7 Things Parents Need to Teach Their Kids - Part 1

There are seven things good parents will prioritize teaching their children. These seven truths come from The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 and are the spiritual foundation for successful children.

1. God loves me and wants to be my best friend.

Matthew 6:9a, “Our Father in heaven...” NKJV

The first thing you need to teach your kids is that they have a Father in heaven who loves them unconditionally and desires to have a relationship with them. If your kids don’t know this, they’ll suffer from low self-esteem. Self-esteem is basically our inner sense of self worth. When you have a strong sense of self-worth you have healthy self-esteem. When you have a weak sense of self-worth you have unhealthy self-esteem.

• Some kids base their self-worth on what they think of themselves based on how they measure up to others. But this is no good because they’ll feel bad about themselves every time they encounter someone they don’t feel they measure up to. 
• Some kids base their self-worth on what others think of them. They feel great when they’re praised and feel awful when they are criticized. 

But good parents teach their kids: It doesn’t matter what you think of you. It doesn’t matter what others think of you. What really matters is what God thinks of you.

• Good parents teach their kids: God bought you at a high price to show you how valuable you are to him! As 1 Corinthians 6:20 says “...for God bought you with a high price...” 
• Good parents teach their kids: You are worth more than any amount of money to God. As 1 Peter 1:18-19 says “For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. He paid for you with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.” That means you’re worth more than millions and millions of dollars of silver and gold! 
• Good parents teach their children: You are the pinnacle of God’s creation! As Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s masterpiece...” 

When your child realizes that God loves them so much that he sent his Son Jesus to die in their place for their sins so that he could have a relationship with them, and that he values them more than any amount of money and views them as his greatest accomplishment, they’ll develop a healthy sense of self-worth (and have a healthy self-esteem). Tell your kids over and over and over how their Heavenly Father loves them until they start thinking, “Wow! I’m worth Jesus, because that’s what God was willing to pay to have a relationship with me! I must be pretty awesome!” When they say that, you’ve done your job. Until they say that, you’ve got some work to do!

The first thing you need to teach your kids is: God loves me SO MUCH and wants to be my best friend.