How To Help Children Grow In Faith

The first thing, for children and parents alike, is salvation. To know that you’re saved, to know that your sins are forgiven, to know that God is your Father, that you have a home in heaven, and if you die, you’re not going to hell, you’re going to heaven.

Many parents come to me, and they say, “Pray for my child.” I say, “Is the child saved?” They say, “I don’t know.” Well, I say, “Why don’t you know? Whose business is it to know?” “How old is the child?” “Six or seven.”

Listen, when a child is old enough to be naughty and know it, a child is old enough to be saved. If a child can be naughty and repent and ask its parent for forgiveness, that child can repent and ask God for forgiveness.

And basically, it is the responsibility of parents, and primarily of the father, to instruct his children in the truth of the gospel and salvation. And God has never transmitted that responsibility to anybody else. Not to a Sunday school teacher, or a youth leader, or a pastor. Every parent is responsible for the spiritual instruction and discipline of his own children. And if parents accepted this responsibility, then we wouldn’t have the problem children that we have.

Another thing that I want to tell you is that children are often capable of advanced spiritual understanding at an early age. Spiritual understanding doesn’t go exactly with natural age.

There’s a parent here tonight. I was talking to him the other day, and he will know what I’m talking about. He and his wife came to me for counseling with my wife, and they brought their little boy who was about, what, four or five years old at the time? And they said, “Of course, he won’t understand.” So, I said, “How do you know he won’t understand?”

So, I talked to them about deliverance and evil spirits as best I could for about half an hour. And when they got up to go, the little boy said, “I see. If you want the right spirit in, you breathe it in. And if you want the wrong spirit out, you breathe it out.”

And I said, “You see, he saw much better than you did.” Well, that’s how simple it is. If you want the right spirit in, you breathe it in. And if you want the wrong spirit out, you breathe it out. But first of all, you’ve got to meet God’s conditions.

Now, the Bible teaches, and I’m talking to you children now, that we’re all sinners. We’ve all done wrong. We’ve all done things we shouldn’t have done, bad things. How many of you believe that’s true? All right. Now, the Bible teaches that God loves us, and He doesn’t want to punish us for what we’ve done. So, God made another way. He sent Jesus, His only begotten Son, into the world. And Jesus took all our sins upon Him, your sins and my sins, died in our place on the cross. And all the punishment that was due to you and me came upon Jesus. He was punished for our sin. He took our sin upon Him. He died our death. He died in our place. And then He rose again from the dead, and He’s alive now, and at the right hand of Almighty God. And if any of us has committed anything that’s wrong or bad, and we are truly sorry for what we have done, and we believe in Jesus and what He did for us, and we come to Him and ask Him to forgive us, God has promised, for sure, that He will forgive us, and that He will cleanse away all our sins through the blood of Jesus. This is God’s written guarantee. No matter how many wrong things you may have done, no matter how bad you may feel, if you will turn away from the bad things you’ve done and be sorry for them, and decide you don’t want to go on doing them any longer, and then will come to God and tell God that you believe that Jesus died in your place, and you’re sorry, and you ask God to forgive you for Jesus’ sake, God has committed Himself. He’s promised in His Word that He will forgive you, and that He will cleanse your heart in the blood of Jesus.

“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as wool. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be white whiter than snow.”

So, there is a way to be forgiven and to be clean, no matter how many bad things you have done. Sooner or later in life, every one of us has to choose, “Do I want to belong to God and Jesus Christ, or do I want to belong to the devil?”

And in the end, that’s the only choice we have: belong to God, belong to the devil. Now, Jesus says the devil is a thief. He’s not a gentleman. You know what a thief does? He comes in when you don’t know it. He comes in in the dark. Maybe he forces his way in, or maybe he climbs in through a window, or maybe he comes to the door and pretends that he wants to read the gas, and really he’s a thief, and walks in and takes something and goes out. You don’t know how a thief is coming. You don’t know when he’s coming. Many times you don’t see him come. He hides himself. Now, Jesus says the devil is like that. And the truth of the matter is, many of you little boys and girls, the devil has come to you, and maybe you didn’t know it. Now, the devil is a spirit, and you just don’t see him with your eyes like you can see your father and mother or me. He’s invisible. And he has a lot of bad spirits that work for him and do his dirty jobs for him. And his aim is to get his bad spirits inside you and me.