Due to my love for music, I want my kids to know its inherent beauty beyond their ability simply to hear notes. So with no hidden dreams of creating prodigies, my husband and I have invested our finances, time, and oversight into making music a priority. We’ve given our kids certain choices along the way, but we understand that we all have a part to play. Their part is to practice; ours is to teach them how to follow through with their commitment and to help them to invest their talents appropriately. If we want our kids to value something, we’ve learned that we must be willing to pay a price.

The same applies to our children’s spiritual growth. While taking our kids to church is valuable and necessary, our investment in their spiritual growth shouldn’t begin and end with a Sunday service. As parents, our commitment to Christ should permeate every part of our lives, so that:

His Word shapes our every decision (Deuteronomy 6:6,8-9,17). Our children (who know us behind closed doors) see and respond to it (Deuteronomy 6:20). We value it as an inheritance to be guarded and given.

Setting aside devotional time is a great response to God’s commandment to teach our children. However, if we believe He can fulfill His promise to put His Word “on the lips of [our] children and [our] children’s children forever” (Isaiah 59:21), we must also understand that we can’t just convey God’s commandments in structured teaching settings. We need to live them out in God-given spontaneous moments as well.

If we believe our children need structure and investment when it comes to their athletic, artistic, scholastic, or musical pursuits, how much more so should we make provision for them to flourish spiritually! Let’s consistently live out and teach our kids what God has revealed.

NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Deuteronomy 31:1-8