Tag Archives: teach

June 6, 2019 · 9:46 AM

Teaching Kids About God

In Psalm 78 the people of God say, “We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord . . . so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children” (NIV).

The Bible addresses this subject frequently. God instructs his people to tell their children about him. God’s work of redemption is multi-generational. Stretching from Genesis to Revelation, God’s plan spans this entire age.

This is our generation. We are a link in the chain of God’s work that reaches back to Jesus and even further to the patriarchs of faith, a chain that will be forged into the future until the day Jesus returns. Those who came before us taught us about God. Now it is our turn.

We teach children about God.

Teaching children about God can be intimidating. God is a big subject. So the Lord has given us a method for teaching kids about him which is tried and true: Bible stories. The Bible is filled with accounts of God working in various people’s lives.

By telling kids the stories in the Bible we transmit great theological truths to them. As they grow and reflect on the accounts in Scripture, God’s Spirit will continue revealing himself to them. Every Bible story is a theological package filled with eternal truth. Telling Bible stories and hearing them is a theological journey that unfolds over a lifetime.

What a joy it is to be the first one to tell children about Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark, Moses and the Ten Commandments, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lions’ den, Jesus feeding the 5,000, Jesus’s death and resurrection, and so much more.

We teach children about God by telling them Bible stories.

Psalm 78 goes on to say, “Then they would put their trust in God” (NIV). The goal of telling kids about God is not just to inform them. The goal is to inspire trust in them, to encourage them to exercise saving faith in the Lord.

As New Testament believers, we understand that trust in God means faith in Jesus Christ. We want children to become followers of Jesus, filled with God’s Spirit and fulfilling God’s call on their lives, which includes telling kids about God when they become adults.

We teach children about God so that they will trust and obey Jesus.

May God’s Spirit inspire us to be faithful in our generation,

Brother Richard Foster

Time for Vacation Bible School!

LifeWay’s Bible verse for VBS this year is Isaiah 30:21, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

The voice spoken of in this verse is none other than the voice of the Lord. Our faith is grounded in the wonderful truth that God himself has spoken and he is still speaking.

God has spoken to us through his written word, the Holy Bible. When we read the Bible, we are reading the words of the Almighty. What a thrill it is to have in our hands and in our hearts the written message of our Maker, Sustainer and Savior!

God’s word takes us back to the beginning of the heavens and earth and forward to the new heaven and earth. Only through God’s special revelation can we know about our true origin and final destination. Only through God’s special revelation can we learn about his unfolding plan for our lives now.

The voice of God also comes to us through the presence of his Holy Spirit. As God’s people we have his Spirit in our hearts illuminating his written word, enabling us to comprehend what we read.

God’s Spirit empowers us not only to grasp the great Truth revealed in his written word but also to apply it to our daily lives. We can see “the way” and “walk in it.” We understand and obey.

What a great honor and tremendous responsibility it is for us to teach these things to children. God has entrusted his word to us and called us to pass it on to the next generation. We are the most recent link in a gospel chain that stretches almost 2,000 years back to Jesus, and even further back into Old Testament times.

In this generation we face a pernicious spiritual darkness that threatens to silence the voice of the Bible in our country, thus denying children the joy of knowing Jesus. God’s word increasingly meets with a hostile reception in the halls of our government and in the classrooms of our schools.

But God assures us that his word is like a seed, carrying the power of life. Planted in receptive soil, the seed of God’s word brings a harvest of eternal life. It is our great joy to plant and nurture the word of God in the precious hearts of boys and girls in our community.

What greater hope do we have for the future?

May our hearts be tuned to God’s Spirit so that we will always hear his word clearly and always walk in obedience to him,

Brother Richard Foster

Impressing the Faith On Children

When it was time to go in and take the Promised Land, Moses reminded God’s people of how they should live in order to enjoy God’s blessing. He reminded them of the agreement God had made with them, the covenant. He was to be their God and they were to be his people. He would give them his truth and they would live according to that truth.

God’s blessing was designed to last for generations. As a result, each generation of God’s people was responsible to make sure that their children and grandchildren knew about God’s ways. Moses reminded the people that they were to impress God’s words on their children (Deuteronomy 6:7). Moses was not talking to professional teachers but to parents and grandparents. Faith begins at home.

God’s people still have the great responsibility and the wonderful joy of impressing God’s truth on our children. It is pleasing to God and profitable to our kids to make sure that they know God’s Word. When we tell our children about God’s ways, we stir the fires of faith in our own lives, too.

Impressing God’s commands on our children is an ongoing task that must be done in our homes every day and in our church every week. The Christian faith is not merely information, but a way of life. Children must see the faith in the lives of their parents in order to understand and embrace Christianity.

As our culture becomes more hostile toward Bible-believing Christianity, parents who strive to pass on the faith to their children will be harshly criticized. The organizations and institutions in our society will put pressure on Christian parents in order to pull them and their children away from the Bible and from the local church. Schedule conflicts will abound.

In this new environment of aggressive secularism, sadly, many parents will compromise. They will try to balance the recreational, academic, and athletic pursuits of this age with their commitments to Christ and his kingdom work. Their children are watching and they understand the inconsistency of claiming Christ as Lord but setting up idols in his place.

Other families will see the temptations of this godless world for what they really are. They will be ready to make personal sacrifices for the faith, knowing that Jesus calls his followers to deny self, take up a cross, and follow him. These parents will model Christ for their children. They will impress upon their children the Christian faith.

May God’s Spirit empower us to keep the faith alive in our own hearts and in the hearts of our children,

Brother Richard Foster

Tag Archives: teach

Teaching Kids About God

Time for Vacation Bible School!

Impressing the Faith On Children

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