Raising Sequoias: How Being Rooted in God’s Love Makes Kids Spiritually Strong

Want your kids to stand firm when life threatens to blow them around? See how they can be rooted in God’s love so they can be firmly planted.

While traveling through the desert of California, one of the things I vividly remember is the tumbleweeds! It was not uncommon at all to see those scrawny bushes blowing across your path or piling up against a wall. When I think about tumbleweeds, I think about how different they are from trees like the sequoias of Northern California. While a tumbleweed is listlessly blown about by the wind and puts down shallow roots wherever it finds itself, sequoias put their roots down into nourishing soil, where they intertwine with the surrounding trees and safely thrive in the same place for hundreds of years.

Sometimes we can be a little bit like tumbleweeds in the way we live our lives. Emotions and hard times can easily blow us around if we don’t have strong roots to keep us steady. No parent wants their child to be an emotional tumbleweed, but for kids to be secure, brave, and successful, they have to learn that acceptance, love, and security can only come from God. Like a sequoia tree, they can be rooted in God’s love and stand strong even when life feels lonely, unfair, overwhelming, or scary. God’s love is solid ground because it anchors them in a relationship with someone who unconditionally loves them, fully accepts them, constantly forgives them, and endlessly pursues them. When they learn to rest in this, they can feel secure, brave, confident, and joyful no matter what.

Why do kids sometimes become tumbleweeds? Here are some things you can be sure of:

• Kids will make mistakes.
• Life will hurt them.
• People will fail them.
• People will criticize them.

4 Ways to Help Your Kids Be Rooted in God’s Love

1. When they make mistakes, teach God’s forgiveness

If you had any idealistic dreams that your children would be perfect, I’m sure you gave up on that fantasy very quickly after they were born! Children will inevitably make mistakes, like forgetting to turn off the bathroom sink (AGAIN!). When kids mess up, it’s an opportunity to point them toward a forgiving God. You have the chance to help them see that God, as a compassionate Father, is patient with their struggles and loves them no matter what (Psalm 103:13–14). You can also demonstrate God’s forgiveness and patience yourself. Even though you can’t love your kids as perfectly as God does, you can ask for God’s help to show His grace to your children when they fail.

Imagine that in a moment of anger, your child says something hurtful to you and disobeys. Rather than just rebuking and disciplining them, consider doing something like sending them to their room until you both can calm down. Then (after you’ve had a chance to pray yourself), sit down with them and discuss what happened. Point out that even though their response was sinful, you love them anyway (just as God does). Choose an appropriate punishment and explain that consequences for our failures help us not make them again. However, once the sin has been dealt with, you don’t have to bring it up anymore.

2. When life hurts them, teach God’s goodness

Unfortunately, no matter how much we try to protect them, children will experience hurt and disappointment from things like having their pet die or not getting the present they wanted. Although situations like these are painful, they are also opportunities for kids to learn about God’s plan for their lives. As a parent, you get the chance to teach them that although circumstances can be painful, they have a God who loves them and works everything out for their good and His glory (Romans 8:28–29). Even in the most difficult times, they can learn to trust Him.

For example, maybe you had to make changes to your family’s vacation because of financial constraints. Now your child is disappointed that they don’t get to go on the trip they were looking forward to. It would be easy to feel like a bad parent and get angry out of guilt at your kid’s response. Instead, you could try to discuss the situation with them and empathize with their feelings. Let them know you’re disappointed too, but explain that God has a plan for why He allowed this to happen. He is still taking care of your family, and you can choose to have a good time with whatever you do.

3. When people fail them, teach God’s faithfulness

Children will probably learn very quickly that other people make mistakes. (By the way, this is one of the reasons it’s important to show your children grace—at some point, they will have to show grace to you too!) When kids get hurt over broken promises or hurtful friendships, it’s an opportunity for them to learn that their confidence cannot be placed in people. However, even though people they trust and admire will fail them, God never will. They can confidently put their security, hope, trust, and confidence in God as the only one who will never let them down.

Let’s say your child is deeply disappointed because their friend broke a promise. It may be tempting to dismiss this or teach them to just “get over it,” but this is an amazing learning opportunity! You can take a minute to ask how it made them feel, discuss whether or not what their friend did was right, and consider what may have led their friend to do it. Explain that it’s OK to feel hurt and that people will, unfortunately, hurt them many times in life. Then you can point them to the comfort of knowing that God will never fail them. Since God forgives them for failing Him, they can forgive a friend for failing them.

4. When people criticize them, teach God’s acceptance

Kids are constantly being made to feel that they’re not good enough by peers, advertisements, and entertainment. Few things bring a parent pain like hearing that their child is being bullied or made fun of. Although there’s no excuse for this happening, the truth is that it’s inevitable. At some point, every child will be criticized by someone else. Although it’s easy to try to avoid or ignore these painful times, viewing them as learning opportunities could set your child up for lifelong success. God wants to use these painful experiences to show that He accepts them. They can find their confidence in Him because He loves them unconditionally and is always on their side.

Perhaps your child comes home from church one day and says that someone there is bullying him or her. Usually, our first response as a parent in that situation is to rush to our child’s defense. “How dare they make fun of my child!? I need to call the pastor and set up a meeting with the other parent at once!” While steps like those may be necessary, there are also other things you can do to help your child grow through the situation rather than just fixing it. Give them a chance to tell you how it made them feel and discuss whether or not that person was right to say what they did. Find out if your child had any responsibility in the situation. Then help them learn what to do with their emotions. Explain that even though what the other person said was hurtful, we can’t control what other people say about us; we can only remember what God says about us. God made your child the way they are, and He doesn’t make mistakes! He loves them just the way He made them, so they can be confident in how God feels about them instead of caring what someone else says about them.

Resources to help:

In addition to looking for opportunities to teach and demonstrate God’s love in everyday life, it’s important to study these truths in the Bible as well. All of these reminders about God’s love, along with many others, are taught in our Bible study Strong Roots: A Biblical Study of God’s Love. We’ve made it easy for you to help your kids be grounded in the love of God so they can be secure, confident, and successful. Together, you can study how to be rooted in God’s love. Look for opportunities to apply what you’re learning in everyday life as your kids encounter things like peer pressure, failure, anxiety, and doubt.