Of course, as a mother, my most fervent prayer is for the salvation of my children. BUT that has to come after they have a complete understanding of who God is. The Old Testament is FULL of beautiful narratives that point us to Christ and teach us about God’s character. Just like our children learn our character (trustworthiness, dependablilty, etc), they need to learn God’s character too.
My biggest struggle with my toddlers was bringing Christ into our daily conversations. I wanted to allow them to really see my dependence on Him. Of course, they see me doing my quiet time, they see me having prayer and leading prayer throughout the day. But were they really seeing that I could not survive without God? They same way my children could not survive without me meeting their needs?
After some advice and guidance from my husband, I started to point things out to my children. Some conversations were basic, “I am so hungry. Did you know that we only have food because God created food (Gen 9:3) and He provided Pop (that’s what they call their dad) a good job that allows us the money to buy nice food even though we don’t even ‘deserve’ it (Matt 6:25-34).” It postures them in thankfulness, and a nice side effect is that is has made my children a little less picky eaters. Some conversations were harder – “I am going to spank you now because I have to teach you obedience in my house (Eph 6:1-3) so that you learn how to be obedient to God when you are grown like me (Rev. 14:12).” Of course this usually gets a little deeper on how God is our Father too and He loves my kids more than I could ever love them, but he hates sin. I could continue on a whole blog post on this, and maybe I will soon. But back to the original point – showing my children the character of God throughout daily routines.
I also heard from Abbey Wedgeworth on her Toddler discipleship stories on instagram (@abbeywedgeworth) on complimenting our children- instead of saying “You are so _____,” try “I am glad God made you so _____.” That little change has also allowed some great conversations with my children. This reminds them that they were created by a loving God who took the time to give them specific qualities unique to them (Psalm 139:14, Luke 12:7, Matt 10:30). They can begin to learn their worth to God and learn how much he cares for them.
In our daily routines we are establishing our dependence on Christ to meet (and usually exceed) our needs AND reminding our children that God created and cares for them. Then, we begin reading these narratives from the Old Testament. We don’t leave out the judgement pages (our children need to know that our God is just in order to learn how great their need for Christ is). We explain that before Christ, God gave the Law (even in the garden, he had one rule). Any type of disobedience had severe consequences. Therefore, you can see though each story in the Bible, God gives the rules and the people disobey. They either repent and God is merciful, or they do not repent and God sends judgement. That is obviously a severely watered-down broad overview, but these are foundational truths that our kids need understand. They can’t think “as long as I act good, then God is happy”. I am sure you’ve seen your child sin multiple times today. Therefore, they deserve death unless the Holy Spirit calls them to repentance.
Think about it, if we leave out the judgement of God and only talk about His mercy, grace, and forgiveness, it doesn’t create a thankfulness for and dependence on Jesus. If we don’t discuss what I (and my children) truly deserve then how can we be thankful for the cross? I am not proposing a doom and gloom teaching of God, but just an accurate portrayal of His character. They depend on us for all their knowledge before they are able to read on their own. It would be a big disservice to leave out critical parts of God’s character especially in light of our children’s eternity.
I hope this gives you some ideas on how to introduce God and point out His character to your children. I have a few resources that I use to lead our daily Bible time that I will link up in another post. Feel free to leave a comment or feedback on our page if you have anything to add! 🙂