It takes time with their parent in a warm and caring relationship for children to establish trust in that parent.  But in our age of drive through coffee stores and "instant messaging" on the Internet time is not something we parents have much of.  Busy parents like us want to believe that we can cut back on the time we spend with our kids and make up for it by giving them "quality time."  But it doesn't work that way! 

You probably don't like hearing this.  My wife Kristi and I don't.  We both are prone to over-committing and becoming overwhelmed by a multitude of responsibilities, including our kids' activities.  Kristi and I have to continually remind each other and discipline ourselves to set limits on our commitments and activities in order to set aside family time and one-on-one time with our three children.  Otherwise, we get caught going downstream with the current of our culture, doing what most everyone else seems to do: sacrificing time at home to advance a career, racing our kids from one activity to the next so they don't "miss out" on an opportunity, rushing through late dinners with family members missing, or, as I'm doing right this minute, tuning out a child's requests in order to work on a project..  

Isn't it easy to let our kids' emotional and spiritual needs take a back seat?  We're busy doing our thing and they're busy doing theirs.  It's as if we're "human doings!" But we're human beings, meant to be together, loving one another as God first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Love Takes Time, So Does Faith

You've heard the expression "love takes time."  Not only is this true for the parent-child relationship, but also for developing relationship with God.  By taking time to nurture, enjoy, and encourage their children parents build a foundation for guiding and disciplining them.  "People don't care what you know until they know that you care" is another tried and true maxim.  Elsewhere, I've said that I believe that the ultimate goal of Christian parenting is discipleship, inviting our children into our walk with Jesus and imparting to them the life of Christ that we've experienced so that they trust in Jesus for themselves and grow into the "new creatures in Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:17) that God intends for them to be.  This means spending quantity, as well as quality, time with them!

The ancient Greeks has a great way of conceptualizing the urgency of "seizing the moment."  They taught that there are two types of time "Chronos" time (from which we get our word "chronology") refers to the passing of time on the calendar and "Kairos" time refers to the opportune time.  Chronos is "our time" that we live in on earth, second-by-second, day-by-day, and year-by-year, until it comes to an end when we die.  Kairos is "God's time"; it's the time that God lives in, not only in heaven, but also in His invisible realm on earth called "the Kingdom of God."  Our time is always running out, but the special thing about God's time is that it's eternal; it passes but nothing within it passes away!  We long to be in God's time.  And He gives us continual opportunities to respond to His gracious presence, but usually we miss out.

This concept of the opportune time was so important to the ancient Greeks that they believed there was a god of opportunity named Kairos.  They built an altar to this youngest immortal child of Zeus at the entrance to Olympia stadium to remind the athletes that this was their chance to be a hero.  Now you need to picture this figure of Kairos.  He had a human shape.  He ran faster then the wind and he had wings to fly.  He was naked and bald, with only a lock of hair on his forehead that hung over his face.  He zipped and zapped around, here and there.  He was so quick and slippery that no one could get a hold of him unless they anticipated his coming and seized upon his lock of hair before he ran by! Picturing Kairos helps understand what the Apostle Paul means when he tells us to make the most of our opportunities by redeeming the time because the days are evil (Ephesians 5:15 -17).  What he is saying is that chronos time that simply passes is evil and we need to redeem it by grasping kairos time.  In the incarnation Jesus Christ entered our historical chronos time, but he wasn't imprisoned by it as we are; he walked on earth living in God's kairos time.  He lived God's abundant life to the fullest, maintaining unbroken communion with the Father and taking advantage of every opportunity to honor God and to do good for people.  When we connect with Christ's presence through faith then we are freed from our time before it vanishes into nothingness and we enter into God's time that is alive now and forever.

So how do we grab a hold of Kairos' lock of hair?  How can we make the most with the gift of time that God give us with our children?  We think that if we race fast enough and move quick enough from thing to thing, surging with adrenaline and slurping down caffeine, fitting as many activities for our children in a day as we can cram in, that then we'll feel the sense of meaning we're looking for.  But we can't catch Kairos that way!  "For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work" and we need to "make every effort to enter that rest" (Hebrews 4:10a, 11a, NIV). 

To strive to rest is a paradox, especially for parents.  To work at trusting in God's grace seems like a contradiction, but it's not.  It means slowing down right now to focus on what matters most, setting our goals and building our weekly schedule around those goals.  When our kids were little it meant hanging out on the floor with toys and books in what my son called the "Happy Room."  Now that our kids are older it means scheduling dinner together at a time when we can linger enough to share our "peaks and pits" of the day and do a family devotion together.  It means sitting on a child's bed to offer a backrub and a listening ear, skipping soccer games for the weekend to get away as a family, and having a fun family night in which a child picks the activity.

Love Your Child as God Loves You

"God is love," is the Apostle John's message to us.  "Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us" (1 John 4:8, 11-12, NIV).  In parenting our children, I believe that it is our greatest honor and opportunity to be "Christ's Ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20, NIV).  Or, as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, "Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you!" 

This is our role with our kids: to model and mediate to them the love of God.  More than anything else this means developing a caring connection with our children and for our children.  The parenting relationship should be focused on the parent providing for the child's needs, not the reverse.  "After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children" (2 Corinthians 12:14b, NIV).  A loving attachment between a parent and child forms the foundation for the child's psychological and spiritual development. 

We've got to start here.  This is at the very core of who God is.  He is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One, three persons in one Godhead.  In other words, God is a community - each person of the Trinity is intimately bonded with the others in a perfect triangle.  This is what our children need to experience.  They need to belong in God's family by being "rooted and established in love" with God, parents, other family members, and friends so that they receive "glorious riches," "power through His Spirit," "love that surpasses knowledge," and "the fullness of God." (See Ephesians 3:14-21 to read the Apostle Paul's beautiful prayer for families.)  Children who are part of a family like this learn not only how to receive love, but also how to give love to others.

That sounds great Bill, but what does this godly, connecting care look like?  How do I do it with my child?  Well, let's make a list of some of the ways that we can establish a loving bond with our children. 

You could add to this list I'm sure, but more important is to realize what all these expressions of God's connecting love have in common: T-i-m-e.

Let Your Child See You Read the Bible

Scripture reading (both study and mediation) is an important part of the Christian life.  There's no better way to teach this to our children then to show them.  The example of great Christians in Bible times and over the centuries since is they spend time every day feeding their souls on God's Word.  I'm fortunate that my mother is in my group of spiritual heroes.  As a boy I watched my mother read the Bible and underline verses that were especially important to her.  She wrote verses down and put them up on our refrigerator.  It was like she was feeding off of it everyday.  I now know that she was!  It's just like Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4, NIV). 

All I knew as a boy was that watching my mom read the Bible made me hungry!  So when I was about ten years old I asked her if she'd get me a Bible.  Then I started feeding on God's Word just like I saw her do.  I underlined the verses that caught my attention, wrote special verses on index cards to make them my own, and kept notes about what I was feeling and what God was saying to me in a prayer journal. 

It's been over 30 years now that I've been feeding my own soul almost daily (my goal is daily, but the reality may be closer to more days than not!) on God's Word.  I just can't get enough of it.  My children see this, not only when they notice me reading the Bible, but also when we've read children's Bible stories at bedtime (when they were younger), doing our dinner-time family devotions when we read and discuss a Bible verse, and in the occasional comments I make about what I read that day in my Bible reading.

It's such a joy for me to pass onto my kids the blessing of God's Word that I received from my mother.

Show Your Child How to Pray

When my wife Kristi was growing up her mother always had a prayer partner, a woman that she talked with and prayed with on a regular basis.  She saw that it was one of the most important things in her mom's life, a priority and a commitment that was not to be interrupted.  She remembers tiptoeing around the house to be within earshot and listening to her pray in the other room.  She saw that the way her mom and her mom's friend prayed was warm and loving and it deepened their friendship.  She felt loved by her mom because she heard her pray about her concerns for her.  The other thing that meant a lot to Kristi was that she saw that her mom's prayer times brought her peace; this was a living example to her of Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV): "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."  It made her want to pray like that with a friend too!  (I had a similar experience with my mother.)

A few years ago Kristi and I took the challenge from two of our mentors, Dr.'s Dave and Jan Stoop, to pray together every day like they do.  Previously, we had prayed together only sporadically, except that we always prayed before dinner.  But now we do it nearly every night before we go to sleep, even if it's just a short prayer or one of us falls asleep before the Amen!  Now we see our kids listen to Kristi and her friends or Kristi and I pray together!  Or they ask Kristi about the Mom's in Touch prayer group she leads for parents at their school.  They're curious.  They're watching us and learning from us. 

Again, what a joy this is!  As parents we love to pass onto our kids any blessings that we received from our parents.  And we also love to break free from our childhood hurts or deficits to bring something new and better to our kids.  So even if you didn't have the blessing of praying parents or your parents didn't raise you in the Christian faith you can start new patterns of faith and spirituality with your children.

Learning to pray is not something that happens automatically for Christians.  I have noticed that at the New Hope Crisis Counseling Center I direct many of the Christians who volunteer to serve as counselors are not comfortable praying out loud with people at first.  They need to be shown how to do it, encouraged to try, and given the opportunity.  Kristi and I want to give our kids that opportunity right from the start in our home.  So when Kristi or I invite them to pray during family devotions, at bedtime, or when beginning a long car ride they know where to start.  And we believe that over time learning to pray out loud with our family will deepen their relationships with the Lord and wet their appetites for developing the kind of spiritual friendships (mutually loving relationships that encourage spiritual growth) that are essential to Christian living.

Invite Your Child to Live with Enthusiasm

I believe that to people need enthusiasm.  You might think it odd for me to suggest that enthusiasm is that essential in spiritual development of a child.  Is joy really a need?  And what's spiritual about it?  Well, if you've ever been depressed (as I have been) to the point of having trouble getting out of bed, smiling, or trusting God then you know that enjoyment is essential to living. 

The word "enthusiasm" actually comes from the Greek work "entheos," which literally means "in God."  Enthusiasm is the vitality of God in your soul, energizing you to live with joyful, godly purpose.  It's what Nehemiah had as he led the Israelites through the long, hard work of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem and proclaimed, "The joy of the Lord is my strength!" (Nehemiah 8:10, NIV).  It's the rejoicing and worshiping faith that David modeled in the Psalms, during times that were happy or painful, peaceful or stressful.  It's the proud joy that a wise son or daughter brings to his or her parents (Proverbs 15:20).  It's even commanded in the Bible: "Rejoice in the Lord always.  I will say it again: Rejoice! (Philippians 4:4, NIV).  This joy is unrelated to circumstances because it's a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22); it's the pleasure we feel when our souls are in tune with God's love (Psalms 16:11).

Enthusiasm is what we experience when God's life is in our souls through faith in Christ and we're living and moving in Him (Acts 17:28), keeping in step with His Spirit (Galatians 5:25), and sharing His love with others (Philippians 2:1-2).  Jesus said that to live in the Holy Spirit is like having a spring of living water bubbling forth from our souls! (John 4:13-14).  I want this!  And I want it for you and for our children!  I desire for my children and your children to discover and then follow the unique and wonderful calling that God has on their lives.  I want them to develop their own Christian faith because I know that there's no greater joy in life then to walk hand-in-hand with our Loving Lord, bringing Him glory through doing His work.  How can we do this?  What are some ways that we can encourage our children to live out their own, enthusiastic faith in Christ?

The first time I remember being drawn into worship is when I was twelve years old.  My family was visiting at my aunt and uncle's house and my two older cousins had learned to play the guitar and lead worship.  That evening we all gathered to sing "praise songs."  I didn't know what this meant.  Even though I was blessed to be raised in a Christian home, as I've told you, we didn't sing together and when we prayed it didn't include worship.  And the church my family attended was a rather formal church so my association to worship was people singing religious hymns that I didn't understand and praying long, boring prayers.  But what I experienced that night with my cousins was different.  It wasn't religious; it was spiritual.  I wasn't disinterested; I was excited!  I watched my teenage cousins talk and sing to Jesus with such devotion and adoration - and joy!  My cousins loved praising God and it showed.

The joy that I experienced that night was so compelling.  I knew that I needed more of that.  As an adolescent I experienced my home and my church as depressing in some ways.  But then I had this experience of joyful worship, of being with Christians who were enthusiastic in their love and adoration of Jesus.  Since that time I've befriended people who are alive with the joy of the Lord and tired to absorb their spirit and learn from them.  I have a ways to go, but I'm learning to "Worship the Lord with gladness" (Psalm 100:2, NIV) and to share this with my kids. 

Perhaps the most obvious ways that we can invite our children to worship God as we do are to take them into the church service with us on occasion and let them see us sing praises with enthusiasm to God or when saying a prayer at dinner or bedtime to include some heartfelt praises to God like, "Father God, you are so good to us, so kind and generous.  We're so blessed to be your children!"  But it can also be as simple as to comment while driving, "Hasn't God made a beautiful day for us today!" Or giving your child a smile and a hug and a blessing, "I'm so glad that God has given me the chance to be your dad!"

William Gaultiere, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the New Hope Crisis Counseling Center at the Crystal Cathedral and a Clinical Psychologist and Spiritual Director with ChristianSoulCare.com.  On his website you can sign up for a free inspirational devotional e-mail.