Declarations for Your Children

Every parent speaks over their children constantly, and almost none of it is planned. Hurry up. Be careful. Why would you do that. Children assemble a great deal of their self-understanding out of whichever sentences get repeated at them most often, and repetition is decided by circumstance rather than intention.

Declaring Scripture over a child is a decision to put a different set of sentences into that pile, deliberately, and by name.

The Instruction Israel Was Given

The most important passage on raising children in the Old Testament says almost nothing about discipline and a great deal about talking.

Notice the settings listed. Sitting at home, walking on the road, lying down, getting up. These are the four least ceremonial moments of a day. The Shema does not describe a family devotional slot; it describes a household where Scripture surfaces in transit, at bedtime, over meals, in the car.

Notice also the order of the first two clauses. Shall be in thine heart comes before thou shalt teach them. Children are considerably better at detecting what a parent actually believes than at absorbing what a parent recites. The teaching flows out of a heart that is already carrying the thing.

The Promise Underneath the Practice

Consider who does the teaching in that sentence. Not you, ultimately. Jesus quotes this verse in John 6 and applies it to the Father drawing people to Himself.

For any parent who has felt the entire weight of getting it right, this is a considerable relief. You are one voice among several, and you are not the last word on how your child turns out. The Lord is teaching them by means you will never see and in seasons you are not present for.

Naming Versus Burdening

There is a version of this practice that goes wrong, and it is worth naming before the list rather than after it.

If a child only ever hears declarations about achievement, that they will be great, that they will lead, that they will do mighty things for God, the message received is not what was intended. What lands is that love is contingent on performance, and that there is a scale they are expected to reach.

Weight the declarations towards who they are rather than what they will accomplish. You are loved, you are made on purpose, God is with you carries a child considerably further than you will be a leader. The first is unconditional and true today. The second is a forecast, and forecasts create pressure.

Remember what the Father said over the Son at the Jordan, before a single sermon had been preached. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Approval came first, and it referenced relationship rather than output.

Children Are Called an Inheritance, Not a Project

Two images, and they say different things.

Heritage, nachalah, is inheritance language — property received rather than earned, and held in trust. It carries an implication most parents feel instinctively and rarely articulate: these are not finally yours.

Then arrows, which is a stranger image and worth sitting with. An arrow is aimed and released. It is not kept in the quiver, and the whole purpose of the aiming is the letting go. A parent's work has a built-in end date and a direction, and both are in the metaphor.

Note also what precedes it in the psalm: except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Verse three follows verse one. The children are named an inheritance immediately after a statement that no household can be built by human effort alone.

The Instruction Given to Fathers

Paul writes to households twice about children, and both times the word to fathers is a warning before it is a duty.

The Colossians parallel adds the reason, and it is unexpectedly tender: provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. The Greek there suggests losing heart, becoming dispirited, giving up trying.

That is the specific danger the apostle names for fathers. Not indulgence. Not softness. A child who has concluded that they cannot win, and has stopped attempting to.

Declaration is one of the plainest correctives available. It is difficult for a child to conclude that they cannot please you while regularly hearing you speak good over them by name, and it costs a parent nothing but the decision to do it.

Fourteen Declarations

Use their name. It matters more than you would expect, and it is the difference between a general prayer and a personal blessing.

• [Name] shall be taught of the LORD, and great shall be [name]'s peace. (Isaiah 54:13)
• [Name] is fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:14)
• Before God formed [name] in the womb, He knew them. (Jeremiah 1:5)
• [Name] shall increase in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. (Luke 2:52)
• The LORD shall preserve [name]'s going out and coming in. (Psalm 121:8)
• No weapon that is formed against [name] shall prosper. (Isaiah 54:17)
• [Name] is God's workmanship, created for good works prepared beforehand. (Ephesians 2:10)
• [Name] shall be strong and of good courage, for the LORD is with them wherever they go. (Joshua 1:9)
• God's thoughts toward [name] are thoughts of peace, to give them an expected end. (Jeremiah 29:11)
• [Name] shall hide God's word in their heart. (Psalm 119:11)
• The LORD shall fight for [name]; they shall hold their peace. (Exodus 14:14)
• [Name] is the light of the world. (Matthew 5:14)
• He which hath begun a good work in [name] will perform it. (Philippians 1:6)
• Nothing shall separate [name] from the love of God. (Romans 8:38-39)

Where and When to Say Them

Over a Sleeping Child

The doorway of a dark bedroom is the easiest place to begin, largely because nobody is watching and you cannot get it wrong. One verse, their name, then leave.

Parents who do this consistently report something curious: it changes the parent at least as much as it changes the child. It is difficult to speak Isaiah 54:13 over a child at nine in the evening and still be carrying the frustration you felt at six.

In Transit

The Shema's when thou walkest by the way is, in modern terms, the car. It is one of the few places where a family is confined together, facing forwards, without screens necessarily involved. A verse said in a car does not require ceremony and rarely provokes resistance.

At the Door

A blessing spoken over a child leaving for school takes four seconds. The Lord bless you and keep you, said with a hand on a shoulder, is a complete practice.

Over a Grown Child Who Has Walked Away

Keep speaking. Monica prayed for her son Augustine across seventeen years while he pursued a philosophy she thought ruinous and a life she found grievous. He became one of the most significant theologians in the history of the church, and he attributed it directly to his mother's persistence.

Speaking blessing over an adult child who is far from God is not denial of where they are. It is a refusal to treat the current chapter as the final one, and it costs nothing but the discipline of continuing.

Weight it towards who they are rather than what they will achieve. Children hear the difference, and they hear it for decades.

Declare Bible

Jesus Used Children as the Standard

When the disciples asked who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, the answer was not a name.

The child is not an illustration of who needs teaching. The child is the model, and the adults are the ones told to change.

What quality is in view is worth thinking about. Not innocence, which any parent knows is a sentimental misreading. More likely dependence, and the absence of pretension — a small child has no standing to defend, no reputation to maintain, and no difficulty at all in asking for things.

Then comes one of the sharpest warnings in the Gospels, about causing one of these little ones to stumble, with a millstone attached. Jesus is gentle towards children and severe about anyone who damages them, and He does not soften the second to preserve the first.

Declaring Over a Child Who Is Difficult

Every list of blessings assumes a child you feel warmly towards. Some seasons do not supply one.

A teenager who is contemptuous, a child whose additional needs have exhausted the household, a young adult making choices that frighten you — these are the situations where the practice is hardest and most needed, and where most articles on this subject go quiet.

Two things help. The first is to declare over them in their absence as well as their presence, because a blessing spoken through gritted teeth in an empty room still changes the person speaking it. It is very difficult to hold contempt for someone you have just called fearfully and wonderfully made.

The second is to keep the declarations about God's disposition rather than their behaviour. God's thoughts toward you are thoughts of peace is true on their worst day. You are going to make good choices is a forecast that today's evidence contradicts, and a child can hear the difference between a blessing and a management technique.

The Prodigal's Father

The parable is usually preached as a story about a son. It is at least as much a story about how a father waits.

Three details repay attention. The father gives the inheritance when it is demanded, which was a grievous insult amounting to wishing him dead, and he does not refuse. He does not pursue the son into the far country. And when the boy finally appears on the road, the text says the father saw him when he was yet a great way off — which means he had been watching that road.

Then he runs, which a man of standing in that culture did not do, and interrupts the prepared speech before the son can reach the part about being made a hired servant. The restoration is complete before the apology is finished.

For a parent with a child in a far country, the parable offers no technique and one clear posture. Let them go where they insist on going. Do not stop watching the road. And be prepared to run.

When You Have Got It Wrong

Most parents reading this can name something they said to a child that they would give a great deal to take back.

Scripture's answer here is not reassurance but repair. Confess your faults one to another, James writes, and he does not exempt the person with authority in the room. An apology from a parent to a child is one of the most formative things a child can witness, because it demonstrates that the gospel applies to adults.

Be specific. Name the thing rather than issuing a general regret. Do not attach an explanation that quietly transfers the blame. And do not require them to absolve you on the spot; that turns the apology into another demand.

Then say the blessing. A house where wrong words are named and right words are spoken over the top of them is a house where a child learns what grace actually looks like in operation.

Let Them Hear It Sometimes

Silent prayer counts and God hears it. But a child who has actually heard their parent say the Lord bless you and keep you over them, aloud, using their name, carries something specific for a very long time.

It does not require a ceremony. In the car, at the door on a school morning, over a shoulder while they are half-listening and pretending not to. The point is that it was said and they heard it.

The Faith That Was Handed Down

Paul writes to Timothy about how faith reached him, and the sentence is more specific than most of us expect.

Three generations named, two of them women, and no father mentioned in either letter. Acts notes that Timothy's father was a Greek, which in that context probably means an unbeliever.

So the household that produced one of the New Testament's most trusted leaders was, by the standards of a modern church leaflet, incomplete. A grandmother, a mother, and a boy who from a child hast known the holy scriptures.

This is worth saying plainly for any parent doing this alone, or without the agreement of a spouse. Scripture's own example of successful spiritual formation is a two-generation line of women in a mixed household, and the result was Timothy.

What Children Are Assumed to Ask

The Old Testament repeatedly anticipates a question, and it structures whole practices around making sure the question gets asked.

• When your son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies? — Deuteronomy 6:20.
• When your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? — the Passover, in Exodus 12.
• When your children ask their fathers, What mean these stones? — the memorial at the Jordan, in Joshua 4.

In every case the design is the same. Do something visible and slightly unusual, so that a child will ask about it, so that the story can be told in answer to their own question rather than delivered at them unprompted.

That is a considerably better model than a lecture, and it suggests something practical. A household where Scripture is visibly spoken — over a meal, at a door, in a car — generates questions. Answering a question a child actually asked is worth a great deal more than delivering an answer they did not.

What Blessing Meant in the Old Testament

The patriarchal blessing was not a warm sentiment. It was a formal, spoken act with lasting consequence, and the narratives treat it as effectively irrevocable once uttered.

When Jacob deceived Isaac and took the blessing intended for Esau, the striking detail is what happened next. Esau begged for it and Isaac could not simply repeat it. Hast thou but one blessing, my father? The spoken word had gone out and could not be recalled.

We are not patriarchs and our words do not carry that covenantal weight. But the underlying assumption of those narratives is one Scripture never abandons: that a parent's spoken word over a child does something, and that children instinctively know this, which is why they seek it and why its absence marks them.

Many adults are still, at fifty, waiting for a sentence from a parent who never said it. That is worth knowing if you are the parent and still able to say it.

Jesus and the Children

The disciples rebuked those bringing children to Him, presumably on the reasonable grounds that a teacher of His significance had better uses for His time.

Mark records that He was much displeased, which is stronger language than the Gospels usually apply to Him. And the verse that follows says He took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

Touch, and a spoken blessing. That is the whole method, and it is available to any parent tonight at a bedroom door.

A Word on Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. This verse has comforted many parents and quietly devastated others, so it deserves careful handling.

Proverbs is wisdom literature. Its sayings describe how life generally works rather than issuing guarantees, which is why the same book can say that a soft answer turns away wrath while Scripture elsewhere records soft answers that did not. Read as a promise, this verse makes every prodigal a parental failure. Read as a proverb, it says what it means: faithful upbringing tends powerfully towards faithful adulthood.

God Himself raised two children in a garden with no dysfunction, no bad influences and perfect parenting. They both rebelled. If the outcome were mechanical, that would not have happened.

So speak the words, do the work, and hold the outcome where it belongs. Your children are being taught of the Lord, and He has been at it longer than you have.