daughter

[5251]

How do you convince a child to believe in God? She is 27 but she is my youngest. She's at a time in her life where she don't know where to turn. We are not speaking right now, I can't REACH her. She's stubborn I guess, like me. I don't know what to do. Can anyone help?

[1over137]

How do you convince a child to believe in God? She is 27 but she is my youngest. She's at a time in her life where she don't know where to turn. We are not speaking right now, I can't REACH her. She's stubborn I guess, like me. I don't know what to do. Can anyone help?

Well, maybe someone else can reach to her. You did not gave us much information, so I cannot say more to it. Btw, I am 28, woman and also have stubborn nature and also am youngest.

[Dallas]

How do you convince a child to believe in God? She is 27 but she is my youngest. She's at a time in her life where she don't know where to turn. We are not speaking right now, I can't REACH her. She's stubborn I guess, like me. I don't know what to do. Can anyone help?

In all honesty, you can't convince anyone to believe in God. It's a decision that they make on their own. You made your decision that you want to believe in God and I made the decision I want to believe in God. Only the person can decide whether to or not. Like 1over137 said, you didn't give us enough information to help you through the situation. Yet, at the same time I don't believe I can fully help because I don't have a daughter for one and two, I'm not as wise as the other members on this board (age+experience=wise, which is not me ). However, I can hopefully give you some tips.

First things first, you need to fix the problem that she isn't speaking to you. Whatever it may be, that is priority right now. How can you help your own daughter when she isn't even talking to you? Take charge of the situation and try to make it better. Don't try to force yourself to try and talk to her. I believe it would just make her mad. But how should I know? I'm only a male

Second, assuming everything went fine in step one, you need to slowly and safely make your way into a God/Christ conversation. People really hate it when you just start talking about God out of the blue. Start talking about things you and your daughter share in common. Talk about the past, mostly good memories (don't bring up terrible memories unless it can work for the Glory of God) then slowly lead your way into a Gospel conversation. If she needs evidence, there's a lot out there. Some people may disagree with me, but I see plenty of evidence for me to believe then to not, but that's a lot of soul searching. I like what Josh McDowell says "Sometimes people don't need evidence to convince them that God exist, but a simple invitation for Christ." That's not an exact quote, but it's around the same lines. And if someone has a problem that isn't the right quote, I'll look it up for them .

Thirdly, it's not really a step, but it really helps a lot. Does the way you live reflect Christ? Does the actions you do show Christ when you do them? This is probably the most important thing in my opinion. This is a different type of importance then what I stated above. One of the major problems in Christianity is that the believer acts worse than the non-believer. This is very common in the world we live in today and it's one of the major reasons why I think people do not want to come to know Christ because if the believer acts worse than the unbeliever then the unbeliever gets something in their head that probably sounds like "If Christ love is so powerful, why do they act worse than I do?" That leads to many atheist sadly because they see nothing in Christ that is worth their time.

Lastly, DON"T GIVE UP/PRAY!!!! Praying before talking to your daughter is a lot better than not praying before talking because when those conversations come up two things will happen.

1) Let's assume you didn't pray before. Things didn't turn out well, you think you made the situation worse and you give up. THAT IS WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO!

2) Let's assume you did pray before. The Holy Spirit shows up and you don't talk at all. It's all God and everything goes smoothly and she becomes a disciple.

Yet, those are ideal situations, but you get my point. PRAY and DON"T GIVE UP ON HER.

Well, I hope this helps. I had a lot of fun writing this, I'm only 17, but I think it will help. I'm not that much younger than you <3

[RazorSwift]

How do you convince a child to believe in God?

That may be your problem...trying to convince. Sometimes you just gotta let go and keep praying. The more you push, the more harm you could be doing. My mom was extremely pushy with me about Christianity (and boy was I rebellious) and the more she shoved it down my throat, the faster I choked. She got to a point where she let me figure things out for myself. It took 18 years. (And on a side note, my grandma got saved in her late 80's!) This approach may be hard to stand and watch -especially if someone is being destructive with their life- but to be cliche', have faith. You/her are in my prayers.