We’re continuing our conversation about the 1st Key to Keeping Your Children Engaged in Church: Intentional Spiritual Training at Home.
I answered What IS Intentional Spiritual Training at Home. You’re clearly interested in the answer to the next question because you’re here again and I’m SO GLAD! I didn’t want to throw shade and make people feel bad about not spiritually training their children at home. My goal is to empower parents to train their own children – using church, Sunday School, Youth Group, Awanas, and all the other good stuff as vitamins, not the main meal.
Today I’ll answer the question:
What does Intentional Spiritual Training at Home include?
Here’s a non-exhaustive list with links to related devotionals:
1. Teaching your children the truth about Jesus and their need for Him then giving them an opportunity to accept His gift of salvation
2. Praying for and with your children (Here’s one devotional about praying for your children’s teachers and class)
3. Reading the Bible to and with your children
4. Encouraging your children to get baptized in obedience to Jesus’ command (“The Importance of Baptism” and “What to do When Your Children are Ready to be Baptized”)
5. Empowering your children to share their faith in Jesus with others to give others a chance to follow Jesus
6. Talking about everyday life in light of Scripture
I have a FREE resource for all of us parents to help us determine our children’s next faith step that’s based on the first 5 actions listed. You can learn more about the resource HERE or just go get it by going to my website (BethMeverden.com) and signing up for my email list. It will bring these devotionals directly to your email each Monday morning.
Let’s expand each of the things on that list a little more. Honestly, go check out any of those devotionals that I linked for you for more information and encouragement. I wrote them for you, so please take advantage of them!
1. Teaching your children the truth about Jesus is also known as “Presenting the Gospel” or Good News about Jesus.
It’s, you know, the most important thing you could ever do for your children. Because you love God and know He loves them, too, you need to tell them how much He loves them.
I heard a story today at a Family Time Training luncheon for Children’s Ministry Leaders about a woman who grew up in the church, attending every Sunday of her life, and was even a part of the choir, but never heard the Gospel until she was an adult. What a sad story. What a waste. She was doing all the things – even serving (Church Skill Set… don’t worry we’ll get to it), but didn’t know about Jesus’ deep love for her and her deep need for Him.
Let’s not let this story be our children’s testimony, please. Please. You know Jesus loves them, please tell them and give them a chance to spend their entire lives loving Him back.
2. Praying for and with your children
I realized I haven’t written much about this on my devotional blog, so that’s a good next challenge. Here’s what’s important. Prayer is thinking thoughts to God. He hears you whenever you speak to Him. You can talk to Him about anything and everything, so… do and then teach your children how to do the same. Talk to Him about everything, wherever you are, but you’ll need to do it out loud so your children can learn how to talk to Him, too.
Have them practice praying out loud, too.
I heard another story about some parents who didn’t want to force their children to pray, so they just prayed and waited for their children to want to pray aloud, too. Then Grandma came over to babysit and at bedtime she said, I’ll pray and then each of you will pray and we’ll go to bed. Because Grandma gave them the opportunity to pray, they just did it. Sadly, one of the children was almost seven. She didn’t know she could talk to God until she was in 1st grade. Parents, come on now. My children were saying, “Dedus, Tee-Too fo food, may-men” almost as soon as they could talk because we said, “This is what we do before we eat. This is what we do before we go to bed. This is what we do when someone needs prayer.”
When you set the standards about talking to God and show them how to do it, they’ll be praying about things you didn’t even think to.
3. Reading the Bible to and With Your Children
This is another one I need to write more about. When you open the Bible with your children, they see it as a normal, expected thing to do. When you say, “This is the Word of God and it’s important to read” by reading it to and with them, they’ll believe you. And their lives will be changed because of its truth.
If we say we trust God to lead and speak to our children, we must give Him every opportunity to do so. Read it to your kids. My favorite kids’ Bible is The Jesus Storybook Bible because it points every story in the Bible back to Jesus. If you don’t have a copy in your house, get one.
4. Encouraging your children to get baptized in obedience to Jesus’ command
Read those other devotional blogs. They’ve got the information you need for this point!
5. Empowering your children to share their faith in Jesus with others to give others a chance to follow Jesus
First make sure your children know the truth about Jesus, then make sure they know part of knowing Jesus is sharing Jesus. The link above will help explain that!
6. Talking about everyday life in light of Scripture.
Yep… this one needs its own devotional. Next time we’ll talk more in-depth about what this looks like in our homes.
Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power. Psalm 145:4
Things to Ponder
- Which of the 5 areas of discipleship do you need to work on with each of your children?
- What makes these areas of discipleship so important to intentionally spiritually training your children?
Train Your Child 