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Bible Studies Marriage & Family
Raising Children in Faith
Biblical principles for leading, discipling, correcting, encouraging, and loving children.
Deuteronomy 6 assumes faith is handed on at home, in traffic and at bedtime, by parents who are not experts. Everything else here follows from that.
What you’ll explore
- 01 Faith taught at home, not outsourced
- 02 Talking about God in ordinary moments
- 03 Reading Scripture with children
- 04 Correction that does not provoke
- 05 Encouragement and blessing
- 06 Letting children ask hard questions
- 07 When a child walks away
Faith taught at home, not outsourced
Read Deuteronomy 6:4-9
The command is given to parents, not to a class of religious professionals, and the setting is entirely domestic: sitting, walking, lying down, rising. An hour a week at church was never the plan. Notice also the order — the words are to be on your own heart first, then taught.
Talking about God in ordinary moments
Read Deuteronomy 6:20-25; Psalm 78:4-7
The model here is a child asking a question and a parent telling the story. Psalm 78 describes one generation telling the next what God has done, so that they in turn tell theirs. You are not required to be interesting; you are required to answer.
Reading Scripture with children
Read 2 Timothy 3:14-15; Nehemiah 8:2-3
Paul tells Timothy he has known the sacred writings from childhood, which he learned from his mother and grandmother rather than from a school. Nehemiah reads the law to an assembly that explicitly includes everyone able to understand. Start with narrative — Genesis, the gospels — and read it as a story, because it is one.
Correction that does not provoke
Read Ephesians 6:4; Proverbs 22:6; Hebrews 12:7-11
Paul’s instruction to fathers has two halves, and the first is negative: do not provoke your children to anger. Hebrews describes discipline as painful, purposeful, and aimed at a harvest of righteousness — not at compliance and not at relief for the parent. Correction that is really an adult losing their temper teaches the child only what anger looks like.
Encouragement and blessing
Read Numbers 6:24-26; 1 Thessalonians 5:11
The Aaronic blessing was spoken over people who had done nothing in particular that day. Children hear correction more clearly than praise, so the balance has to be deliberately tilted. Say the good thing out loud, in words, where they can hear it.
Letting children ask hard questions
Read Mark 9:24; Jude 22
A father in Mark says "I believe; help my unbelief" and Jesus does not rebuke him. Jude tells the church to have mercy on those who doubt. A home where hard questions are unwelcome does not produce children without questions; it produces children who ask them somewhere else.
When a child walks away
Read Luke 15:11-24; Psalm 27:14
The father in the parable neither chases nor disowns — he waits, and he is watching the road. Scripture nowhere promises that faithful parenting guarantees a believing child, and Proverbs 22:6 is a proverb about the general shape of things rather than a contract. What is left is prayer, an open door, and a long view.
Questions to sit with
- What did your children hear you say about God this week, unprompted?
- Is correction in your house instruction, or is it release?
- Which of your child’s questions have you been avoiding?
Every passage in this study
Go deeper
Where this connects
This study sits inside a larger story. Read the passages above in their own books, and follow the thread back through Scripture as a whole.