Teaching Your Household the Way of the Lord

Tucked into the story of Abraham's intercession for Sodom is a sentence about why God chose him at all. In Genesis 18:19, the Lord says that he has chosen Abraham so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. The purpose of Abraham's election was not only that he would be blessed but that he would pass the way of the Lord along. The household was the delivery mechanism for the promise.

That is worth sitting with in summer, when routines are loose, the kids are home, and the days run together. This guide is not a program. It is a set of practices, drawn from Abraham's story, that a household can take up in an ordinary week.

Begin with the altars. Every time Abraham arrived somewhere new, he built an altar and called on the name of the Lord. He marked the place. Households can do the same in small ways. When you move into a new home, pray in every room. When school ends or begins, when a child gets a driver's license, when someone starts a job, stop and give thanks out loud together. It takes two minutes. The point is that your children see that the family marks its transitions with God, not just with pizza. Over years, those altars become a map of where God has been with you.

Second, tell the story honestly, failures included. Genesis does not clean Abraham up. He lied about Sarah twice. He tried to help God along with Hagar and made a mess. He laughed at the promise. Children raised on a sanitized faith, where every believer is a hero and every prayer is answered on time, are being set up for disillusionment. Tell your kids where you have failed and how God kept his word anyway. Read them the Egypt story and the Gerar story. Let them see that the Bible's heroes are people God was patient with, because that is the only kind of hero there is.

Third, let them see you wait. Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. If your children only see you asking God for things and receiving them, they learn a vending-machine faith. If they see you praying for the same thing month after month, and still trusting, and still going to church, they learn something truer. Keep a family prayer list somewhere visible, and do not remove the old requests when they go unanswered. Let the list itself teach patience.

Fourth, practice deference. Abraham let Lot choose first. In a house full of siblings, that is a daily opportunity. Let the older child give the younger the first pick sometimes, and explain why: because God has promised to provide, we can afford to be generous. Then do the same yourselves, in front of them, when it comes to the last piece of something or the better seat. Generosity is caught more than taught, and children can tell the difference between parents who preach it and parents who practice it.

Fifth, intercede for the city. Abraham stood before God for Sodom, a place that had nothing to do with him. Teach your household to pray for your town, your neighbors, the people whose names you know from the mailbox and the ballfield. Pray for the ones who are difficult. Children who grow up hearing their parents ask God to bless the neighbor who complains about the noise learn something about what the way of the Lord actually looks like.

Sixth, do not withhold. The test on Moriah was whether Abraham loved the gift more than the giver. Parents face a version of this with their own children. We can make our kids into idols, organizing everything around their success, their comfort, their happiness, and calling it love. Abraham learned that Isaac was safest in God's hands, not his. Pray regularly, in their hearing, that God will do with your children whatever glorifies him, even if it takes them far from you. That is a hard prayer. It is also the one that frees them.

Finally, remember that the promise runs through the household but does not depend on your perfection. God kept the covenant when Abraham lied, laughed, and doubted. He heard Ishmael under the bush when the household had cast him out. He will hear your children too, in places you cannot go and at ages when you cannot help. Your job is to direct them in the way of the Lord. God's job is to keep the promise. Do yours, and let him do his.