PARENTING & FAMILY
How can I raise a child to be kind and considerate of others?

(3 John 4-11)
Be hospitable yourself.
If you want your child to be kind and considerate of others, you have a perfect setting in which to teach them: your home! You can encourage your children to share toys with visiting children and to speak respectfully to adults. You can involve them in making and decorating cookies for a sick friend, and then let them have the joy of taking the treats to her.

You can also show them what Gaius exemplified in this passage—true hospitality. The difference between entertaining and hospitality is this: when you entertain, you're concerned about how beautiful your table is or how clean your house is because you want to make a good impression; when you're hospitable, your focus is on the person. You seek to minister, to meet that person's needs.

It's always easier to "minister" to someone you know—and that's good. But Gaius took hospitality a step further. He was hospitable to followers of the Lord whom he didn't even know (5)! The result? These followers were encouraged, and they told of his love, which strengthened others' faith in Jesus (6). (See also Jonah 1; Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 10:25-37.)

Words to remember:
Dear friend, you have always been faithful in helping other followers of the Lord, even the ones you didn't know before.—3 John 4-11

3 John 4-11
⁴Nothing brings me greater happiness than to hear that my children are obeying the truth.

Working Together
⁵Dear friend, you have always been faithful in helping other followers of the Lord, even the ones you didn't know before. ⁶They have told the church about your love. They say you were good enough to welcome them and to send them on their mission in a way that God's servants deserve. ⁷When they left to tell others about the Lord, they decided not to accept help from anyone who wasn't a follower. ⁸We must support people like them, so that we can take part in what they are doing to spread the truth.

⁹I wrote to the church. But Diotrephes likes to be the number-one leader, and he won't pay any attention to us. ¹⁰So if I come, I will remind him of how he has been attacking us with gossip. Not only has he been doing this, but he refuses to welcome any of the Lord's followers who come by. And when other church members want to welcome them, he puts them out of the church.

¹¹Dear friend, don't copy the evil deeds of others! Follow the example of people who do kind deeds. They are God's children, but those who are always doing evil have never seen God.

These excerpts are from The Bible for Today's Christian Woman. This Bible is no longer in print. But new this month is the Woman's Life Bible, which includes the same great features for today's busy woman. Click here to purchase the Woman's Life Bible.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc. All rights reserved. Excerpted from The Bible for Today's Christian Woman, CEV, page 1461. Used by permission. For reprint information call 630-260-6200.