01 May Good or spoilt rotten fruit? – May 15

by Grace Susatyo

Have you ever seen fruit that was absolutely fabulous on the outside, but when you cut them, you found it was rotten on the inside?

One day when I was dressing up my daughter, I had to choose out of many choices, which dress she should wear that day and which shoes or bags or hairbands to match it. Please do not misunderstand me; nothing is wrong with all of that.  But then a question popped up in my heart, have I invested enough in what really matters most to my princess, which is their spiritual life?  Have I modelled enough Godly behaviour in our daily activities so that my child grows as what God wants her to be? The honest answer is NO. Then this image of fruits that look marvellous on the outside but rotten on the inside struck my mind, as I am reminded of this will happen to any child if the parents are not portraying Godly principles in the children’s lives. As Christian parents, we need to apply spiritual parenting.

Michelle Anthony in her book describes “Spiritual parenting is not a perfect parenting – its way of parenting that declares, “I want to parent the children that God gave me in such a way that I first honour God, and then second create the best environment to put my children in the path of the Divine””

Oftentimes parents’ natural reaction when recognizing the evil in the world is to protect our children from the exposure of sin completely.  Parents, including myself, also tend to think that by teaching children the Bible stories, taking them to church every Sunday and putting them into Christian schools, will be enough to teach good morals and values and keep them away for the dangers of this world. In fact, spiritual parenting says it is not enough.

What does Spiritual Parenting mean to parents?

1. It reminds us to teach children that they are going to live in the world because God has placed them there, but they are not part of it.
2. Parents need to be mindful that “We are living examples of what is real, and it’s not our job to merely control children’s behaviour, but it is our job as parents to model with authenticity what we have in our relationship with God through Christ.” Therefore if you want your child to pray, read Bible, give offerings, then parents need to firstly be their role model.
3. Parents need to continually depend on God and Holy Spirit whilst modelling our Christian lives to our children without compromising with the worldly values.

With the above perspectives, hopefully parents can now set on a bigger picture of passing our faith to our children. And let’s use daily activities to be an opportunity for us to be a living testament to our children.

Happy Spiritual Parenting!