.

A Prayer for Parents Blessed Father, most earnestly do we ask You to open the eyes of the parents of Your church to see and know their holy and most blessed calling. May they understand and realize that You say to them at the birth of each little one entrusted to their care, “At your hands will I require it.” O God, show us what the dangers are that surround our children and how impotent we are. Give us the true surety spirit, the willingness to sacrifice all rather than be unfaithful to our charge. As we see the power of sin and of the world threatening them, may we plead as for our own life, yea, with the offer of our life, that the children be now saved from sin and Satan. As Your eye sees us day by day with our children, may this be the one desire of our parental love that You find – that they may be wholly Yours. Be this our one aim in prayer and education and communication. And may You, O blessed Lord Jesus, reveal Yourself as our Helper and our Joy. O Lord Jesus, teach us and the parents of your church that we are the surety of our family. O Thou who art the faithful Surety, make us faithful too. Amen.

Let your faith do its work: God Himself will see to it that our labor is not in vain. The education Moses’ mother gave her son during the years of his childhood was such that all the years of his training at Pharaoh’s court could not obliterate it.

May my own life be the life of faith, hid with Christ in God, that my child may know no other dwelling place.

Let holy love for God and His words mingle with all your fond and tender love to your little ones, and it will be a sweet and happy work to win your beloved to the Father.

God’s Word has taught that obedience is the child’s first virtue in which his will is to be exercised. He is to obey, not because he understands or approves, but because the parent commands it. In this, he is to become the master of his own will, voluntarily submitting it to a higher authority.

We have no idea of the extent to which self-interest weakens faith and self-sacrifice strengthens it.

Young mothers, your motherhood is a holier and a more blessed thing in God’s sight than you know. If you are indeed God’s child, you have been placed under the leading and the rule of His Holy Spirit in everything. Be sure that all the tender interest and solemn thought, all the quiet trust and joyful hope, which expectant motherhood stirs up, may be sanctified and refined by God’s Holy Spirit, and you may be united with your little one under the overshadowing of His heavenly grace.