Permeating Your Child’s Heart With Scripture: The Salvation Series (Part 5)
- Children ,
- Gospel ,
- Motherhood
August 31, 2023
If you missed the earlier posts included in the Salvation Series, find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Also, find the free gospel for children printable here.
As we saw last time, the word of God is POWERFUL! The only answer I could get to the question, “How can she get saved Lord? She believes on you, but she’s lacking the repentant heart change. How Lord?” And my answer from Him…fill her life with the Bible.
And so that’s what we started doing.
I know there are many different ways families do this, but what is so key is giving the children STRAIGHT BIBLE. Bible storybooks are great! They are so important! But Bible storybooks are not God’s inspired words. I hope you understand what I’m saying. Don’t throw out the Bible storybooks, but make sure you are giving children scripture straight from the God’s Word as well. HIS WORD is what is going to change their hearts.
PERMEATE THEIR HEARTS WITH SCRIPTURE! Here are some different ideas that have worked well for us. Maybe you’ll find something helpful for your family as well.
Training Children to Have Personal Devotions
Personal devotions is the single most basic and necessary habits of the Christian life. Children must be taught early on the necessity and the benefits of a relationship with Christ. They should be taught how to read and reflect, how to actually get something from their reading, and how to pray.
When our daughter was just a toddler, we started her in this exercise of a quiet time in the morning by putting a stack of Bible story board books next her crib to look at when she woke up. Of course, this is doing nothing for her spiritually, but it was putting the habit in place of just sitting still and being QUIET for that first portion of the day.
When she grew out of the board books around age 4, we moved her on to listening to the Bible.is app. Bible.is is awesome because it’s dramatized, so there is background music and a different voice for every character. It brings to life what could be confusing language for even a very young child. And you know what is incredible?! She memorized so much scripture just from listening to her favorite passages over and over again! It’s just an amazing way to get a lot of scripture into a young child in a very short amount of time. And the parent doesn’t have to do any work except for turning the Bible app on for them! This is just perfect for children who can’t read on their own yet. But when they are first learning to read, they can follow along in their own Bible.
Once they are fluent readers, they can transition to reading the Bible for themselves. Concentrate on “easy” Bible passages. Things like their favorite Old Testament Bible Stories, the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Gospels and Acts.
At this point, it’s time to start training them how to read to get something from God’s Word. Provide them with highlighters, pens and a journal so that can write things down that convicted them. Teach them to start their devotions praying Psalm 119:18. “ Lord, please open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law!”
Then teach them how to pray. First teach how to pray about what they are reading. (The 24 Family Ways is good for this to teach during Family Devotion time.) And also teach them how to have a basic prayer time separate from what they’ve read. I love teaching children the ACTS model because it is so simple. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. Prayer is hard. The earlier they can learn how, the better.
Having Family Bible Time
Another thing we started becoming very focused on was to have Family Bible Time. It’s so easy to let this slip if it’s not a priority. In the first few years of parenting, we unfortunately did let this slip, but once God convicted our hearts about getting God’s Word into our daughter, we really had no other choice but to make it a priority.
And when I say Family Bible time, don’t get stuck on the fact that the whole family has to be there in order to make it happen. As a new, and well meaning mother, this is what I got so hung up on in those early years. I was so adament that my husband be the spiritual leader of my home and felt that HE should be the one to lead family devotions. But he’d often be gone or busy, and in the back of my mind, I’d think, “Well, that’s his responsibility, so he needs to do it.” And I’d let that become a wedge in our marriage because I put “spritual leadership” expectations on him, and then be ticked when he didn’t follow through with what I FELT was spiritual leadership of our home. I don’t know where we got the idea that spiritual leadership of a man means he HAS to be the one to lead family devotions, but it is a common thought process that can cause serious rifts in the marriage. My husband is an amazing spiritual leader, but he doesn’t run a family devotions every single day. The Lord really convicted me to stop trying to force my husband into a mold. It was only hurting my marriage. (I’m not saying a husband SHOULDN’T lead family devotions. If he does, that is AWESOME! I’m just saying if/when he doesn’t, don’t get it into your head that your family is ruined forever spiritually.)
B leads family devotions when he can, but more often than not, he’s not able to do it. And if he’s not able to do it, then that responsibility falls on me. And if I’m not doing it when I’m fully capable, then I’M the one that’s wrong. A wise friend with several children (whose husband works crazy hours like mine) once told me that she would have family devotions every morning with her children so it was happening daily, and then if her husband was able, he’d have them at night with everyone. But with mama doing it every morning, it was happening on a regular basis and not just sporadically. We’ve adopted this same routine and it’s worked beautifully. We’ll have family Bible time every morning; if Dad’s here, he joins us, and if not, we still have it. And sometimes he’ll do his own in the evening.
Let me encourage you mama, if you’re in the same situation, don’t cast blame or put a burden on your husband and cause a rift in your marriage. YOU get your Bible out, and make it a priority to teach your children the scriptures YOURSELF. The bottom line is that our children need to be taught scripture whether it’s our husbands or ourselves teaching it.
Running a Family Bible Time does not need to be hard. You can literally Read, Discuss, Sing and Pray. That’s it!
We love using different books for a guide, but you can just read straight out of the Bible. I love the book For Instruction in Righteousness specifically for conviction about sin. The book takes basically all the childhood sins you could possibly think of and gives verses for each sin. It was just so easy to go, “Ok, she really struggled with disobedience today, so tomorrow we are going to read verses about disobedience.” I was amazed to see how God’s Word convicted her heart, and really helped her to see her sin as God sees it. You can literally do entire word or subject studies with this book. It’s so good! Proverbs for Practical Parenting is another book that is similar, but is just focused on the Proverbs. The Child Training Bible is another resource that is a similar idea. I also love Our 24 Family Ways by Clay Clarkson. While it is not KJV, it is a great setup for family devotions. Another favorite thing to do is read a Proverb a day…read the Proverb that corresponds to whatever day of the month it is, so on the 1st I’ll read Proverbs 1 and on the 2nd, Proverbs 2 and so on. The Proverbs are so very convicting.
The key is to just do it. It’s overwhelming to think of the lifetime of Bible training we need to do with our children, but JUST START and take it one day at a time.
Memorizing Scripture Together
Another thing we do is to memorize scripture, especially about specific sins a child might be having a problem with. And this is where the previous books referenced really come in handy because you can easily find a passage on a certain topic, and they are easy to review. The awesome thing about learning verses according to topic or according to sin, is that you can really see the full effect of what God thinks about this sin. So, for example when we’re dealing with arguing, we have learned from this verse— “A fool’s lips enter into contention,” —that fools are the ones who argue. And from this verse— “Only by pride cometh contention,” —that the proud argue. And then of course that comes around to asking, “Do you want to be a fool and proud? That is what God thinks about you when you argue.” And again, just letting God’s Word do the work. I just cannot get over how powerful it is.
Pointing Conversation and Correction back to the Bible
Children have a lot of questions. We can often use everyday conversations as Biblical training. When they hear the news and see that a hurricane killed hundreds of people, they might ask, “Mom, why does God allow that to happen when he knows most of those people are unsaved.” Umph! That’s a hard one. Let’s go to Scripture.
Or you over hear children arguing or see a child push another child and call him an idiot. Wow! We have some work to do. Let’s see what the Bible says about that!
Rather than getting frustrated at all the question or even more, the manifestations of sin in that child’s life, we should instead view each of these moments as OPPORTUNITIES to point our little ones to Christ—to train them in the way that they should go. We don’t need to be weird Bible-thumpers. We just need to live a sincere life. Do we truly believe we should live like the Bible tells us to? We need to show that to our children.
As we pour scripture into their hearts and lives, and they see how God has transformed our own lives because of our salvation, He will work on their little hearts. He will bring them to Him in His time.
Praying that this is helpful to you as you navigate leading your little ones to Christ. I’m looking forward to sharing more again next week.
Sarah