How can I motivate my children to want to learn about God?

Children, obey your parents as believers in the Lord. Obey them because it's the right thing to do. Scripture says, "Honor your father and mother." That is the first commandment that has a promise. "Then things will go well with you. You will live a long time on the earth."

For almost two thousand years now, these verses have been a favorite passage of Scripture for every parent who's ever read the Bible. Unfortunately, when we examine the context, we see that these verses arent telling our children that if they agree to do everything we say and make our lives wonderful, God will somehow reward them with a good and long life.

The Apostle Paul quoted these verses, with a few minor changes, from the Old Testament. In their original context Moses was reading God's Law to the Israelites after they left Egypt and before they entered the Promised Land, Canaan. He told the people that if they lived God's way, they would enjoy a long life in the land of Canaan. The adults who listened to Moses (and later to Joshua) all agreed to do things God's way.

The adults were also told to teach their children God's principles, and that too they agreed to do. The children were told to honor and obey their parents, but they were told this in the context of their parents agreement to follow God's principles and to teach those principles to their children. And the children were promised that they would receive the same thing as their parents for following God, a long and hapy life in the Promised Land.

Paul updated the quote by adding the words "in the Lord" - "Children, obey your parents as believers in the Lord"- to show that, just as in the original context, the command still assumes a willingness to do things God's way, on the part of the adults as well as the children.

The interesting thing to note in the verse is that God has given us the way to motivate children and to help them want to learn about him and follow him. And that motivator isn't fear. We need to motivate children with love.

Our goal as parents whould be to help our children know how much God loves them and how much good he wants to do for them, so that they can trust him with every part and every moment of their lives. They should know that they can trust that every decision they make according to his principles and his direction is in the long run the best possible decision they could make; reliance on God takes them on the path to becoming the best possible "them" they can be and to living the best life they can live.