PKs

How many of you have known a preacher's kid? I know my mom is one and one of my good friends is one also(which makes sense considering I go to her dad's church). And I also know a couple at my old high school. So if you know one, go ahead, get them in your head, think about who they are and what they are like. Ok, now think about this--how do they usually act? What is their personality like? I know the ones I know, or have met, are almost always one of two ways--either on fire for God or completely smothered and drowning from the ways of the world.

Does that sound familiar? I know a couple who are absolutely spot on with God and seeking after His holiness, and I know a couple who are absolutely crazy and do pretty much everything they can in sin, but I can't think of very many at all who are just "good kids". I guess it goes down to our roots, to the very morals and beliefs that we are raised on. If we have Christian parents, they will, most likely, raise us with Christian teachings and Christian morals. So everything we learn as children and continue to learn until we are on our own is from a Christian perspective--"good morals" are taught with Christ at the core.

So if this is the case, why do some of the "preacher's kids" or merely the kids of Christians turn out to be such party animals? I don't believe that the problem can lie in our morals, because we are told to set our mind on things above and not on earthly things, so if God is in our values, they are not in fact wrong. So what's the problem? If our parents' teachings are rooted in truth, why do some of us just seem to miss it?

I think one of the majors things we fail to do as Christians is raise disciples instead of just converts. What I mean is this: we are so worried about following the "Great Commission" and go to all corners of the earth, that we forget the part about making DISCIPLES. We weren't called to just tell people about Jesus and the things He did, we are called to get them to know Him as their Lord and Savior and learn how to seek holiness themselves. Too often we focus on the shallow aspects of the Christian faith and the smaller aspects of it rather than getting them to pursue the wholeness and truth of who God is. Too many times, we try to relay our stories of faith to our children instead of getting them to have their own. Where we go wrong in raising our families is not in the ideas, but how we make them come across. If instead of telling and forcing our opinions on our children we invited them to know God themselves and learn to find out for themselves who He is, we wouldn't have the "party animal" preacher kids or believers' children gone bad.

In the same manner as raising children, please treat your friends and peers the same way. Don't set out to merely introduce thousands to Christ and not follow through with the biggest step of all: Discipleship. We need more people seeking to be like Jesus, not more people seeking to live their own sinful lives and showing an interest in who Jesus was. Take the time to help build relationships. You took the time to meet your most incredible friends and got to know them on an intimate level, so do not deny them that opportunity with the most loving friend they will ever meet in Jesus Christ. So with the wild and crazy, did our morals just miss the mark? No, sometimes we just missed the opportunity to help them sink in and take root.