The Following Blog Post is By Kati Berreth, Redeemer Kids Director

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 ESV)

I have used the above verses for the past two blog posts because these verses affirm that we are in fact the primary disciplers in our homes and that because of this we are called to disciple our kids daily, regularly, all the time. Yet, these verses are taken out of a larger chunk of scripture that is necessary for us to look at if we are to figure out what we are to actually say to our kids when we disciple them.

                  “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV)

There is one God

So how do these verses help us know what to say to our kids? Look at the beginning of verse 4 - “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”  One of the most important things we can tell our kids is that there is only one God. If your two-year- old can hold up 1 finger, then teach him or her to say “1 God” and repeat that over and over again. It can be just that easy.

Love the Lord

The next part of verse 4 is also crucial in helping us know that we should say to our kids but it is more about our relationship first then about what we should say. We need to love the LORD (our) God with all (our) heart(s) and with all (our) soul(s) and with all (our) might. The more we spend time in His word and in prayer with Him, the more we will want to share what we are learning with our kids.

Today, as I was prepping the curriculum for Sunday in Redeemer Kids, I was overwhelmed by reading about how Jacob literally “held on to God” as he waited to hear back from his brother Esau whom he had tricked and stolen their father’s blessing from 20 years prior. Think back to the last time you were anxiously awaiting news or wrestling with God during the night. Did you cling on to Him and His promises that He has spoken to you in His word and through your prayers? Spending time in the story of Jacob today gave me a new perspective and a new understand of what my relationship could be and should be like with God. I am to love the Lord with everything in me and I get to share this new insight tonight during our devotional time.

But what if you aren’t there yet? What if you don’t love the Lord currently? This is where the story of Jacob can speak to that as well. He clung on to God because the safety of his life and his family’s life was in the hand of the brother he had treated so horribly. All Jacob could do during this time was cling on to the knowledge that God had promised to bless his family beyond anything he could imagine - and we get to cling on to God’s promises as well. 

John 3:16 tells us that “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” God loves us! He loves us so much that He sent His own son as the sacrifice for our sins so that we too could receive His blessing, if we believe, like Jacob. So we can rejoice that even our sin of not loving Him enough or rightly has been forgiven because of Jesus’ perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection - defeating Satan, sin, and death. 

Know the Lord

And the last section of the scripture passage then goes into this idea because we can’t love God unless we know Him, but these verses “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” are telling us specifically how important it is to know God’s commandments. These verses tell us to put them everywhere so that we never forget them. And although we could take these as literally as the Israelites did by wearing head bands with boxes on them containing the scriptures or special bracelets or even bring this idea into our current trend of getting tattoos, I would simply encourage you to know the words of God and His commandments by spending time in the Bible. Read it daily, meditate on it, memorize it, read it to your kids, listen to sermons about it, read commentaries about it. By knowing Him and spending time with Him, your love for Him will grow and that affection will pour out of you and into your kids.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 ESV)

Last post (Part 1) gave 3 steps to start being the primary discipler:

1.     Talk to your kids daily about God

2.     Decide what you are going to say.

3.     Pray for your kids and pray with you kids

And this post I want to focus on the first step “Talk to your kids daily about God” by sharing how this works out in my home and by giving some book titles that I believe are must haves in every Christian home with kids (and without:))!

A conversation with my kids after school….

After school yesterday, I was in the kitchen getting snack ready for my kids while they were prepping their lunches for school the next day. My son, Judson, said to me, “Mom, can I have a peanut-free sandwich tomorrow so I can sit with my friend because he is allergic to peanuts?” I said sure and kept prepping their snack. He then proceeded to have a conversation with his sister about his friend, who I guess used to argue in kindergarten with my niece.

I entered back into the conversation when I hear my daughter say, “That is funny that they used to fight.” My heart sank and in that moment I had two choices. I could either say to her “That isn’t very nice to say” or I could remember that I am one of the primary disciplers in our home and use this as a teaching moment. I decided on the later.

I said to my daughter, “Do you remember the bible story you learned the other week in Redeemer Kids where two people were arguing? What did God say about that?”

She looked at me and said “No” right away. But my two sons both immediately started to squirm and started to tell her the answer. I quickly asked them to stop so that she could answer. Well, to make a long story short, after half an hour of her looking through a children’s bible looking for the answer with no luck because most children’s story bibles don’t include the story of Cain killing his brother, I asked one of her brothers to tell her the story of Cain and Able.

He told her the story in complete detail and we then got to have a conversation about what happens in our hearts when we are angry and how unrighteous anger against someone is a sin and not something that is funny. And although this conversation was much longer and more time consuming then just telling her that what she said wasn’t very nice, it was pretty important for all of us.

My daughter got to learn more deeply about anger, my son was able to teach her about the Bible and practice some leadership skills, and I was given a quick assessment into my kids’ knowledge and retention of what they have been learning and what they know and don’t know in terms of their biblical literacy. And all of this came from simply “talk(ing) of them when you sit in your house” after school while we were prepping and eating snack.

These kinds of spontaneous spiritual conversations are super important and we all need to have them all the time as Deuteronomy 6:6-7 instructs but they also need to happen daily at specific and planned times - just like instructing your kids to brush their teeth. Below are some resources I believe will help you to do this during your family devotionals. I know there are tons of other resources that can do these things, but here are a few books that I believe should be in every Christian home and I will break them out by age appropriateness just in terms of what I have seen work for attention spans.

2-5’s:

Everything a Child Should Know About God by Kenneth Taylor and Jenny Brake

From Marty Machowski, author of The Gospel Story Bible, “Everything a Child Should Know About God” is a pre-school dynamite! Kenneth Taylor explains our incomprehensible God in ways even a four-year-old can understand. Get a copy for your family and introduce your young children to our amazing God and the life transforming, powerful, message of the gospel.”

We are currently using this for our family devotional and it has sparked great conversations with all our kids age 7-12.

The Big Picture Story Bible by David Helm

From Trevin K. Wax, Managing Editor, The Gospel Project, “When serving as a pastor, I frequently purchased and gave this Bible to families with young children in hopes that the parents would read and absorb its message. Here’s a Bible storybook that shows the biblical story from Creation to New Testament - a book that anticipates Jesus in the Old Testament and makes his crucifixion and resurrection the proper climax of the New Testament. My wife and I love it. Our kids love it. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”

3 and up:

The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sallie Lloyd-Jones

From Tim Keller, Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City “I would urge not just families with young children to get this book, but every Christian - from pew warmers, to ministry leaders, seminarians and even theologians! Sally Lloyd-Jones has captured the heart of what is means to find Christ in all the scriptures, and has made clear even to little children that all God’s revelation has been about Jesus from the beginning - a truth not all that commonly recognized even among the very learned.”

Our family uses this bible so much we are on our second copy. The first was getting worn out so we ripped it apart and use it for our advent devotional with the pictures hanging on the wall in our living room each Christmas season. It is an invaluable book to have in your home and to give to friends!

6 and up:

The Gospel Story Bible by Marty Machowski

From Timothy Paul Jones, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Family Ministry, Southern Seminary; editor of The Journal of Family Ministry “I could speak at length about how much I recommend Marty Machowski s books to churches and indeed I do, along with books from a long list of other authors. But Marty s resources for families and children also appear on a far shorter list that places them in a more significant category for me: they are books that I actually use in my home. Again Marty has provided us with a God-centered, Scripture-grounded, gospel-driven resource that orients the minds of children toward the wondrous works of God.”

I hope that theses books bless your families as they have blessed ours!

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 ESV)

Yup, if you are a parent or a primary care-giver, you have been called by God to teacher your kids about Him everyday, every moment, in everything you do. That seems daunting, right? Over the next few blogs, I hope to break down the above verse into small, manageable parts so that the idea of discipling kids isn’t so overwhelming with the hope that as we intentionally disciple our kids, it will become second nature - something that we do as we sit and walk and lie down and rise and text and drive to soccer practice and grocery shop and play video games…

So here are three ways to start being that primary discipler:

1.  Talk to your kids daily about God.

Pick one time during the day when you will consistently - or as consistently as possible with crazy schedules - talk to your kids about God. This could be at breakfast or dinner or before bed. Just pick one and make it a routine.

One way that family devotionals have been consistent for us as a family is that we do them as we finish our meal…notice I said “as we finish” our meal. The reason we do our devotionals as we finish is to help bridge that age gap span between our 4 kids who are 7-12. They are all in different places emotionally, physically and spiritually so everyone is still “present” during each conversation if they are eating and sitting still even if the conversation takes a more mature turn for our 10 year old son. And to be honest, it also helps me - mom - not be rushing to move on to clean up dishes and get ready for bed, which I was always tempted to do when we did devotionals at the end of the meal.

2.  Decide what you are going to say.

For most of us this seems easy in theory but in reality it is really daunting. Questions like what book in the Bible should I read to my kids first or what devotional should I use or do I need to explain the Trinity first or how do I explain reformed theology to my 4 year-old can make the task seem overwhelming. My advice - just start somewhere.

Over the course of parenting for the last 12 years, my family has started and stopped numerous family devotionals. We have read through proverbs, then the Jesus Storybook Bible, and made it through the first quarter of The Long Story Short probably 3 times. We have used the family devotionals provided by Redeemer Kids, The New City Catechism and even done season devotionals. And we start each with good intentions but sometimes they don’t work for the stage of life our kids are in (we have four spanning from 7-12) or for our schedule.

This might sound like we aren’t very “devoted” to devotionals but the reason I shared that is to say it is simply important to make it a priority, even if the devotional you pick doesn’t work long term. If you make it a regular rhythm in your home, then your kids will begin to expect it to happen and they will grow as disciples in their love of God and the Gospel!

3.  Pray for your kids and pray with your kids.

God is sovereign over His relationship with your kids and with you and you get to be the agent that the Holy Spirit uses to teach your kid about Him. How amazing is that! So spend time in prayer asking God to give you the words to speak to your kids and then model this prayer with your kids so that they grow up praying as well.

And help your kids learn to pray corporately by attending Redeemer’s dinner and prayer night. This will not only help you grow in your prayer life by seeing how the Holy Spirit is prompting others to pray, but it will help kids see that this is an amazing thing - not something weird that only your family does at dinner or at bedtime. Your whole family will get to experience being part of the family of Redeemer and petitioning God together.

I pray that as all of us seek to be the primary disciple makers in our homes that we would experience the amazing power of the Gospel more completely and we would fall more in love with our Savior so that we can pass on these affections to our kids.

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Blog post by Kati Berreth (Redeemer Kids Director)

Gospel Communities are just that, a community that is based on the Gospel. As you think about that purpose for gathering, whether it is around a meal, dessert, community event, or in a circle discussing the sermon questions, what brings you all together is your love of the Gospel and your desire for the Gospel to be made known to the ends of the earth.

With that as the purpose, the inclusion of kids into your GC is not as daunting a task as you might think. When we think about including kids into our GC, we often think that means that our GC has to be kid centered. This isn’t true, the same as your GC being young adult, single or married, or just adult centered isn’t the case. Gospel Communities at Redeemer should be and are Gospel Centered. Your GC gets to look Gospel Centered where everyone in your group gets to hear the Gospel proclaimed at some point during your meeting.

So what might that look like? Here are some ways to welcome your future brothers and sisters in Christ that are 2-4 years old into your worship of Jesus at your GC meeting.

1. (Sing and Dance together)  Kids love music so if you have someone in your group who plays the guitar, ask him or her to bring it and sing a few songs together. The more you do this, repeating the same songs, the faster the kids will be able to pick up on the lyrics and sing along with you…and until that time, let them dance to the Lord, just like David did. There are not a lot of things sweeter in life than seeing a 2 year old dance to music that praises God without inhibitions or a 4 year old singing “Here I raise my Elbowneezer:)”
2. (Pray together) After your meal or dessert and before kids go off to play (which is a great way for them to be building community as well so continue to let them play with their friends) stand in a circle holding hands (which keeps busy hands still for a few minutes) and ask everyone to pray for the person on their left. Praying together will model how to pray aloud not only to the kids but to some adults in the room as well. And if there are older kids you can modify the prayer time to assign families to pray using ACTS - Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication to focus the prayer time.
3. (Read the word together) Gather everyone together and have kids sit on laps or on the floor with their parents and read the verses that are going to be discussed out loud to the kids. If it is a long chunk of scripture you can read a few verses that are applicable or if those verses are in the Jesus Storybook Bible or Gospel Story Bible read them out of there. These books are amazing and always take everything back to the Gospel - which is great for adults as well. Be sure to ask questions as you go to engage the kids or if things are listed or numbered have the kids repeat those lists or numbers using movement…it really helps them to engage if they can move their bodies in some way.
4. (Build or Craft together) Crafting or having families build something together as an attention getter towards the text will help kids and parents alike engage in the text. Kids who are tactile become adults who are tactile and doing an activity that is related or even just gets everyone engaged in a fun way to help build community.
5. (Family Devotion together) Each week Redeemer Kids hands out a family devotional to parents as they leave. These are also posted with the sermon questions. I would encourage you all to look at these and incorporate them into your GC. Attention getting activities, books of the bible memorization, questions, and specifics in regards to prayer are all included and can be modified for your GC setting. These devotionals usually connect what happened in RK on Sunday to the sermon to help parents be the primary discipleship makers in their child’s lives…which can be modeled and encouraged in a GC setting.

Hopefully these ways to engage 2-4 year olds will help you make sure that everyone gets to hear the good news of the Gospel as you meet and will strengthen your relationships in your GC family.

photo credit: KkleinRN via photopin cc

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photo credit: nickcastonguay via photopin cc