My First Prayer

To paraphrase a father far greater than I, "These are my children in whom I am well pleased!"

Every night when I put my children to bed I pray the same prayer. The one thing that I desire for my children above all else. That they would know and love the Lord. While I give them a backrub, sing "Father, I adore you", listen to them talk about their school day, or listen to them pray "Now I lay me down to sleep..." I lift them up in prayer to the Lord of All and ask that the Holy Spirit would reach these three apples of my eye.

"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6

My wife and I do all I can to model, emulate, and teach our children to know and love the Lord. But we also know that we are broken, sinful parents and our best efforts will never be enough. What's more we also know that each child will make their own choice about their faith and there are no guarantees that they will choose faith.

With that in mind we choose to take advantage of every opportunity that exists to encourage our children to grow in faith.

This is one of the reasons we are such ardent supporters of Christian Education and Christian schools. If there is an opportunity that will allow us as parents to do a better job of raising our children to know and love Christ we'll take it no matter what the cost.

Students from my online class explain one of the key reasons we believe so strongly in Christian education in this video:

I know that there are many Christians who did just fine in public education. I also strongly encourage those Christians who are called work as teachers in the public system as they are needed there. I've heard the arguments about having our children serve as witnesses in the public system. I've heard people complain about the fact that our Christian schools are full of sinful, broken human beings just like the rest of the world.

But none of that matters if Christian schools will make a difference in my children's faith life.

I've always believed that Christian schools (and homeschooling for that matter) make a huge difference in the lives of our children. There's even a recent research project by Cardus gives us reason to believe that it's true. I know that it made a difference in my life.

As a father I must do all I can to raise my children up in the way that they should go.

That is my first prayer.