Have you ever read your kids a picture book or a beginning chapter book? You probably naturally did some things to make it more interesting for your child. Yet when most adults read portions of the Bible to kids, they often begin to sound like they were raised in Shakespearean England. The reading is serious and somber and not very interesting to a young child (or understandable).
I’m not going to suggest you make reading your child the Bible into some sort of comedy routine. I do think we need to remember the stories in the Bible you read to your kids are probably either true historical accounts or one of the parables Jesus told. They are well written and true. They have godly lessons to be learned. They can also hold a child spellbound and make him or her eager to read the Bible for himself (or herself).
The next time you read a Bible story to your child consider adding the following elements:
Looking for a family service project that will also teach your kids about God? The next time you hear about a flood consider a family service project helping people recover from the devastation left by flood waters.
If you are trying to dedicate your children to God, they need to read the Bible. If you want your children to become mighty men and women of God, they need to have the scriptures imprinted on their hearts. If you want your children to make wise choices, they need to learn from God’s Word what those wise choices are. In short, if you are Christian parenting, you must find ways to teach your children the Bible and get them to love and value it in the process.
How many Bible stories have your children heard? If they are like most regular church attendees, they probably hear between 20 and 30 Bible stories during their childhood. If you don’t have regular family devotionals, they may never hear many more than that. When we started Teach One Reach One (our parent ministry), we counted the Bible stories we thought were appropriate for children (we skipped a couple involving rapes) and came up with 207. Now one could probably group them differently and come up with a slightly changed number, but you see the gap.