By Adam Groza

Recently, I have enjoyed some good conversation with friends about raising our little girls to be godly women. Of course, this will ultimately depend on the working of the Spirit in their lives. But in everyday life, from cloths to comments, actions have consequences. This is true for boys and girls, of course. But my interest here is to share some comments on raising little girls to be godly women. Since Brent is only capable of producing male offspring and has of yet been denied the wonderful privilege of a daughter, I will leave him to comments on raising little boys☺.

So I start with the assumption that the bible defines what it looks like to be a godly woman in such places as Proverbs 31. I will leave you to read that passage, and move ahead to ask the question, “How do we parents encourage our little girls onto a godly path?” I think that answering this will require two sorts of things, the first positive and the second negative.

Positively we must love them, which in Biblical sense, means that we care for them as God has cared for us. Just as God teaches us and reveals truth to us, so too we must teach our daughters. From the earliest age, we must instruct them. Deuteronomy chapter six tells us that this teaching must permeate our home. Dish-washing times are teaching times. So we teach as we live, but we also are intentional about designating time to teach. God has done this for the church in setting aside a day for worship and rest. So too, I think fathers do well to set aside a time of day to have a time of family worship, to teach your children to pray, sing, study, and teach Scripture in the act of praying, singing, reading, and teaching Scripture. When does your family do this and how have you structured it to (practically speaking) work for you?

Yet teaching cannot be detached from affection. God‘s character includes dispositions analogous to human emotions. He loves us, cares for us, and provides for us. Revealed truth detached from loving-kindness would improperly reflect the Father and would likely fail to effectuate a desire for the truth. God is sovereign, but he uses tender interaction to develop love for Himself and our negligence can have adverse consequences. I am of the opinion that little girls especially, because they are the weaker sex (1 Peter 3:7), must be taught and loved with a tenderness and sense of protection which leads them to delight in God.

These are things (though hardly exhaustive) we must do positively to love our little girls such that they become godly women. But there are things that we must avoid as well. There are certain cultural land mines that I intuitively believe will push our daughters from Christ.

First, it seems to me that busyness will destroy the heart of a little girl, especially a father who teaches, hugs, and then leaves. For those of us blessed to have wives who stay at home, our time at home is limited but our ability to give attention to the scribbles, the “ouchies”, and the tea-parties are of critical importance to a little girl. Ministry and work cannot be an excuse for perpetual absence. I am pretty sure any daughter would prefer a no-name poor father who is present than an evangelical celebrity or corporate mountain-mover who is absent. In fact, I venture to guess that our absence might fuel bitterness rather than godly affection and admiration, especially if we are gone in the name of Jesus.

Second, we must guard them from vanity and materialism when they are young. If we want teenage girls who are modest we must dress them modestly when young and tell them how pretty they look when their bodies are covered. It means we don’t let them wear pants with words across the bottom (such as “cutie”) that direct people’s eyes to our daughter’s backside: Unbelievable! Moreover, we must keep them, as much as possible, from the constant media barrage of “princess imagery” that most girls will never obtain without surgery. One thought shared to me by a pastor is to tell our girls they are “pretty” but not “the prettiest girl in the world”. The latter statement instills a sense of beauty by comparison rather than creation and relation. Of course, our only beauty is the righteousness of Christ which is owed completely to our (new) creation and relation to Christ. So too little girls should be pretty to their father: Not because other girls are not pretty or because they are pretty in relation to others but because they are our daughters and beautiful in our eyes.

Lastly, I have been thinking a lot about having a little girl and training her to be content in living simply, which is to say, not materialistic. How do I train my daughter such that one day in the future her husband could say “I think God is leading us to sell our home and cars and go on the mission field” so that she would respond “Yes, let’s go” without a moment’s thought for the material loss she will incur. So loving our daughters to become godly women would include, I think, helping them to be content with less; less toys, less shoes, less cloths, and less stuff. It seems to me that God limits our possessions to teach us dependency. He can give us more, but his love won’t allow it because we need to learn to live with a certain detachment from the things of this world even as we have a healthy appreciation for those same passing thing. So maybe we love our daughters in a more godly way when we buy them a used dress and tell them they look pretty rather than the most expensive dress. We could tell her that the money saved can go to help other kids and/or share the gospel around the world. This does two things: Instills (hopefully) a sense of simplicity and a love for missions. I think the two go hand in hand.

So these are just thoughts about raising daughters to be godly women. Many of you know much more than I on the subject, so I welcome your thoughts and comments.

• Read Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp
• Read Everyday Talk: Talking Freely and Naturally about God With Your Children by John Younts
• Read Teach Them Diligently: How To Use The Scriptures in Child Training by Lou Priolo