People sometimes feel like this law of multiplication is unfair….They make a few bad decisions, and when life falls apart, they think, “Well, I know I haven’t always made the wisest decisions, but I don’t deserve all this.” But what they are experiencing is probably not punishment; it is harvest…
I can’t tell you how many Christian parents are surprised when their kids go off to college and walk away from the faith. “But we raised them in church,” they say. But were church and your walk with God really that important to you? You attended sporadically. You didn’t volunteer. You weren’t in a small group. You didn’t do missions or serve with your kids or read the Bible together or pray together. Your kids weren’t involved in the student ministry. You frequently missed church for sports events or dance or trips to the beach. You raised your kids around God, but he was only a second-tier priority.
Is it any surprise, then, that this nonchalant attitude multiplied in your kids’ lives when they went to college? Your half-commitment wasn’t just replicated in your kids. It multiplied in them.
Now, I want to be clear that this isn’t an ironclad rule. Kids leave the faith for a number of reasons. But I’m concerned that what many parents—Christian parents—are sowing in their kids is a little bit of Jesus and whole lot of materialism.
– Excerpted from Baptist Press