Faith Development – Parenting Like Hannah

Spiritual Disciplines for Your Kids – Confession

For the last several weeks, we have been looking at various spiritual disciplines and how you can adapt them and teach them to your children. Our working theory is that if children develop these habits while young, they will be more likely to participate in them as adults. Spiritual disciplines are not mentioned by that specific name in scripture, but most of the individual ones are discussed. They have been used by Christians for centuries to help them keep their focus on God and become who He wants them to be.

This week’s spiritual discipline is different from the rest, because in theory it doesn’t apply to young children. Confession of sins is, or at least should be, a daily practice for Christians. But the scripture teaches that children are not born sinners and don’t actually sin until they understand what that means at the age of accountability. So why have your kids practice confession?

The truth is that even though small children are too young to understand the full concept of sin and their need for repentance, they can still disobey you and God. They just don’t have the spiritual maturity yet to understand completely what that means. They do, however, need to not only learn obedience, but also what they should do when they disobey you or God.

Ultimately, confession is taking personal responsibility for our actions. It is admitting we did something wrong. It is wanting to be honest more than we want to avoid possible correction and consequences. It’s about telling the truth when it is hard to do so. Confession should lead to repentance and atonement – taking steps so it is hopefully less likely the sin will be repeated (literally turning from the sin) and trying to make right whatever was damaged because of the sin (like Zacchaeus).

You can help your children practice confession even before they totally understand what that means and how important it is when they become Christians. Start by expecting your kids to tell you the total truth one hundred percent of the time and making the correction swift and consequences firm for lying. Lying is the opposite of confession in many ways which may be one of the reasons God hates it so much. Make it clear that consequences for lying about a rebellious choice will be much worse than if the truth had been told and then be consistent about doing what you say. Make it clear there is a zero tolerance policy for lies in your home. (Of course that means you and your spouse will have to be honest, too.).

As they get older, point out in Bible stories what happened when people tried to lie to God. Have them memorize applicable verses. Have conversations about the importance of taking responsibility for our choices. Talk about how “sorry” isn’t enough, but it’s about our hearts actually feeling sorry for not only what we did, but for being rebellious. Discuss repentance and atonement in ways they can understand and encourage them to practice both when they are rebellious.

Confession, repentance and atonement are abstract concepts most children won’t fully understand until they reach the age of accountably in early adolescence (for most). Helping them practice the actual tasks in the process when they are young, however, will make it easier for them to do the practices once they become Christians and understand the fullness of the concepts.

Spiritual Disciplines for Your Kids – Silence

I love music. My taste in music is rather eclectic and I often use music to adjust my energy levels or moods or just sing along for fun. One day, when I was a single young adult living paycheck to paycheck my car radio went out. Since the car still worked and there wasn’t extra money, I drove without music for several months. (This was before cell phones!)

At first, I thought I would lose my mind. The silence in the car was deafening on my long commute to and from work each day. Gradually though, I began to appreciate the quiet. I found it helped me to think more clearly. It encouraged me to pray. It gave me time to listen to God (not His actual voice). It gave me a quiet space to dream godly dreams. When the time came to get a new car with a working radio, I was as sad as I was excited.

Your kids are surrounded with constant noise. That noise can drown out their conscience. It can drown out their questions. It can drown out processing what they are learning about God. It can discourage them from praying. It can make it harder to think through moral choices. It makes it very difficult for them to reflect on scripture or God’s commands and promises. In short, noise may be stunting their spiritual growth.

Help your kids create a quiet time each day. It doesn’t always have to be used for Bible study and prayer, but it’s great to encourage them to use part of the time for that. Your introverted children will probably find this relatively easy and even pleasant. Your extroverted children may struggle. As an extrovert, I have found walking – especially in a relatively quiet place like a forest, makes it easier to be in quiet.

As a bonus, you may find a time of quiet each day calms and soothes your children. Some may even catch some extra needed sleep when things are quiet and calm. In the end, your kids need silence each day for spiritual and mental health. Try to help them make a daily habit of spending time in quiet.

Embedding Faith Reminders in Your Kids

Have you ever thought about the reminders God has put all around us to remind us we are His? From the rainbow God put in the sky to remind Noah after the Flood to standing stones and the Cross, God wanted people to have little nudges in view to remind them of Him when they were struggling. These reminders can help us remember God loves us or that we need to obey Him.

Yesterday we were blessed to attend the baptism of a young man. As the youth minister spoke before his baptism, he pointed out that every time in the future the teen encountered water, he should remember his baptism and what it meant. In fact, the youth minister spent some time listing the ways the young man might encounter water and how those things should always remind him of his baptism.

If you had been there, you might have wondered why the youth minister was talking about water so much. After all, water is just water without the spiritual rite of baptism. But I knew exactly what he was doing. Just like God wanted Noah to remember His promise to him every time Noah saw a rainbow, this youth minister wanted to plant a symbol in the young man’s mind that could serve to encourage him or remind him to obey wherever he was in the future.

We were visiting the congregation on our travels, but the young man’s parents had evidently been doing something similar for many years. Each of their children had a special, different chapter from the book of Psalms that the parents had sung to them regularly over the years. They read the one for their son that was being baptized and it had in it a lot of the messages that wanted their son to have so firmly engrained in his mind that those truths would come to him wherever he was in life – even after they were gone.

Take some time and think about some ways you can encourage your children to think of God when they see something. Or find ways to regularly repeat key scriptures you want so firmly embedded in their minds they will immediately come to mind when your kids are struggling. Make sure your kids always remember God is there – whether they need to be encouraged or reminded to obey.

Spiritual Disciplines for Your Kids – Fellowship

Growing up, we lived 30-45 minutes from the church we attended. For most of my years in school, I didn’t attend school with anyone from my church. Yet some of my best friends were those who attended church with me. Oh, I had plenty of friends at school. I was popular enough to be elected officers in clubs, for my class senior year and for the school in student government. But I would go out of my way on weekends to spend time with my friends from church.

Why was this fellowship with my Christian friends so important to me as a teenager? Because they understood me on a deep spiritual level. We had similar values and made similar choices. We dealt with similar issues at school because of our moral choices. We shared beliefs in the most important thing in the world – God and everything connected to Him.

Fast forward to today and a lot of children and teens being raised in a Christian home spend their time with their secular friends. Or their parents choose a church not based on solid biblical theology, but on merely on where their children’s best friends attend. Neither option is helping your kids find the type of friends who will encourage them to obey God and challenge them to grow to their full God given potential.

Not only that, but COVID evidently taught many families that church attendance was optional. That virtual church provided all of the benefits of in person church without the hassles. Only it doesn’t. At in person services, your children will meet all sorts of people that make following God their top priority. They will learn from some, be mentored by some and be challenged by some. They will be loved and supported in many ways – but especially spiritually- by many. Those relationships that are so vital are impossible to make virtually.

What if you are attending a church in person that is biblically strong, but your kids are having trouble making friends? First, teach them that the kids at church are family, not just friends. Just like they have to spend time and be kind with cousins they may not particularly care for, they need to love, respect and be kind to other kids their age at church. They also need to learn that often secular friendships are based on really shallow things. People with spiritual friendships may not have a lot in common, but they have each other’s backs – no matter what. Those friends are so hard to find, but your church has plenty of them if your kids will give them a chance.

Finally, help your kids build relationships that encourage fellowship by being hospitable. It doesn’t have to be fancy or involve food any fancier than a popsicle. Have over kids their age from church. Have over other families. Do things with older people. Go to the park as a small group. Provide your kids with lots of opportunities to fellowship and for the vast majority, those relationships will gradually build.

I live hundreds of miles from the kids I grew up with in church. My parents moved away when I was in my twenties. But the other month we traveled to where one of my best church friends now lives with her own family. We got together for lunch and it was like no time had passed at all. Deep down we still had those same priorities in common and we knew that no matter what, we would always be there for each other. Give your kids that same gift.

What Your Church Can (and Can’t) Do For Your Kids

One of the frustrations in Christian parenting can be when you don’t believe the church you attend is giving your children everything they need spiritually. But I will tell you a secret. One of the frustrations of the ministers on the staff of your church is that they think you have unrealistic expectations of what they can actually accomplish in helping your kids grow spiritually. The problem is the two sides rarely have open collaborative discussions about who will commit to do what to help young people build unshakable faith foundations and develop to their full God given potential.

While the answers to what your church can and can’t do to help you will vary, I believe there are some realistic (and unrealistic) expectations you can have as a parent of children in a children’s or youth ministry. Having said that, the underlying caveat is that you make sure your children are fully participating in all of the opportunities the ministries at your church give them to learn and grow.

You can expect ministries to:

Provide age appropriate Bible classes once or twice a week.
Teach Bible based lessons in those classes that include lots of scripture as well as discussions or activities designed to help them understand how to apply that scripture to daily life.
Provide adult volunteers who will support your efforts to require your children to obey God and not undermine those efforts.
Provide occasional (preferably regular) opportunities outside of regular class time to dive deeper into scripture or learn more about the things they are learning in Bible classes.
Provide opportunities to serve others and begin sharing their faith.
Provide encouragement for your children to read the Bible independently, memorize scripture and live out what the Bible teaches them to do.
Teach your children how to become a Christian.
Provide spiritual mentors for your children. This may be casually through relationships with staff or ministry volunteers or in a more formal mentoring program.

What your church can’t do:

Teach your children more than about 20% of what is in the Bible on average. Yes, it would be nice if Bible class curricula covered more of the Bible instead of constantly repeating the same few stories and scriptures, but most churches aren’t truly analyzing what young people and aren’t being taught and informing parents so they can fill in the gaps. No matter how great you think the Bible classes are at your church, your kids aren’t being taught most of what is in the Bible. Which means your kids will be trying to live a Christian life with a small fraction of the information God intended them to have. You need to be intentional at home about making sure they know everything God wanted them to know in the Bible.
Provide the amount of spiritual coaching and correction your children need to develop godly habits and character. They are only around your kids a couple of hours a week at best. They only see a snippet of the children you live with every day. You need to be their “coach” spiritually. Encouraging, teaching, correcting and giving consequences for rebellion.
Most churches aren’t great at providing opportunities for young people to dive deeper into scripture outside of Bible class – particularly in children’s ministry. Find opportunities to have great spiritual conversations with your kids. Take them to museums to see some of the things they read about in the Bible. Ask them what questions they have about what they are learning and if you don’t know the answers, research them together. Have regular conversations and find ways to encourage each other to live out the things they are learning from the Bible. Have regular family devotionals and really talk about what you are reading and what God wants them to do with what you read from scripture.
At best, most youth ministries provide one or two opportunities to serve others a year and group most of those are in the summer months. Children rarely get to serve in their ministry environments. From the time they are beginning to walk and talk, your kids should be serving others constantly. Talk about ways they can personally serve others daily. Serve others together as a family regularly. Serving others only a couple of times a year does not result in children who grow to have servant hearts. Whenever you serve others, talk about ways you can also help those you are serving learn something about God or take the next step towards God spiritually.
Most churches aren’t great at truly encouraging independent Bible reading or scripture memorization. Your kids need both habits to be able to make the choices God wants them to do in the amount of time they generally have to make those choices. Which means they have to really know the Bible well and have the gist of it in their long term memories. They will also need you to help them practice the Christian life skills that make it easier to obey God.
Make sure your child becomes a Christian. Parents have the greatest impact on whether or not their children decide to be baptized and commit their lives to Christ. If you don’t talk about it constantly and teach them God’s expectations, they may never become a Christian.
Most churches don’t provide formal mentors for teens or especially children. You can help develop these relationships by keeping your kids in worship with you and helping them get to know the adults in your congregation to build relationships with them. You can also invite strong Christians your family knows over to your home on a regular basis so your kids will become comfortable talking with them. Effective mentorships require spending time together so providing opportunities for your kids to know strong Christian adults will give them people they feel comfortable enough with (and who you trust to give your kids godly advice) that they can ask for advice.

So what can you do if you believe your church isn’t providing the bare minimum to help you – rather it is the curriculum, lack of opportunities or staffing issues? Say something! Start with the person who has the best ability to make changes and then work your way up if necessary. Be prepared to offer suggestions or help make changes happen. The reason most children’s and youth ministries aren’t more helpful to parents is that parents aren’t speaking up about what they expect in ways ministries and church leaders can understand.

Most leaders only know they see and what people tell them. If they don’t hear there are issues or problems, they will assume everything is great – even if it’s horrible. Don’t just complain to your spouse or other parents, talk to someone who can make change happen. Your job as a Christian parent is hard, but so is theirs and many are not adequately trained in the skills needed to do their job well. So unless they hear from you, they think they are doing a great job. Be loving and kind, but be honest. Remember, some kids aren’t getting any help spiritually at home. If they aren’t really learning anything at church either, then they will really have trouble becoming the strong productive Christians God wants them to be. Knowing whether or not your ministry expectations are fair and holding others accountable for their part in loving ways is best done collaboratively. When you and ministries truly work together, your kids will get everything they need to become strong productive Christians.