Instilling the word of God unto the hearts of your children is forever an ongoing process. During a conversation a few years ago about children’s spiritual growth, a church leader sarcastically said, “yeah who really does family devotions anyways.” I will admit I didn’t say “we do.” I felt embarrassed and naive that we were doing it. I should’ve spoke up, but no one usually want to listen to the wisdom of a new mom, because what do we really know. But new moms still have excitement, drive, and hopes that contrast the cynical, self-centered, lukewarm view of some empty-nesters. I didn’t need to be told to quit trying Family devotions, but encouraged to keep it up because it will be tough. I needed advice, that only an experienced mature believer can give, on how to wade through those tantrum waters ahead. But that’s not what was offered and I wonder how many other moms feel alone, helpless, exhausted, failures, and confused and all the advice they get is “you were foolish for even trying.” I’ve been blessed with a strong extended family to help guide, but not everyone has that. So after our complete utter disaster of today, I wanted to share what real life Family Bible time looks like at home, in hopes to encourage someone else. We do a couple things right now: •Family Bible Study •Family Quiet Time •Memory Verse Reading Right now, for our Family Bible Study, we have a Bible basket that holds my two Bibles, my devotional, and our children’s picture Bibles. The boys can pick which Bible to read and look at pictures quietly while I get my own reading in. Once I have my own time, I read a chapter aloud out of my Bible and a story from theirs that they have chosen. We end in prayer...at least that’s how Hallmark would show it. Today we took our Bibles on our morning walk to do our Family Bible reading. The boys reading on their own is new to them, but we’re trying to teach them the habit of daily being in the word. So far, the three year old wants nothing of it. He refused to open his Bible and complained. The baby took his short baby time, but while he was quiet, the three year old whined. Then baby was finished and crying to climb on the rock, so my own quiet window was lost. I read my devotional to the sound of complaining children and then read a chapter of Proverbs to them, while they climbed on the rock, repeatedly brushing ants off the baby and taking pebbles from his hands. Then the three year old complained he wanted a snack I fought the urge to scold a plethora of Christian guilt to try to manipulate my child to opening his Bible. It’s so hard to accept that as a parent I have no control over my child’s heart. There’s no magic words or steps to promising a little angel heart, devoted to God and obedience. But even if he was sitting pleasantly, singing hymns, and whispering little child prayers to God, it doesn’t mean a thing. He could just know how to manipulate a situation to look good and get mommy’s approval, and I could get an A+ at raising a little hypocrite. So I look for the silver lining; he’s honest with me. I’m seeing his true heart so I know how to pray. He actually did end up flipping through his Bible on the rock, while I was reading aloud, and he even asked a question about one of the proverbs so he WAS LISTENING. They’re learning it’s important. I’m learning to hold my tongue, to persevere, and that God calls me to instruct them, not to change their heart, I must leave that to Him. I don’t save. I am not the giver of knowledge and understanding. He is. So we’ll do it again tomorrow. Again, I’ll take a deep breath and ignore the attitudes and whining. I’ll try to read a bit myself and share how special our time is. This afternoon will be our family quiet time and they like that, but we’ve been doing it longer. We get out our special blankets and lay on the floor and be still, listening to God, praying, or thinking about him. I try to alternate doing it with and without baby. He needs to learn the habit of sitting still, but he doesn’t get it yet. He’s crawling all over and thinks it’s a wonderful time, so it’s a bit distracting. The thing, is he knows it’s a special time and he IS learning. We did quiet time during baby’s nap yesterday and forgot to put away the blankets. He squealed when he saw them and immediately sat down...and then stood up and sat in a new spot...and then found another new spot. He isn’t quiet, being still lasts maybe 10 seconds, but he wants to do it with us. Very rarely is anything picture perfect, and if it is it lasts just long enough to maybe snap a picture but that’s it. A picture makes a specific time last forever because it stopped that time, but time doesn’t stop and neither does a toddler. Memory verse reading is simply that, my Bible is usually on the table during meals and I read the same verses over and over. I underline the verse and mark each page with some sparkly washi tape to make it easy to find. We all end up learning the verses and little Danny enjoys the routine and repetition. Slowly more verses are added, so at this point we already sometimes don’t get through them all, but Danny knows almost all of them. Danny isn’t a performer and if he’s told to memorize or asked to recite he will dig in his heels and refuse to do anything. The pressure of messing up makes him refuse to try, so we don’t even act like it’s anything more than reading. For a time he wanted to say them with me, but now he refuses. He comments at church if he hears one he knows, and he regularly recites Joshua 1:9 to me the moment I’m showing any frustration. So, I’ll give up having a performing monkey and trust God to do the work. If I stay consistent at reading them, the boys are hearing them as well, and whether they want to memorize them or not, they are. We are just working a little slower, but I don’t know who we’d be racing anyways. These times aren’t perfect or consistent. There’s days where I’m grumpy or seasons where we’ve gotten out of the habit, but just because a habit broke doesn’t mean we can’t pick it back up. I remember in high school my pastor saying, “if you quit reading the Bible because you failed to read the whole thing in a year, so what! Keep going! Don’t you think God would rather have you read it than quit because YOU didn’t meet the timing YOU decided.” I apply the same reasoning to family quiet time. I’m to be faithful, that doesn’t mean perfect. If we’ve gotten off track, praise the Lord for his graciousness in showing me, praise Him for His patience, His mercy, His forgiveness. He knew I’d fail and never expected me not to, that’s why He sent Christ. Praise Him for providing a Savior, for His unconditional love, for His direction and discipline, and get back to where we need to be.
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Living the gospel daily.What does that mean? What does that really look like? As I sat down this morning for my quiet time, this is what the focus of the day was, The gospel, the Word of God being living and active in my life now. It should have changed everything in my life, it’s impact woven through the way I think and act. Here's an excerpt from today: ”..the gospel redefines how we understand our whole story, how we think about the meaning of life, how we understand the human struggle, where we get our identity, where we look for peace and security, what we consider in life to be dangerous, what we see as successful living...” ”..When Jesus takes up residence in us everything in life changes. Nothing remains the same. Now if you don’t know this, you celebrate your salvation, but for help with your marriage, parenting, sex, money, friendships, fear, addictions, decisions, and such, you don’t look to the gospel. You log on to Amazon.com and scan for the latest self help book... You’ve forgotten who you are as a child of God.” Paul Tripp, New Morning Mercies This was just the conversation I was having with my brother the other day, as I was asking his opinions on the influences I allow on my kids, and the methods I use to teach them. His comment was that there is no greater teacher of wisdom, critical thinking, persuasive speaking, etc., than the Bible, and Christ himself. If we take time to really look at the the gospels and what Christ is saying, we see he IS the greatest teacher. How true and freeing that was to be reminded of! Why did I start to forget the power and completeness of the gospel?! The Bible truly is the best source for teaching, and how wonderful it is that God has given us all such a blessing to have his word at our fingertips! So, the spirit of God should be working in every aspect of my life, including parenting. The gospel isn’t just something we hear at church. It changes us. How have I see the spirit working? What does this look like practically? Well, if you’re are a parent, then you know how time and time again you are put in situations where you are completely at loss on what to do. You see your limitations, your lack of wisdom, your inability to completely help and solve every problem your child throws at you. It is humbling, discouraging, frustrating, but is also where you can allow God to take control if you are willing to submit to him. We’ve been battling anger and tempers right now in our parenting journey. My kid definitely has my temper and gets mad to the point of being out of control. I get it 100%! That’s me. The problem is I don’t really know how to help. He’s sobbing in frustration and learning that throwing things, hitting others, or biting himself all aren’t ok ways of dealing with his feelings. When I was mad as a kid, I’d ride the fourwheeler or shoot some pine cones with the BB gun to take a break and calm down, but those aren’t good options for a toddler. We pray, but that honestly just irks him more, and again, wrong as it is, I get it! When I’m mad, I’m mad at God too. Don’t hug me, lecture me, belittle the issue, just give me space, and talk to me later, But how do you help a toddler who doesn’t even understand what he’s feeling and why? We were praying, disciplining, trying to give better solutions, modeling how to talk it out, but we were grasping at straws and felt like we were drowning. (That drowning feeling is usually a good hint that I’ve been trying to be in control of something instead of giving it to God.) Then, finally one day God revealed to me what was before right before my dumb eyes, Danny’s favorite Bible story, The Talking Donkey. Every morning we read the story about Baalam’s talking donkey. And what does angry Baalam do? Hit his nice donkey. Seriously, I feel like God must have been rolling his eyes at how dense I was for not seeing this as my kid requested it every morning. But finally, thanks to the Holy Spirit, I finally saw a way to connect scripture to the issue at hand. So now if he’s mad or hits, we talk about Baalam. Walk about how Baalam sinned. How Baalam could have acted in a better way. We even called Baalam on the play phone and talked about forgiveness, something that has been very challenging around here. It hasn’t completely solved the issues. Like any normal human being my kid still gets mad, makes mistakes, needs to calm down, but I’m now learning to try to connect the situation to a story in scripture and it greatly calms him down. As I work through those times I have peace, I’m no longer drowning, because I’m letting God teach me and him. Isn’t it funny how as a kid you think parenting is all about training kids, and then you realize it’s God training and teaching adults by using kids. My child listens better to a story about someone else struggling with the same thing over just lecturing on why his behavior isn’t ok. We talk about times I have struggled and needed to make a better choice and we talk about people in the Bible. The other issue we’ve been battling is him making noises at us when he’s mad. In not knowing how to properly handle correction, he’s been getting disciplined for making what we’ve been referring to as animal sounds. Again the Holy Spirit stepped in. Who acted like an animal in the Bible? King Nebuchadnezzar!!!! Here I already had experience telling this story to a bunch of toddlers thanks to BSF covering it just months before. Little did I realize God was training me in the story to be prepared to use it to teach my child. How good is He! Suddenly if found myself telling the story of someone who REALLY acted like an animal. I was careful to not stretch the story to fit my parenting needs, although it was scary how tempting it was. I just shared the truth of the story and the lesson in it. Even though it didn’t relate to what I wanted my kid to learn, I trusted that maybe God wanted to teach him something different than I did. God knows my child perfectly. He sees his heart. So I felt at peace talking about Nebbuccanezzar’s arrogance before God, his depraved mind, and what wisdom without God is really like, and let go of the perfect obedience lecture I wanted to give. Discipline is an opportunity to share the gospel with my child, to come together before God, and that is what God provided, so I had to let go of how I wanted the teaching moment to be and follow where God was taking us. The freeing feeling of peace after these issues helps me know God is working. I’m sure plenty of Christian parents would have frowned on the whole Nebuchadnezzar situation and how I handled it. The story did distract him from the issue. I didn’t reconnect it to the behavior by saying something like “God made Nebuchadnezzar an animal for not obeying.” I can’t change scripture to meet my needs. The lesson of Nebuchadnezzar was different so I just shared that lesson. But I trust God. He led me to the story. Somehow he is going to use it. Who am I to say I know exactly what the most important lesson is for my kid?! Bottom line is, I can’t change my child. Only God can. His wisdom is perfect. His word is perfect. He provides for us all we need, including our parenting needs. We’re still working through these issues. This post in no way it so say we solved toddler tantrums, but God truly does provide all we need in his word. His spirit provides all the wisdom we can ever need or get.
With baby boy's language skills rapidly developing, I am beginning to gear up for starting scripture memorization. Kids tend to have this amazing ability to memorize things easily and I don't want to waste those years. While we want to wait to school, we believe you can never start teaching them God's truth too soon. Right now we read Proverbs 8, Psalm 23, and Danny's verse we picked for him (Eph 3:16-21) when we are at the table. Bible time in the morning has become just what we do, something his Daddy did a great job doing over the summer. Baby gets his breakfast and then says "pray" and "Bi" (Bible) always giggling with excitement, waiting to be asked what books he wants to read. He always requests "Ro" and "John" (Romans and John), which is what we've been doing in BSF, and if we still have time we read an additional Psalm and Proverb. He is getting the reference down to his verse, although we're the only ones that understand him, and he loves hearing us read and says "gen," (again) every time we get to the end. I'm learning that even in a church setting, the mention of wanting to do scripture memorization, family scripture reading, morning devotions, or anything like it is found pretty annoying. Even more so out of the older moms about to be empty nesters, I hear 'it just isn't practical,' or 'who really does that,' or 'don't even try you'll just fail.' But here's the thing, in elementary school I had to memorize one verse a week as part of our Bible grade. It was just the norm to have weekly verses along with our spelling words to learn. We did it and the verses could get quite lengthy. Do I remember all of them? No, but I do remember a lot. Now let just think about what this meant at school for scripture memorization. If there's 36 weeks in a school year, after 5 years we would have memorized 180 different verses and that is only doing one verse a week, no passages! That's a lot of verses! I've realized if I continue down the homeschool path for my kids, the responsibility of scripture memorization falls completely on me. There is no school to rely on, and yeah it's extra work for me, but that's not an excuse to not do it. The lesson to learn from the older Debbie Downers, is truly living this out is hard, and I believe it. I'm not the most organized and diligent person, so this will require some serious training for me, but I've got to at least try. I really love the book of Deuteronomy (I know its weird). It spoke so much to me as a new parent and really showed me that I was not to take teaching my children about God and his word lightly. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deut 6:4-9 If we really take this verse to heart, we should be using every possible moment and opportunity to teach our children about God. It is my job as a parent to teach them, not just throw them in church and let them worry about it. Finding time to teach my kids about God comes down to my priorities. Letters, shapes, numbers really all need to take a back seat, but it is so easy to get lost in the wordly battle for grades and neglect spending the time learning God's word. And then there's the laziness; sometimes I just don't want to do it. Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done. Deut 11:1-7 The passage above hit me so hard. Here the people were being commanded to remember what God had done, his blessings, his power. How often am I having these conversations with my kids about what God has done for me? Not only do they need to hear it, but it's also a sure fast way at snapping me out of any ungratefulness. The thing is, when you study the Bible, you learn the people of Israel failed. They didn't do this stuff and their kids didn't know and obey God like they should. It's been hard for parents from the beginning, but God didn't seem to say that was an excuse. I cringe now feeling the overload of judgement coming my way over this. I can just hear the, "I'm just waiting for her to crash and burn." The thing is, I know I'll fail. I'll fail over and over and over again, but that doesn't mean I don't keep trying every time God gets me back on track. Ever since we were married, I began slowly writing down verses I wanted to memorize or have my kids memorize. After 5 years of slowly picking away at it, I have a spreadsheet of verses for my kids. Unfortunately, I haven't been consistent with it so it isn't even near covering the entire Bible, but it is a great starting point and I keep adding to it as I find more. I'm sure there are plenty of books out there on where to start with kids, what verses to learn and when, but I wanted to do what I felt God was putting on my heart. Right now I have over 145 passages listed and it keeps growing. Will my kids learn all of them? Probably not. I'd love them to, but if I'm being realistic, no they won't. I plan to use this as a guide line for selecting verses, going by age and topic to help me sort which is right for each child. I want my kids memorizing what they need, not that they don't need it all, but sometimes you need to hear a specific truth. The verses are more grouped by age but are no way in order. I don't really feel like there is a right order, just picking and choosing what is best for each kid along the way. I'm bad a memorizing scripture, always wanting to, but never getting around to it, so this list helps me a lot. As I begin teaching my kids it will force me to memorize them too, at least while they can't read. I figured I've already got the list so why not share it. If I can help make this so unachievable task a little easier for someone else, why not do it?! I will continue to add to it as I find more and more through my own study. So here it is. Just click the link and you can view it in google. I organized the verses by the earliest age I wanted to start kids learning the verse, PK (pre-k) being the youngest and MS (middle school) the oldest. I recorded the verse topic or paraphrased what it is, because I'm horrible a references. I also listed any method/materials that exist for each verse to help aid memorization or give further insight on the verse. There are also columns to list a child's name and record which ones they have learned, that way I can print it and keep track, hopefully helping them keep them fresh in their mind.
Right now we're doing the verses I listed in the beginning of this post. Our newest addition is Psalm 56:3-4, which I've added to the songs we sing at bedtime. There's no schedule. He may not say it until he is three, but we're just trying to learn and make it a fun special time. He's hearing God's word daily and that's what is important. |
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