A friend of mine has started choosing a theme word for each year. Instead of having to keep up with resolutions, she constantly reminds herself of her theme word. It helps her remember what was important for her to work on for the year.
Whether you make resolutions, choose a theme word or do nothing at all, I want to make a suggestion for you as a parent for this year. Make your parenting theme for the year “FOCUS”.
Why “focus”? Parenting like Hannah means we are striving to dedicate our children to God. We want to proactively parent our children towards God in hopes they will grow to become involved, faithful Christians with a strong biblical worldview.
“FOCUS” as your parenting theme word should help you remember:
- Our focus must always be on God. He should be our filter for our decisions, our worldview, our attitudes and how we parent our children.
- Our focus should be on becoming an involved, proactive parent in the lives of our children. They should know without a doubt how much we love them. Our children should have consistent and fair rules and consequences. They should constantly be exposed to God’s words and principles. They should get our focused attention for a significant amount of time each day.
- Our focus should be on making multiple daily impressions on our children about God. Family prayer time, family devotionals, sharing how we see God working in the world today, sharing how God helps us through struggles and temptations, serving others and sharing our faith, attending worship services and Bible studies are all a part of what helps build the faith foundation for our children. God tells us it takes multiple conversations on a daily basis to impact children for God the way they need to be impacted. We can’t expect it to happen from just one or two exposures a week at Church.
- Our focus needs to be on the goal. What is our ultimate goal as parents? To have our entire family in Heaven.
If you can focus on these four areas this year, you will be on your way to parenting like Hannah. Remember though, Satan is active, too. As soon as you start to focus, he will do everything he can to distract you. You will need to surround yourself with reminders. Place the word “focus” around your house. Find scriptures to memorize that will help you remember your goals. Make an effort each day to focus on the goals for the year and do at least one thing each day to accomplish them.
Found a creative way to help you focus on godly parenting this year? Please share it with the rest of us to help us focus better ourselves.