How To Know if Your Child is not Ready to Accept Christ as His Savior: The Salvation Series (Part 3)

If you missed part one of the Salvation Series, you can find it here and part two here.

Yes, I said NOT READY.

We do not want to lead our children into a false profession of faith and cause much confusion years down the road. Obviously, the first step is to be walking in the Spirit yourself and be praying for His guidance in this situation. He will let you know if it’s not time yet. But here are some other practical things to look for to know your child is not quite ready yet.

Boredom

One thing to watch out for is if they seem bored half way through your explanation of salvation (see last post for a thorough explanation of how to give the gospel to your children.) Our daughter came to us many times asking us to explain the gospel, but became bored a short way into it. At that point, we’d quickly wrap up the explanation and tell her to come back to us any time and ask as many questions as she wanted. We would always be available to answer. And off she’d go, back to whatever she was doing. If they get bored, they aren’t ready.

Losing Interest Quickly

Many times, if our daughter sat through the whole explanation without getting bored, but she still didn’t seem ready, I would tell her to talk to daddy about it that night when he got home from work. She would never talk to him, which told me she wasn’t quite under conviction yet. She was just interested. She wanted to know more. When she was ready, she HAD to talk to Dad, and she DID NOT forget. In fact, she mentioned throughout the day that she was going to talk to Dad as soon as he got home. And she did just that when she was ready.

Lack of Understanding

Another thing to watch out for is lack of understanding with any of the points in your explanation of the gospel. If they don’t understand that Jesus is God, or think that they are a sinner, or don’t feel the need for repentance (see next point), or don’t believe that the death, burial and resurrection of Christ is all that is needed to take the punishment for their sin, take the time in the following weeks or even months to teach whatever it is they are stumped on so that they can come to a full understanding before proceeding. (I’m not saying they need a full understanding of all the doctrines of the Bible, just an understanding of each of these simple points.)

Lack of Repentance

A last thing to look out for is a lack of repentance. Yes, salvation is simple faith in the Lord Jesus, but it is the kind of faith that changes who you are as a person…because of repentance.

But wait! I’ve heard it asked, isn’t repentance a work that you have to do to get saved? Absolutely not. It’s a work that God does in your heart. He takes that old man and makes him new! He takes that dead flesh and makes it alive! He takes that blind man and makes him see!

The Greek word used for repentance in the New Testament is μετάνοια or “metanoia.” It is used 24 times in the New Testament, and makes for a fascinating study! Strong’s defines it as “compunction (for guilt, including reformation); by implication reversal (of decision).” Notice those words—reformation and reversal. There is a change.

As a young child I “got saved” because I was simply afraid of hell and beleived that Jesus died on the cross. I often will call this “head salvation.” There was absolutely no change of heart, there was no relationship with Jesus Christ. I had heard it over and over again and believed it to be true. It was the same kind of belief that is talked about of the devils…“Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” (James 2:19) But when I was sixteen and comletely at the end of myself in sin and sorrow, I realized how much I needed a Savior. And that’s when I got “heart salvation.”

Our goal is to bring our children to understand that “heart salvation.” Ya’ll, if they are growing up in a normal Christian home and going to Sunday School and church every time the doors are open, they’ve got “head salvation.” But that’s not true salvation. “…the devils also believe and tremble.” God is after their hearts, not after conformity. It’s not 1, 2, 3, pray this prayer with me. Wipe our hands off, we’ve got that taken care of…now moving on.

Read through the Bible. All through the Old Testament you’ll see God chasing after the HEART of the Israelites. “Repent,” He cries! “Turn from your sin! Turn from your idols!” In the New Testament, you’ll see Jesus faulting the Pharisees over and over again because they only cared about their outward appearance. There was no repentance—no change of heart. There was no relationship. Their conformity didn’t matter to Christ. He was after their heart.

And He is after our children’s hearts too. Salvation is so much more than the simple prayer of faith. Living in the gospel after salvation is a relationship with Jesus, it’s walking in the Spirit, it’s a growing faith in who God is and what He has done for me, it’s a daily sanctifying and new mercies every morning. I get so excited just simply being reminded of these daily blessings as a new creature in Christ!

A child is not going to understand the process of sanctification at salvation nor does he have to in order to be saved, but he can understand simple repentance, and THAT is where the sanctification process starts.

But I can’t FORCE my child to have this heart of repentance. So now what?!

That’s right. Matters of the heart can’t be forced. And that is where a parent must have PATIENCE and FAITH to believe that the Lord will do the work on his child’s heart. Remember, God loves your children even more than you do! He is the one that gave His life for them! Knowing this, you can be confident that He will convict their hearts of sin and bring them around to repentance. He will do the work in His time.

But that doesn’t mean we just sit idly by. As parents, we have some heart work (and much prayer) to do! That work is something I’ll dedicate an entire blog post to next time.

Praying that this is helpful to you as you navigate leading your little ones to Christ. I’m looking forward to sharing more again next week.

Sarah