We must understand that “the talk” is never going to be enough. Rather, we need to engage in “the talking.” Helping kids navigate the sexualized culture is an ongoing activity rather than a once-and-done endeavor to simply check off our parenting list. And like anything else in life, the more we talk, the easier it becomes to keep on talking, and the more freedom our children will feel to come to us with their questions.

“I know where babies come from!” Those were the words my eight-year-old son blurted out in the midst of a conversational lull during a family dinner back in 1994. Before asking him what he had learned on the topic, I awkwardly swallowed my mouthful of food and asked him about where he had received his information. With genuine enthusiasm he answered, “Donnie told me. . . on the playground!”
I’ll spare you the details of Donnie’s not-even-close-to-accurate sex-ed lesson, but Donnie’s miseducation had dropped in our laps a golden parenting opportunity for beginning a series of conversations with our young children about God’s good and glorious design for His gift of sex and sexuality.
That conversation took place thirty years ago. Today, it isn’t just “Donnie” on the playground. Kids are receiving a dangerous miseducation on sex and sexuality that runs at high volume on a 24/7 loop through smartphones, social media, streaming television, and more. Truth be told, this ever-present narrative washes over our kids, misshaping them from preschool right into adulthood.
When I think about our culture’s obsession with sex, I can’t help but ponder the wise words of Proverbs 14:12:
There is a way that seems right to a man,but its end is the way to death.
As parents, we are called by God to use our words and our example to teach our children and teens God’s good design for sex and sexuality, offering correctives to help them find their way through the cultural narrative’s lies. Here are three essential elements to lead them into hearing, believing, and following God’s will and way about sex that is right for all of His image-bearers.
1. We Must Teach God’s Creational Design
If our sexualized culture is getting sex wrong, where do we go to get it right? We go to the Bible. God’s order and design for sexuality is clearly stated in the creation narrative (Gen. 1–2), reflected in the teachings of Jesus (Matt. 19:4–6), and maintained consistently throughout the Bible. God’s plan way back “in the beginning” (Gen. 1:1) reflects the way things are supposed to be. Because of humankind’s rebellion against God and fall into sin (Gen. 3), everything and everyone is broken. Because of sin, our default setting is to rebel against God’s good order and design for our sexuality. The cultural narrative is one of the great weapons of deception the enemy uses to steer our kids away from understanding God’s creational place and purpose for sex.
Our responsibility is to teach that God’s place for His good gift of sex is in marriage. God’s design and plan for marriage is that it is to be a committed, lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual, physical union between one man and one woman.
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While we have been given the responsibilities to tend, teach, and train, we cannot drag, push, or pull our kids screaming and kicking into the kingdom of God. There is no guarantee that we will see the results that we want, in the way that we want, or in the time that we want. No, “salvation belongs to the Lord” (Ps. 3:8; see also Rev. 7:10). It is only the Holy Spirit, working in His way and His time, who will call our children to faith. 

My fourteen-year-old self had gone to bed at my usual 9 p.m. time. Two hours later, I woke up to use the bathroom. While walking undetected past my parents’ darkened room, I not only heard my dad whispering, but I heard him whispering my name. It was at that unforgettable moment that I learned that my parents’ bedtime routine included intercession on behalf of their three children.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had been blessed with parents whose only stated hope for me for as long as I can remember was that I would grow up to love, follow, and serve Jesus Christ. As Christian parents, we ought to hope the same for our children. Nothing more. Nothing less.
But challenges to passing on the faith in today’s world and seeing these good desires realized are many. Marketing, media, social media, and peer groups are among the many compelling voices that speak counter to the gospel, summoning the allegiance of our children and teens. Research from David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock in their book Faith for Exiles reveals that more and more of our kids who have grown up in the church and Christian homes are following “the course of this world” (Eph. 2:2) as only 10 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds who “grew up as Christians” are embracing a lifestyle of consistent discipleship.
The good news is that parents always exercise the greatest influence on the spiritual lives of their children. This should not be surprising, since God has established the home as the primary arena for spiritual nurture (Deut. 6; Eph. 6:1–4). This influence is effectively exercised as we entrust our children to God, which includes certain responsibilities that He has entrusted to us. How can we entrust our children to Him in a contemporary world full of distractions that so easily leads both children and parents away from the faithful pursuit of the chief end of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever?
First, to entrust your children to God is to tend to yourself. I love Tedd Tripp’s definition of parenting as “shepherding the hearts of your children in the ways of God’s wisdom.” It follows that the only way that we can effectively nurture our children in the ways of God’s wisdom is to be constantly nurturing ourselves.

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