What does it mean to be a godly parent?

Parenting may be the most frustrating and exhausting work in the world. At the same time, it can be the most rewarding and fulfilling. Whether you are a happily married couple, a blended family, or a single parent, you can be a godly parent with God’s help. The Bible is a great resource for challenging times and a guidebook for parenting, raising godly children, and building a protective hedge around your family. Our highest priority in godly parenting is teaching our children the truth of God’s Word. If God is an expert parent, and he is, we can follow his parenting advice, which is in his Word.

Be the example: The principle “More is caught than taught” is nowhere truer than in parenting. Children learn more by observation than by instruction. Your example will outlast your words; what example will your children remember? Your relationship with God should be accessible and casual for your child to see and hear. Teaching God’s words and ways should be a natural flow of life that your children don’t have to be told because they observe it all the time in action. This only happens if God’s Word is part of your life. Read it. Live it. Apply it. Make your talk about God match your lifestyle.

Discipline with love: Discipline is part of godly parenting. Godly discipline is balanced, loving, and imposed properly; it builds a child’s sense of worth and value. Proverbs 13:24 says that discipline demonstrates love and that parents who refuse to discipline hate their child. Discipline and correction are often unpleasant in the moment, but discipline must never cross the line into abuse. We should accompany all discipline with loving instruction and encouragement for the child to do better next time.

Be involved at church: Involve your children in a healthy family environment at church, where they will see your same values, discipline, and love reflected in other godly parents. This helps them see such behavior as the norm. Let your children see you studying the Bible and read it with them. Imagine the seeds you sow if your child learns to read by reading the Bible!

Children are a heritage from the Lord. Sow seeds of a godly life in them and nurture those seeds with consistent discipline and examples. You will see those seeds blossom and grow when you demonstrate a godly life before them.