top of page

How to Pray for Your Child, pt.8

Children are known to lie. It is natural for them to do so in their sinful condition. Even for children who are followers of Jesus, there is a lesser degree of maturity that lends them to the desire to protect themselves through sinful deception. Whether it is a “white lie,” or a manipulative scheme, lying is a sin and an offense to the God of truth.

You likely recognize this in most of your children and work hard to condition them out of this type of behavior. Lying is not reserved only for children, it is a struggle for many adults, even firm believers can have moments when their integrity is put on the chopping block and they struggle to tell the truth.

Proverbs 12:22 says, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight.” The author draws a comparison between lying and faithfulness. Essentially, to lie is to be unfaithful to truth, to adulterate the truthfulness of God. Therefore, to lie is in direct opposition to the character of God and an assault on his holy faithfulness to always remain true.

Therefore, we teach our children that lying is sin, we command them to tell the truth, and we discipline them when they disobey this command. However, I encourage you to do two more things:

  1. Pray that God would keep your child from lying and prevent the development of deceptive character.

  2. Teach your children that lying is more than disobedience to you. Lying is disobedience to God, and it is an attack on the perfect and holy truthfulness of God, who hates all lies.

My prayer and hope for you and your child is that their desire to be honest and speak truth would come from a long-term desire to remain faithful to God in how they use their God-given gift of language.


RECENT POST
bottom of page