It was late on a weeknight, dinner was later than it should have been, and everyone was hungry.
My wife and I were rushing. We got the food on the table, sat down, and started eating.
We forgot to pray.
Our daughter didn't.
She stopped, put her hands together, and began praying to Jesus. She thanked Him for her food.
It was such a small moment, but it stayed with me.
My daughter is still very young. She doesn't understand theology. She couldn't explain the doctrine behind prayer or give you a sophisticated answer about why Christians give thanks to God before a meal.
She simply knew what she had seen her mother and father do.
And when we forgot, she remembered.
There is something incredibly encouraging about that as a Christian father.
There is also something terrifying about it.
Because she isn't only watching when I pray.
She is watching everything else too.
My Daughter Is Learning From the Christianity I Actually Live
Children imitate us long before they understand us.
My daughter repeats our words. She copies our behaviour. She has started imitating prayer because she has watched us pray.
Unfortunately, she has repeated some other words too.
I've struggled with my language, particularly when I'm angry. There have been moments when I've heard words come out of my daughter's mouth and immediately known where she learned them.
I've also seen flashes of anger in her that remind me uncomfortably of myself.
Those moments force a father to confront something that is easy to forget:
My daughter is learning from the things I deliberately teach her, but she is also learning from the man I am when I am not trying to teach her anything.
Scripture presents spiritual instruction in the home as something woven into ordinary life.
In Deuteronomy 6, Israel is commanded to keep God's words upon their hearts and teach them diligently to their children—talking about them at home, while travelling, at bedtime and when getting up.
It isn't confined to a scheduled religious lesson.
Faith is supposed to permeate life.
That means my daughter is receiving an education about Christianity when we pray before dinner.
She is receiving one when we pray over her before bed.
But she is also receiving one when I am exhausted.
When I'm frustrated.
When her mother and I disagree.
When plans fall apart.
When I have too much on my shoulders.
When I sin.
The question isn't simply whether I'm teaching my daughter about Jesus.
The harder question is:
What is she learning about Jesus by watching me?
Becoming a Father Changed What Christianity Required of Me
Before becoming a father, I thought a lot about provision.
A man provides for his family. He protects his family. He takes responsibility.
I still believe those things matter tremendously.
But fatherhood taught me that providing materially isn't enough.
I also have a responsibility for the spiritual direction of my household.
That realization forced me to examine parts of myself that had previously been easier to ignore.
I am not naturally a particularly soft person. I have had to learn softness.
I've had to pay attention to how I speak. I've had to think differently about how my wife and I disagree with each other. I've had to recognize that the way I treat her mother is teaching my daughter something about love and marriage whether I intend it to or not.
Even something as simple as swearing changed once my daughter began speaking.
Suddenly there was a little person standing beside me who might repeat whatever came out of my mouth.
But some changes went much deeper than language.
Fatherhood forced me to confront private sin. It forced reflection on behaviours I could once compartmentalize more easily. Having a daughter made some things impossible for me to look at in quite the same way.
It became harder to separate the man I was privately from the father and Christian leader I wanted to be publicly.
That has been one of the unexpected gifts of fatherhood.
My daughter has made me want to become not only a better father, but a better Christian.
Anger Is One of the Places Where I Still Fail
Anger is probably the struggle I worry most about my daughter remembering.
I carry a lot at times.
And I've learned that what comes out as anger isn't always simply anger.
Pressure can come out as anger.
Anxiety can come out as anger.
Exhaustion can come out as anger.
Frustration can come out as anger.
Feeling overwhelmed can come out as anger.
None of that excuses it.
My family doesn't experience the complicated collection of emotions happening inside me. They experience what comes out of me.
Sometimes that's a short fuse.
Sometimes I don't speak to my wife in a way that reflects Christ.
Sometimes I become impatient with my daughter.
And there is something deeply uncomfortable about seeing a behaviour in your child and recognizing yourself in it.
Scripture places a particular warning upon fathers:
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
— Ephesians 6:4
That verse doesn't eliminate discipline. It commands it.
But it also places a restraint upon the father exercising authority.
How I lead matters.
How I correct matters.
How I speak matters.
The goal isn't merely producing a child who complies with me. I am raising a person who is learning what authority, discipline, grace, forgiveness and ultimately Christianity look like partly through her experiences inside our home.
That is a much heavier responsibility than simply getting a child to behave.
My Daughter Does Not Need a Perfect Christian Father
There is a temptation in Christian parenting to think our children need to see us having everything together.
I don't believe that anymore.
If my daughter eventually judged Christianity by watching my life, I wouldn't want her conclusion to be that Christianity made her father perfect.
It didn't.
I want her to see how desperately her father needed Jesus.
Christianity makes no sense if we pretend we don't sin.
The Gospel begins with the uncomfortable truth that we do.
So when I fail my daughter, I try to apologize to her.
I don't want to give her an empty “sorry.”
I try to explain what I did wrong and tell her that I am sorry for doing it.
And I believe it is important for her to hear me confess my sins to Jesus and ask Him for forgiveness.
There is a difference between teaching your child that something is wrong and allowing your child to see that the same standard applies to you.
Being Dad doesn't place me above repentance.
Being the spiritual leader of my household doesn't mean pretending I don't struggle.
If anything, leadership requires the opposite.
My daughter should know that her father sins.
She should also know where her father goes when he does.
Back to Christ.
Our Children Can Recognize Performative Christianity
Children eventually become capable of recognizing contradictions.
If Christianity is something Dad talks about on Sunday but abandons when he is angry on Tuesday, eventually the child notices.
If I tell my daughter to control herself but refuse to confront my own lack of self-control, she notices.
If I teach forgiveness but refuse to apologize, she notices.
If I tell her Jesus comes first while everything about my life demonstrates that work, money, comfort, entertainment or ambition actually comes first, eventually she will notice that too.
Our lives can become incredibly routine.
Mine does.
There are times when the pressures and priorities of ordinary life crowd out things I genuinely believe matter more.
We have a routine of praying over our daughter before bed, and I'm grateful for that.
We spent a period reading the Bible together more consistently. Lately, competing priorities have made that harder to maintain.
I don't say that proudly.
I say it because pretending otherwise would defeat the point.
Performative Christianity doesn't disappear because we become better at performing it.
The answer is truth.
If I am struggling in my faith, I don't believe the solution is to manufacture some flawless version of Christianity for my daughter to observe.
The solution is to pursue Christ genuinely.
Pray.
Repent.
Return to Scripture.
Deal honestly with whatever has displaced God.
And let the relationship with Christ become visible again through the way I live.
Grace Matters Because Children Are Still Learning
My parents modeled Christianity to the best of their ability.
They were imperfect too.
We went to church. Our lives were rooted in Scripture. Prayer mattered. Hard work mattered.
My father worked constantly to provide for us. We didn't have everything, but we didn't go without.
More importantly, I watched him remain steadfast.
Even when relationships became difficult as his children grew older, he didn't give up on us. He continued supporting us. He prayed for his family and continued pointing us toward Christ.
That foundation mattered enormously.
There were also times when the standards I experienced growing up felt unattainable. Sometimes I felt there wasn't enough grace accompanying those standards.
I don't say that to condemn my parents.
Quite the opposite.
They gave me a foundation strong enough that, even after my own wandering, I eventually knew where to return.
Now I have the opportunity to carry forward what they gave me while trying to learn from the places where I struggled.
One thing I want to do differently with my daughter is remember that she is learning.
Some concepts are new to her.
Sometimes she needs correction.
Sometimes she needs discipline.
And sometimes she needs additional grace because she is a child encountering something for the first time.
Grace doesn't mean that obedience suddenly doesn't matter.
It means remembering the person standing in front of me while I teach it.
I want her to understand that discipline itself can be an expression of love—the love that prevents someone from continuing toward something harmful.
But I also want her to know mercy.
Patience.
Forgiveness.
Another chance.
Because those aren't weaknesses in Christianity.
They are central to the story.
I Can Show Her the Road. I Cannot Make Her Walk It.
There is another difficult truth every Christian parent eventually has to confront:
I cannot make my daughter believe.
I can teach her about Jesus.
I can pray with her.
I can take her to church.
I can teach Scripture.
I can answer her questions.
I can establish boundaries in my home.
I can try to live a godly life in front of her.
I can pray that Jesus draws her close to Him and pursues her heart.
But I cannot believe for her.
That distinction matters to me.
I take my responsibility for the spiritual direction of my family seriously. I believe I should lead in prayer and take responsibility for spiritual decisions affecting my household.
But Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and humanity.
My daughter does not ultimately reach God through me.
She needs her own relationship with Christ.
And someday that relationship will include questions I cannot control.
She may encounter parts of Scripture she finds difficult.
She may wrestle with how a loving God could permit or command things she struggles to understand.
She may challenge things I taught her.
If that happens, I want to be available.
I want to have the difficult conversations.
I want to answer what I can.
I want her to know she doesn't need to hide questions from me because Christians are frightened by questions.
And I will continue praying for her.
I am pragmatic about this because I have to be.
I love my daughter with all my heart, but I cannot force her to believe.
All I can do is show her the road, continue to pray for her, and show her love.
At some point, she has to walk with Christ herself.
What I Hope My Daughter Remembers About My Faith
When I think about my own father, I don't remember perfection.
I remember steadfastness.
I remember a man who worked.
A man who provided.
A man who prayed for his family.
A man who made mistakes.
And I remember something else.
He came back.
He could fall, but he would return to Jesus.
Beaten, battered and bruised, he would come back to Christ, His grace and His forgiveness.
I think that's much closer to the legacy I want to leave my daughter than some carefully polished image of a perfect Christian father.
I hope she remembers that I prayed.
I hope she remembers that I loved her mother.
I hope she remembers that I protected and provided for my family.
I hope she remembers that I tried to extend grace.
I hope she remembers that when I was wrong, I could tell her I was wrong.
And when I fail—and I will—I hope she sees me return to Jesus.
Because if my daughter were to judge Christianity by watching my life, I hope she would see just how much human beings need Christ.
I hope she sees the struggle involved in trying to live a life following Him.
I hope she also sees how rewarding that journey is, whether the road is easy or brutally difficult.
The Christianity my daughter remembers will not only be the Christianity I deliberately taught her.
It will be the Christianity she watched me live.
And maybe one of the most important things I can show her is that following Jesus isn't a performance of perfection.
It is a lifelong journey of faith, obedience, failure, repentance, grace, and continually returning to Christ.
My daughter is watching.
So I want to make sure that when she sees me fall, she also sees where I go to get back up.
Faith for the Everyday Walk
Christian faith is lived one day at a time—in our homes, our relationships, our failures, and the decision to keep returning to Christ. If these themes resonate with you, explore our Iron Sharpens Iron Proverbs 27:17 Christian Hoodie, Be Strong Joshua 1:9 Christian Hoodie, and Trust in the Lord Proverbs 3:5–6 Christian Canvas Wall Art.