So what about children who are questioning their parents' faith and their lifestyle? So on the one hand, that's a good thing to do. I've told my sons many times that if they see that dad is teaching something or practicing something, and they are not seeing that in the scriptures, then they should be questioning that and asking me about that. Dad, how does this line up with what you said with what the scriptures, or what we practice as a family in the scriptures? And so that's a good thing to do is to evaluate everything against the scriptures.

Children should be evaluating the teaching, whether from pastors or parents to the scriptures. Every person who is born again should be evaluating everything they're taking in to the scriptures. That is a good thing. On the other hand, it may not be good, it is not good when children resent their parents and they think of practices of church meeting and Bible study, of prayer, things that are important and all myriads of things that stem from those kinds of things, they start to resent that or question that or despise that. So that is when maybe a root question needs to be asked, does this child belong to Christ?

Does this child love God? Because if there's a resentment and it's deep seated and it's continuing, that would be a very appropriate question. On the other hand, it could be a child who loves Christ. They just need to mature in their faith and they're progressing, perhaps through teenage years where they question everything. You just need to stay the course with those children and just keep telling them, sometimes kindly and gently and tactfully and other times very directly, this is what God requires.

This is what the Bible says. We want to reap the blessings of God, we belong to Christ, we're just going to keep going. And usually what happens with resentful children who belong to Christ is that after a number of months or years and they start to mature somewhat and see the scriptures for what they are, they have a love for God, they come through and they start to understand that and it's a joyful time.