Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as reminders on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, speaking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19
Our Echo Groups are currently going through a book called The First Principles: Cultivating Habits of the Heart and it calls us to examine the habits of our hearts to see if we are living a disciplined lifestyle that is aligned, pointed toward and chasing after Christ. One of the lessons concerns itself with how we teach and instruct our children in the homes to raise them with a foundation and a Christlike worldview. I have been challenged to incorporate more lessons and principles into our everyday lives together. After all, they are always learning SOMETHING so it might as well be connected to and centered around Christ!
So yesterday my 10 year old and I rode our bikes (yay quality time!) to the local snow cone place in town and as we were sitting there I was thinking that even the most common, seemingly unrelated objects can help spur a conversation about God. I was holding a red snow cone in hand and was thinking I have the perfect object to talk about God. Immediately I started seeing the connections, and how I could draw comparisons to a snow cone and God. And I was so tempted to use all of my knowledge about God to start “teaching” her what I know, but then I felt prompted to just ask questions and let her lead the conversation. It went something like this:
Me: “I think God is like a snow cone, what do you think?”
Evie: “Oh yeah!”
Me: “What makes up a snow cone?”
Evie: “There’s three parts—the cup, the ice, and the flavoring.”
Me: “And how is that like God?”
Evie: “God has three parts too, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Me: “Yes!” Which part of the snow cone is like each part of God?”
Evie: “Well, God the Father is like the cup, because He holds everything together in His hands, and Jesus is like the ice because it’s water and Jesus came down to us like the rain comes from the clouds, and the favoring is like the Holy Spirit because…I actually don’t know that one.”
So the conversation went on, and we got to have a fantastic talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives and how the Bible tells us He teaches, comforts, and guides us into all wisdom. By the end of the conversation she decided that the Holy Spirit is like the flavoring because it’s what makes the ice sweet and better than just plain ice. Kind of like how Jesus was a man, but with the Holy Spirit in Him it made Him extraordinary and be able to do great things that man alone can’t do.
So I just loved that we had this conversation about something common, but had led to a deeper understanding of who God is and how He functions. I am also so glad that I allowed her to process her ideas and not immediately just give her mine (because when I was thinking of the snow cone, I had different reasons for how I matched up the parts and none of them were the same) because she was able to see and understand God in her own way, and not just rely on how I see God through a snow cone to shape her ideas.
This is just one of many ways I plan to engage my kids in the first principles of faith and teaching them how to build a solid foundation on Christ and the apostles’ teaching using the tools they already have.
What ideas do you have to teach and train your children the in the way of Christ?