Teaching God's Truth to Our Children

It has brought my husband and I tremendous joy to watch our firstborn daughter grow and develop from a newborn to a toddler. We praise God continually for her capacity and eagerness to learn. As any parents can attest to, it is a remarkable experience to witness your child approach and conquer various milestones.

My husband and I are beyond excited to watch her continue acquiring knowledge throughout the span of her life. We are especially eager to see her discover the truth about God--who He is and what He's done for her through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Convinced that God has entrusted us with the responsibility of training our children to know and love Him, we recently set out to establish a system of spiritual instruction that would work for our family in this season of life.  As we've pursued this God-given task of instructing our daughter, God has been abundantly faithful to provide our family with helpful ideas, materials and scriptures to implement.

As an encouragement to other parents who desire to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, I wanted to share some of the practical principles that have helped to shape our family's current regimen.

1. Depend on God to Give the Growth-It is clear from God's word that our parental responsibility is to merely plant seeds of truth while praying and trusting God alone to grow our children's faith. This truth keeps me anchored to my teaching mission, helps to alleviate my worries, and stretches my faith in God all at once. God is in the business of making dead hearts come alive-- through faith in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We have only to commit ourselves to the work of Godly instruction and place our complete hope in Him to grant our children new life. 
2. Consider Your Content-When I first started praying about what to teach our daughter specifically from God's word, I settled upon the Gospel of Mark.  I literally spent hours trying to put each subsection of Mark into "toddler friendly" language.  Admittedly, I began to overcomplicate and over think the concepts in the text (sin, forgiveness, repentance, etc) and how to effectively communicate them to a toddler. I started to doubt myself and my decision to teach Mark. I humbly took a step back from my initial plan and began to consider the core components of the Gospel. I broke down the Gospel into 12 main points, which could be formulated into 12 guiding questions. Then, I found simple memory verses that captured the essence of each point. Since toddlers learn best with consistent exposure to concepts over time, I decided to devote an entire month to exploring each question with our daughter. Once my content was clear, it was easier for me to plan out related activities and lessons. 
3. Consider Your Season-With the impending birth of our second daughter, we knew that the system of instruction we created would have to be sustainable. If it required excessive, unrealistic amounts of time to plan and implement, then it probably wouldn't happen on a consistent basis. I developed a template that would enable us to stick to a predictable, manageable rotation of activities from Monday through Friday. For example, every day we review our memory verse and use our Bible felt board to explore the question of the month. On Mondays, we do a coloring sheet related to the question of the month. On Tuesdays, we use playdough to explore the question of the month, etc. This systematic approach to instruction has kept us organized and prepared, has given our daughter access to various creative platforms, and should allow us to maintain a sense of routine once our newest little blessing has arrived!
4. Consider Your Gifts-As a former Early Childhood Educator, I am well accustomed to creative tasks. I thoroughly enjoy creating things--schedules, learning activities, crafts, and the like! So, when I started scanning Pinterest for instructional inspiration, I was drawn to the thought of creating and utilizing a felt board to help facilitate our daughter's spiritual learning. I recognize that not all parents have the time, desire, or ability to trace and cut out billions of miniature Bible figures--but this was a project I knew I would enjoy designing to meet our family's needs.  If you're gifted in music, use music! If you're gifted in technology, use technology! Use the gifts, talents and passions the Lord has given to you to do the work He has called you to do.
5. Consider Your Child-Just as God has designed my husband and I to enjoy certain tasks and activities over others, He has designed our daughter with her own unique preferences as well. So, with that in mind, it has been helpful to plan activities that cater to her current likes and interests. If your toddler despises painting, it probably wouldn't be the most effective teaching tool for you to use. I think it's safe to say that most toddlers are enthusiastic about coloring, playdough, drawing and making tangible crafts. Since we've observed this to be true with our own daughter, we have made those things central to our instruction. As she gets older, we can reevaluate her evolving interests and talents and adapt our teaching strategies as needed. 
6. Treasure What You Teach-There's so much more to Godly instruction than imparting mere facts about God to our children. Our Children need to see that we treasure the spiritual truths we are teaching them. Over the month of March, we were exploring the concept of Creation. As we were teaching our daughter that God created the day, the night, the sun, the animals, and the plants, I couldn't help but stop and consider: was I personally in awe of God's creation? As I accompanied her on walks outside to observe the vibrant array of flowers and the endless expanse of sky above, I couldn't help but stop and consider: did I myself gaze upon God's handiwork with wonder and amazement? Yes, it's important for our children to know the truth about God in their heads, but it's equally important for them to treasure the truth of God in their hearts. We have the opportunity to model this for them by treasuring what we teach. It has been helpful to spend personal time reflecting on the content we are teaching--thereby allowing God's word to dwell richly in our own hearts first.
7. Be Flexible, Yet Faithful-The schedule we follow from day to day is flexible. If we have errands or a playdate scheduled for the morning, our instruction can take place in the afternoon (and vice versa). On some days, we might not even get to our spiritual actvities at all! Life happens--and that's OK!!!! However, there is an undeniable temptation to let one lax day run into the next. Laziness has a subtle way of creeping into our lives and preventing precious seeds of truth from being planted and watered. So while there is much room and grace for flexibility, we have learned that we must also fight against our laziness daily in order to remain faithful and intentional about our spiritual instruction. 
8. Ask for New Mercies Each Day-Difficult days will come. I can remember sitting down with our daughter at the felt board one morning, eager to start our Bible time and brimming with patience. We began to talk about God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit--placing the corresponding felt pieces on the board. Well, my daughter couldn't quite get one of the pieces to rest on the board in the exact way she wanted. And so, she attempted to reposition it. Still no luck. She tried again. Then again. And then again, still. She was fixated and I was getting frustrated. I finally snapped and shouted something along the lines of, "Just leave it!!!!" She stopped dead in her tracks and her little eyes began to well up with tears. You can imagine how horrible and hypocritical I felt in that moment--attempting to teach her about our inexhaustibly patient and gracious God with the most impatient and ungracious attitude. But God supplied me with mercy, right then and there, to confess my sin to her and ask for her forgiveness. Yes--difficult days will come. But His mercies are new every morning. 
9. Plan Ahead-Throughout my 3 years as a professional educator, I had to learn the critical skill of planning ahead. Effective planning yields effective learning. So, before Monday rolls around, I try to look at the week ahead and lay out all the materials I'll need. When I fail to plan ahead in this way, I tend to become paralyzed by my own lack of organization and I'm prone to abort my teaching mission entirely. 
10. Stay Humble-The power of any changed heart lies in the Gospel. Our resources and methods, as "perfect" or "impressive" as we may secretly think they are, pale in comparison to the transforming power of God's word itself. God deserves all the glory for every abiding seed of truth that is planted within the soil of our children's souls. So then, we must remain humble, not haughty, when it comes to the instruction of our children. We might be tempted, at times, to compare and contrast our own family's teaching methods with those of another family in a prideful, critical way. We must resist the urge to do so and instead pray for God's word to be faithfully and effectively proclaimed by all of our fellow, God-fearing parents.

Helping our daughter learn about God has been a learning experience of our own. Although the content of what we teach our children as believers is non-negotiable (we are to teach them the truth of God's word as revealed to us in the Bible), the process we use to teach them can (and should) look different for every family!

I do not share our family's current methods in a boastful way, but in a "I'm so encouraged by God's guidance through our journey and want to encourage other parents to persevere in discovering and employing what works best for them" kind of way! 

Below, I've shared some of the resources I've developed to guide our designated "Bible Time" at home. If you have any questions about how we utilize these templates and tools, I would be more than happy to explain!

Also, I would love to hear what has worked for your family! So please feel free to leave your comments below!

This is the content of our instruction right now. We spend an entire month exploring each question. We also spend a whole month memorizing the verse that corresponds to each question. 

This is a calendar template we use to plan our instruction each month. I use this to keep track of the question we are exploring, the verse we are memorizing, and the sequence of related activities we are doing each week.  

This is the 5x7 frame we have displayed on our dining room table every day. We attempt to set aside time at the beginning of every meal for reciting and memorizing our monthly verse. It was Jesus himself who said, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." It is our family's conviction that we, too, must feast on God's word as if our lives depended on it. It is a low-maintenance method of memorization that we have found to be fruitful for our daughter, as well as for us!

This is our "Bible Board" that we utilize Monday through Friday. This is a great visual for young children and has helped us to more effectively unpack the question of the month. As you can see, this month we are exploring the creation of Adam and Eve!