Train them up
Train Them Up
The most powerful sermon your child will ever hear is the one lived out quietly inside your home every single day.
There is a moment that happens to almost every parent, usually when they least expect it. You are in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday. Maybe you are washing dishes or sitting at a red light or handling a phone call that got a little more heated than you intended. And then you glance over and there they are. Your child. Watching. Taking in every word, every tone, every reaction, every choice. Quietly absorbing everything you are showing them about how life is lived and how people are treated and what you actually believe when no one is looking.
That moment has a way of stopping you completely. Because you realize all at once that your child is not just listening to what you say about faith. They are reading what you do with it.
Proverbs 22:6 is one of the most quoted verses in all of Christian parenting. And yet I wonder if we sometimes read it as a promise about the future without fully understanding what it asks of us in the present.
"Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it."
Proverbs 22:6 · NKJVScripture quoted from the New King James Version (NKJV).
The Weight of the Word Train
That first word matters deeply. Train. Not simply tell. Not occasionally remind. Not leave a Bible on their nightstand and hope for the best. Train.
The original language of this proverb carries the picture of a skilled craftsman shaping something carefully over time, with intentionality and repetition and patience. It is the image of someone who shows up day after day, not just once, not just on Sundays, not just when the conversation feels convenient. It is a commitment to the long and holy work of formation.
Training happens in the small and unremarkable moments far more than it happens in the big ones. It happens when your child watches you open your Bible before the rest of the house wakes up. It happens when they hear the way you speak to the person who got your order wrong. It happens when they see you apologize. When they see you forgive. When they see you pray over something instead of panicking about it. When they see you get back up after a hard season and trust God through it.
Your child is being discipled every single day. The only question is who and what is doing the discipling. Let it be you. Let it be your faith. Let it be the life you live out loud in front of them.
Leading by Example Is Not Optional
Here is the tender and honest truth that Proverbs 22:6 quietly demands of us. We cannot train our children in a way we are not walking in ourselves. We cannot point them toward a God we are not genuinely pursuing. We cannot teach them to pray if they never see us on our knees. We cannot raise them to love the Word if the Bible on our shelf gathers dust between Sundays.
This is not about being a perfect parent. Please hear that clearly. God is not asking you to have it all together before you can raise children of faith. He is asking you to be honest. To be real. To let your children see you seeking Him in the mess of real life, not just in the polished moments.
In fact, some of the most powerful things your child will ever witness are the moments when you fall short and they watch you return to grace. When you lose your patience and then come back and say I am sorry, that was not kind of me. When something frightening happens and instead of crumbling you gather them close and you pray together. When life does not go the way you hoped and they watch you trust God anyway.
Those moments are not failures in parenting. Those moments are some of the greatest lessons of faith you will ever give them.
Your children do not need a perfect parent. They need a real one who shows them what it looks like to love God with an honest and imperfect and wholehearted life.
Raising Godly Disciples Starts at Home
Jesus did not sit His disciples in a classroom and hand them a curriculum. He walked with them. He ate with them. He showed them how to love difficult people, how to serve without needing recognition, how to pray, how to rest, how to grieve, how to trust the Father in moments of uncertainty. He trained them through the dailiness of shared life.
That is the model we have been given for raising children of faith. Discipleship happens around the dinner table. It happens in the car on the way to school. It happens at bedtime when you sit on the edge of their bed and you ask them what they are grateful for today and what felt hard. It happens when you read the Word together, even just a verse, even just a few minutes, even imperfectly.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 puts it this way. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Everywhere. Always. Woven into the fabric of your ordinary life together.
That is the vision. Not a formal lesson plan. Not a performance of faith. Just a life where God is so present and so real and so woven into everything that your children cannot remember a time when He was not simply part of how your family lives.
What It Looks Like in Practice
Raising godly children does not require a theology degree. It requires presence, intentionality, and a genuine love for God that your children can feel and see and grow up inside of. Here are some of the most meaningful ways to train them up in the way they should go:
Read the Word together
Even one verse at breakfast. Even a children's Bible at bedtime. Let scripture be a familiar and beloved voice in your home.
Pray out loud with them
Let them hear you talk to God naturally and conversationally. Show them that prayer is not just a ritual but a real relationship.
Talk about faith daily
Bring God into the ordinary conversations. When something good happens, thank Him. When something hard happens, turn to Him together.
Serve alongside them
Let your children see you give, help, and serve others. Then invite them to join you. Generosity and compassion are caught more than they are taught.
Apologize and forgive
Show them what grace looks like in real life. When you make a mistake, own it. Let them see that repentance and forgiveness are not signs of weakness but of strength rooted in Christ.
Make your home a sanctuary
Let your home be a place where God is welcomed and honored. In the music, the conversations, the way you treat one another. Your home is their first experience of the church.
The Gospel Is Caught Before It Is Taught
There is a phrase that has sat with me for a long time. Faith is more often caught than taught. And I believe that with everything in me.
Your child may not remember the exact words of every devotional you ever read together. But they will remember the feeling of your home. They will remember whether God felt real and close and present or distant and formal and only for Sundays. They will remember whether faith was something you performed for others or something you actually lived. They will carry the atmosphere of your home long after they have left it.
So let that atmosphere be one of genuine love for God. Let it be one where Jesus is not a last resort but a first response. Where the Word is not just a book on the shelf but the foundation that everything else is built on. Where prayer is as natural as conversation and grace is as ordinary as breakfast.
You do not have to be a pastor to raise a disciple. You just have to be willing to let your children see the real and beautiful and ongoing work that God is doing in your own life. That transparency, that realness, that willingness to let them watch you grow in faith alongside them, is one of the most powerful gifts you will ever give them.
A Word of Grace for the Imperfect Parent
Before we close, I want to sit with you for just a moment, because I know this road is not always easy. Some days you are running on little sleep and a lot of grace and the devotional did not happen and dinner was cereal and bedtime prayers were three sentences long. And that is okay.
Proverbs 22:6 is a promise and a process, not a pressure. God is not keeping score of the days you got it perfectly right. He is honoring the direction of your heart. He sees the parent who is trying, who is praying over their children even when they feel like they are falling short, who is showing up imperfectly but faithfully day after day.
Your children do not need you to be flawless. They need you to be present. To be real. To keep pointing them toward the One who is both of those things perfectly on your behalf and on theirs.
Train them up. Not in perfection. In love. In faith. In the daily, faithful, ordinary, holy work of raising little disciples who know whose they are and where to turn when life gets hard.
That is the calling. And you were given these specific children for it on purpose.
- What is one thing my child sees me do regularly that I would want them to carry into their own faith as an adult?
- Is there an area of my own walk with God that I have been neglecting and that I want to tend to so I can lead my children more faithfully?
- What does the atmosphere of my home feel like right now and does it reflect the presence of God I want my children to grow up inside of?
- What is one simple and consistent practice I can begin this week to disciple my children in the way they should go?
- When my children look back on their childhood, what is the one thing I most want them to remember about how our family lived out our faith?
Lord, thank You for these children You have blessed me with. What a gift and what a calling it is to love them. I confess that I do not always get it right. There are days I am too tired, too distracted, too caught up in my own worries to be the parent I want to be for them. But I am asking You today to make me faithful. Help me to live in a way that points them to You in the ordinary moments of every day. Let them see Jesus in how I love, how I speak, how I forgive, and how I trust You. And on the days I fall short, cover my imperfections with Your grace and let even those moments teach them something beautiful about who You are. Amen.
With love and grace,
Honeycomb & Heart