Understanding: Background and context: the Bible provides some essential foundations for raising children that help parents in the aim that God has for parents, namely that a child would come to know God for themselves. For at least the last 60 years or so Western culture and society has increasingly provided parents with alternative foundations upon which to build. As Christians we need to be aware of which foundation we are building upon when it comes to parenting. Paul suggested four biblical foundations for parenting:
1) Marriage: should provide for children a living example of Christ’s love for us, a model or example to follow and an essential sense of security.
2) Family: should provide for children a sense of identity and a place of belonging, a moral compass for them, support, comfort, guidance love and a lot of fun.
These two foundations are vital for parents to achieve the aims God has for our parenting of our children (see last week’s Word notes). They are indeed a huge challenge to lay and build upon, they are even more of a challenge if those foundations are non existent, broken or have been poorly laid. Parents with no supportive grandparents or extended family, parents without a strong family background of their own to draw from and single parents especially all face a greater challenge in their parenting. So what provision does our faithful, loving God provide in those situations? Paul suggested the answer was a further two foundations – what were they?
3) Jesus: The bible says to parents who find themselves facing the challenge of raising children on their own that your ‘Maker is their husband’ [Isaiah 54:4-6]. A maturing relationship with Jesus is an essential foundation for raising children. If you have no other Christian foundation to build upon such as marriage or Christian family, a person can build upon Christ as their foundation and it will be sufficient.
4) The Church: the Bible tells us that ‘God is the Father to the fatherless and protector of widows and he is also sets the lonely in families’ [Psalm 68:5-6]. He does these three things primarily through His Church, through you and me! If a young person has no father figure or mother figure in their life – an elder ‘brother or sister’ in their spiritual family should reach out to them, eg ‘Older women should teach younger women’ [Titus 2:3].
Application: Work though the questions below or spend a bit more time on just one or two.
1. As parents what foundations do you think you’re building on or have built on? Are they primarily biblical, taken from popular culture or a mixture of both? 2. How is your family doing in providing the features Paul described in 2) above? 3. In what way can a relationship with Christ be a help to a person facing the challenge of parenting on their own? 4. Discuss how we as a church could encourage the experience of ‘older’ women/men in the church to be utilised in ‘teaching’ the younger men/women in the church? 5. What barriers might be there for a younger woman seeking help from an older woman? And what might prevent an older woman who desires to help a younger woman from doing so?
