When you bring home a new baby, the job description is pretty simple: keep the tiny human alive.  Sometimes it’s about snuggles and sometimes it’s about surviving the day hour.  You feed…change…nap, repeat; sustaining new life as it grows and matures.

Once you exit survival mode, your parental job description expands to raising educated, socially acceptable, contributing members of society. Pinterest is full of articles to help your child potty train in three days, read before kindergarten, and learn the 10 skills every teenager should know before college. Parenting is hard work, and we all have our hands full instilling information, rules, and norms.

As Christian parents, we also want our children to be moral humans that love God and love others. Thank goodness for the fantastic children’s program at church that has spiritual education taken care of…right?

Could we be missing out on our primary role, and ultimately blessing, as parents? Could our job  description be more than raising self-sufficient, socially acceptable, producers?

Take a look at this parental job description from Deuteronomy 6.

First, the greatest commandment:

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Then parents are instructed to:

Impress [this commandment] on your children. Talk about [it] when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (NIV)

Our children can be taught to read in nearly any school.  They can learn moral lessons and Bible stories at many churches.  But where does the Bible say they to learn to know and love God? They are to learn from us as parents as we make dinner, as we drive to the store, and as we read before bed. Day by day, hour by hour, we impress…talk about…remember, sustaining their new spiritual lives as they grow and mature.

Could our job truly start with knowing and imitating God ourselves? Could our most important job description be pointing children toward becoming God-dependent, God-reflecting, lovers of God and others?

A wise friend once said, “It’s your job as a parent to live in such a way, so that when you tell your children ‘God loves you’ they know what love means. When you tell them ‘God is trustworthy’ they know what trustworthy means. When you tell them ‘God is patient, and kind, and faithful, and good,’ they know what all of these things mean because you have been this for them.”

Your most important job as a parent is to know God. Your most important job is to love his character and become more like Him.  Your child will imitate you, and when they do, they will be imitating God as well.

The Attributes of God For Kids is a bright, engaging devotional for kids and parents to read together. Order below!