Parenting is hard!
I’ve been pondering these questions lately: How can I inspire my children? How can I give them a hunger for God’s word? How do I combat the selfishness and entitlement that our culture propagates? How do I change my kid’s hearts?
The answer is simple. I can’t.
I’m in desperate need of God’s help to shepherd my kids! He is the one that changes hearts! Parenting has a way of reminding me of my weaknesses, my failures, my inconsistencies, and my desperate need for God’s work in my own heart!
The most effective thing I can do for my children is pray! I pray for wisdom and strength for myself. I pray for my children, that God would draw them to Himself. I pray that they would see their need for Jesus and trust Him as Savior. I pray that their love for God and for others would grow.
The next most important thing I can do for my children is to saturate our home with the Scriptures! Deuteronomy 6:4-9 reminds us of the need to teach our children the Scriptures and talk about them as often as possible. Verse 7 says “You shall teach them [God’s words] 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.”
Much of the artwork in our home has Scripture on it. We talk about the Scriptures a lot, and even do quite a bit of memorizing. AWANA has been a great supplement for getting the Scriptures into our home. We frequently have worship music playing in our home, which is full of God’s truth, and every once in a while we will sing those songs together!
Just plain reading to my kids out of the Bible can be a struggle, especially for the younger ones (although the picture book Bibles work pretty well). We’ve found that Phil Vischer’s Bible studies on RightNow Media are very well done and engage our 11, 8 and 5 year old really well! If you haven’t gone through those, I highly recommend them for any home with children up to the age of 13 (I love these video studies, and would find an excuse to go through them even if I didn’t have children at home). If you do them, start with 1st John, and then do Ephesians, and then 1st Peter.
Parenting is hard! For those of you that feel like you are struggling, I’m there with you! Let’s pray earnestly to God for our children, and do everything we can to saturate our homes with His word!
My RightNow Media pick of the month is the newest family Bible Study from Phil Vischer on 1st Peter.
This Sunday is Compassion Sunday! We’ll worship through song, explore God’s word together, and you’ll have an opportunity to sponsor a child from our Bolivia church plant for $38 a month, providing that child with regular Christian training, food, education opportunities, health care, hygiene supplies, and more! You’ll be able to write letters back and forth with this child and will pray for him/her regularly as if he/she were your own child! Our children know that we pray for Peria and Abigail several times a week. Now we will be praying for Anyelo from Bolivia as well!
Looking forward to Sunday!
-Pastor Kyle