How are you teaching your children about God? As believers, we may think that as long as we share the key stories, send our children to church and youth groups, and memorize the passages from our curriculum, all will be well. Yet we live in a world of deconstructed faith and every wind of false doctrine. What if our children need more than memorized Bible verses and a children’s program at church?

We don’t like to think of our cute, tiny children as being sinful. As moms, we may feel uncomfortable even telling our children they’re sinners. Why do we want our children to feel guilty? But what if the uncomfortable, bad news is necessary before our kids (or anyone) can truly understand the good news of the gospel at all?

Being a mother has humbled me. Weekly I’m faced with my own questions and failures. Yet our Heavenly Father is the perfect parent to us all the time. And being our perfect parent, we can look to him and image his love to our children. In her latest book, Christina Fox reminds us of how God cares for us as his beloved children and how we can reflect such care to our children through our parenting.

Though we may rightly lament the pain our earthly fathers caused (and seek help if we are in an abusive situation), we can also find hope in our sonship with our Heavenly Father. Though our earthly dads fathered us in sin, he fathers us in perfection and righteousness. We are not fatherless.