Blog

Oct 18, 2025 06:00am

Train Up a Child: The Generational Power of a Praying and Pointing Parent

98 Views

I’ll never forget the time I was driving in the car with my daughter sitting in the front seat when a car pulled out in front of me. A few things happened quickly in that moment. I slammed on my brakes, threw my right arm across the passenger seat to hold my daughter in place, and yelled a certain naughty word.

Though we hadn’t hit the car in front of us, the damage was done. My daughter looked at me wide-eyed and said, “You cussed, Mom!” I immediately apologized, feeling terrible. Right after this, she then said quite curtly, “And why did you hit me?” Of course, I explained I was trying to save her life, keeping her from hitting the dashboard—or worse, going through the windshield. She looked at me questioningly when she said, “Mom, that’s what a seatbelt is for.”

Um, yes—correct.

I laughed… I knew what I had just done. Immediately, I had a flashback to the 1980s when my mom and I were driving along when a car pulled out in front of us, causing my mom to throw her arm to the passenger side and pin me against the seat. In doing so, she also yelled a particular naughty word for fear of an imminent accident. There are a few things to note here. First, we didn’t wear seat belts in the 80s. I’m not sure if wearing a seatbelt wasn’t common back then, or if my family just didn’t, so the arm across the chest was appropriate. Secondly, my mom didn’t ever cuss—except in moments like this. And her chosen naughty word was also my chosen naughty word.

It wasn’t a one-time occurrence—this had happened enough times that it got ingrained in my mind and became my “default programming” in a way—my automatic response. I was passing down something my mom and I weren’t particularly fond of… and it stuck. When telling a friend, we joked about the truth of Solomon’s proverb that seemed to ring very true in my circumstance: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Without realizing it, I was teaching my kids some poor driving etiquette that had been passed down to me.

Ugh. The conviction.

It turns out that generational influence—the things we do day in and day out—can shape our kids more than anything else in life.

And that, friends, is exactly how God planned it.

Before the Torah was ever written, God planned for faith to be passed down through generations. We see this in Deuteronomy 6:4–9: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

You see, for years, I thought if I just got my kids to church, we were good! I mentally checked it off my “to-do” list for the week, letting the Sunday School teachers do all the teaching. However, in my younger days as a mom, the Lord led me to these verses in Deuteronomy 6 and opened my eyes to the deeper truth: I had to point my kids to God, too. I needed to talk about God and my love for God. I was to live out this love for God and train my kids on what faith looked like.

Gulp. (Again, oh the conviction!)

It was one of the most life-changing times in my life. I knew I needed to teach my kids about God, but all I knew came from a handful of Bible stories I had remembered from VBS. After all, one can only retell David and Goliath so many times. So, I decided to do something I hadn’t done before: read God’s Word daily. Once I made that decision, something beautiful happened: I fell in love with reading my Bible. I began getting up early to read it. It gave me hope and help in every area of my life.

And something else beautiful happened that I had not expected: I found myself falling in love with the Lord even more.

And this love would naturally come out through my conversations with my kids. I began sharing my favorite Bible stories. I taught what God says about ______ (insert naughty behavior). I would pray with them, encouraging them to trust God in areas where they are struggling. I would confess my sins to them (I mean, they already knew), and I would ask for their forgiveness when I failed as a parent. I prayed for them to choose to love God too, and I would point them to God and His Word.

God used those early experiences to show me the power of being a praying and pointing parent. When God has our hearts, He has our trust. It’s when we truly begin to follow Him, walking in His light. It’s where growth happens. It’s where strength comes in. And it’s when the impossible becomes possible.

Pray and point, parents. Because once you’re marked by Jesus, you’re never the same.

And that’s the point.