At Home with God

My children clean their teeth most days now without us having to ask (though they do still need the odd reminder).   This is the fruit of some very intentional work on our part as parents. We saw personal as an essential part of their preparation for future life so built in a routine of brushing their teeth from when they were very little.  Supporting the more when they were younger, then encouraging them and now leaving them to it.  In the same way we should encourage our children to develop their own times of reading the Bible.  In our home this is encouraged from when they have the skills to be able to read the simplest Bibles and are older than five so able to take some measure of responsibility for it.  Set a target Set a target of reading for your children, perhaps by guiding them to a particular book. For children in primary school a few verses or a short story is a good starting point, for children in secondary school a chapter a day is very achiev...

It can be daunting to know where to start when it comes to reading the Bible as a family.  I’m not thinking so much about the  how  we can read the Bible together – there are hundreds of amazing resources and suggestions out there that address this. Rather, I am seeking to reflect on  what  we should be reading.  Where should we start? Here are 8 ideas of places to begin your Bible reading journey as a family. These have come from history, personal experience and from speaking with the oldest members of our congregations to hear what their parents used to do for them when they were children.   1. T he core stories.  When children are young you can simply open a Bible story book, snuggle up on the sofa and start to read. Stories of Jonah, Adam and Eve, David & Goliath and the miracles of Jesus are all the more gripping when hearing them for the first time and enjoyable when they become well known. They help lay a foundation of Bible knowle...

In this series of three blogs, I want to reflect on the importance of exposing our children to the Bible in the home.  This first article we look at the importance of reading the Bible together. In the next article we consider places where we can start to read the Bible. Finally, we will look at how we can encourage a regular habit of Bible reading and personal devotion.  Why? But first a quick comment on  why  we should prioritize reading the Bible together. In times past, reading the Bible together as a family was consider the normal daily thing to do. With increased time pressures of modern living and decreased communication across the generations, family Bible reading times are not as common as they should be.    That’s not to pile guilt on parents, but it is a statement that we should seek to read the Bible together regularly as a family, even if it is only a verse a day on the way out of the door or in the car on the school run.    The ...

Over the years, we surveyed the children under our care so we could look after them better and target the ministry to where they were at. Time after time the same concerning result would come back. No matter what we did there was a hard core of 20% of our regular church children, raised in Christian homes, who believed that you had to be good to go to heaven. Every month we made sure the Gospel message of God’s grace was included somewhere in our teaching programme. So much so that one seven-year-old even commented to his mum after church,  “Mum, I think I’m ready for adult church now.” “Why is that dear?” “All we talk about in children’s church is the cross and I know all about that.” Long pause while the mother processed this fact. “But that’s all we really talk about in adult church too!” Of course, we covered many topics over the months, giving the children as much of the meat of God’s word as we could, but this seven-year-old had clearly picked up our repeated emphasis on the ...

Under Pressure Children sat in class are requested to accept that there is no difference between male and female, that gender is subjective and self-determined. In church, they learn that God made mankind male and female. Constantly pressured to compromise or fear being shunned, our children are placed on the cutting edge of modern dilemmas in this world. Sectors of society are trying to redefine tolerance – no longer do they want it to mean that I can disagree with someone’s opinion but still live with them. Now you are considered intolerant simply if you disagree. When the Bible is no longer the basis for our moral code, the potential for eroding Biblical values is endless. The self-appointed thought police take jurisdiction over any area of life they choose, even if it changes centuries of established wisdom and practice. In this context, are we raising a generation who will be able to continue to stand for God, with love, but without compromise? Every New Doctrine? Many children ra...

Parents think their children do it too much. Children want to do it more (they already do it more than six hours every day on average). The online world is drawing our children deeper in and while some embrace this without reservation and others shun every aspect of new technology, desiring the life of the Amish community, most of us are stuck somewhere in between these two extremes. Going out of town on rural retreats with a group of young people can be amusing. “What’s the wifi passcode?” is quickly followed by “What! No wifi!” Yet perhaps amusing is the wrong word. Surely bemusing even concerning is more appropriate. Surrounded by God’s creation, which shouts out, declaring the glory of the invisible God who is clearly seen, our children are not in sync with their surroundings, but looking for their next download fix. Could it be that a yearning for the virtual world is masking a desire for the spiritual? One of the greatest challenges in discipling this generation is to manage the...

Effective learning Do we teach our children Bible memory verses effectively? Will they remember those verses a year from now (or even next week)? These questions have bothered me for some time.  As we travel through Africa we see children aged five who know huge portions of Scripture. When we travel t hrough the Western nations we find that often many children raised in the church do not know John 3 verse 16!  This is not the only verse in the Bible, but surely it is the first one that most people should learn, with the whole Gospel packed inside. When it comes to teaching verses I have vacillated on other questions too: What version of the Bible should we teach our children memory verses from? Which verses should we teach them? Over the years I have swung between these two options. I love the short sentences of the ICB: For God loved the w orld so much that he gave his only Son.  God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life. Th...