The day your child is baptized is not the end of your journey of dedicating your child to God. In many ways, it is only the beginning. For many Christian parents, the baptism of their child seems to lift the burden of the responsibility to point their child towards God. After all, your child has made the crucial decision, right?
Actually, although baptism is what makes us a Christian, we often forget there is another piece to being Christian. Baptism is definitely about forgiveness of sins, the promise of eternity in Heaven and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is also about becoming a disciple of Jesus. Yet somehow we often forget to teach our children exactly what that means and how it affects the way they live their lives.
When our children are old enough to really understand the concept of sin and the impact of sin in their lives, we call that the age of accountability. Scriptures teach us when each of us reaches that age, we have a decision to make. We must decide if we will obey God and be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins, or walk away and live our lives in pursuit of our own desires.
Most Christians are pretty diligent about teaching their children to thank God for His blessings. We train them from a very young age to pray and thank God for food, family, clothing and shelter. Have we trained them though to see God’s spectacular, overflowing blessings? I think many of us are missing a prime opportunity to teach our children the amazing ways God works.