Helping Your Kids To Adore Christ In A Cupid World

It’s not just hype and marketing, it’s true. The heart does go pitter-patter for that which is beautiful and catches the eye, and that which captures our affections.

We all know what it is to adore things that don’t adore us back, chocolate, a beautiful home, a spa retreat, or Legos and Star Wars if you ask my boys. But, don’t we all find our greatest affection for relationship–for people that love us back and make us feel….special?

And so…all the hearts, the professions of love, and the arrows of cupid that pierce the hearts of the one we hope to make our own.

With all the promise of excitement, adoration, joy, and companionship, we can’t blame our kids for eagerly anticipating the experience of finding love for themselves. And at the proper time, we anticipate it for them as well.

But on this Valentine’s Day, I stop to consider: Am I presenting the beauty, the adoration, the love of Christ in such a way as to draw my children’s affections? Do I speak of Him and my relationship with the Lord so as to cause them to desire such a love for themselves?

Of course I don’t mean hearts, chocolate, and lace. And I definitely don’t mean cupid. But I do mean adorning the Gospel with a life of praise–a life that presents the adoration of Christ the true Love our hearts long for.

If the world were to present the love between two people as merely obligatory, routine, full of rules, and something only worth considering on special occasions, would anyone find it all that appealing? (In fact, think of the way television portrays marriage…not very attractive, right?) No, instead, eros love is touted in music, media, art, and entertainment, as all-consuming, beyond description, and satisfying to the core.

Is that not who our Jesus is? He is the lover of our souls, the all-consuming fire, the author of all that is beautiful?

What are some practical ways we can attract our children with the beauty of Christ in a cupid world?

Here are just a few…

• Cultivate a personal love for Him and His Word.
• Speak of that love descriptively and personally.
• Be quick to profess and proclaim your love for Christ, in the same manner that people do of a fiance, a best friend or a favorite sports team.
• Demonstrate love for Christ that is motivated by adoration and not obligation.
• Put before them a view of God that is bigger than themselves…don’t try and fit Him in a box…one full of chocolate or otherwise!

How about you? How are you striving to draw you kids to the love of Christ in this Cupid world?

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