Category: Faith Development

Important Scriptures for Your Kids to Memorize

Scripture memorization is a great way to help your kids keep God’s words on their hearts and in their minds. Your church may not encourage your kids to memorize scripture. If you want your kids to know what God would want them to do without having to take the time to research, look up and read scriptures, memorization is key.

With so many possible passages, which ones should you help your kids memorize? Below is a list of some of the scriptures that can help your kids be who God wants them to be.

Some of the passages are only one or two verses. You will need to review these regularly in order for them to transfer to your children’s long term memories. Longer passages should do that automatically because of the number of repetitions they take to memorize.

Make sure your kids understand what they are memorizing. Explain to them how those verses can help them if they memorize them. Since memorization assignments at home are rare for non-homeschoolers, you may want to have ways to celebrate whenever they memorize passages.

The scriptures have been divided into categories to help you organize your memorization project.

Classic Scriptures

  • Psalm 23
  • Acts 2:38
  • Deuteronomy 6:6-7
  • Luke 6:31
  • John 1:1-14
  • 1 Corinthians 13
  • Matthew 5:2-12
  • John 3:16-17

Scriptures to Comfort

  • 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
  • Romans 8:26-28
  • Psalm 1:1-6
  • Isaiah 40:29-31
  • Proverbs 3:5-6

Scriptures About Courage

  • Philippians 4:6-7
  • 2 Timothy 1:7
  • Joshua 1:9
  • 1 Peter 5:7
  • Isaiah 41:10
  • Matthew 6:31-33

Scriptures About Behavior

  • 1 John 1:8
  • James 1:27
  • Colossians 3:23
  • Proverbs 29:11
  • Psalm 34:14
  • 1 Timothy 4:12
  • Ephesians 2:10
  • Matthew 5:13-16

Scriptures About Our Heart

  • Philippians 4:8-9
  • Galatians 5:22-23
  • Luke 16:13
  • 1 Peter 5:5
  • Proverbs 21:2
  • Matthew 22:37-38
  • Psalm 51:17
  • Ephesians 4:32

Scriptures About Family

  • Proverbs 6:20
  • Colossians 3:20
  • 1 Timothy 5:8
  • Ephesians 6:1-4
  • Proverbs 15:17

Scriptures About Friends (and Enemies)

  • 1 Corinthians 15:33
  • Proverbs 17:17
  • Ephesians 4:2
  • Luke 6:35
  • Proverbs 27:17
  • 1 John 4:7
  • 1 Thessalonians 5:11
  • Proverbs 27:6-9
  • Hebrews 10:24-25
  • 1 Peter 4:8-10
  • Proverbs 22:24-25

Don’t know these scriptures yourself? What a better family activity than memorizing them together? Having God’s words on the hearts and minds of your family will help all of you.

Creating Space for Your Kids to Grow

Maria Montessori was an Italian educator who believed giving children the freedom to explore their environment was the best way for them to learn. She developed classrooms full of interesting things that would engage children, encourage them to explore, experiment and ultimately learn.

While I don’t necessarily agree with everything in her theories, she did have some important points. And though as far as we know, she didn’t apply them to a child’s spiritual growth and development, they do.

The ministry of Jesus and how he discipled the apostles is very interesting. We know now what their futures held, but they didn’t. Jesus did, however, and he spent a lot of time teaching and mentoring them. But look a little more closely.

There were times where he went off to pray and left them to themselves. At other times, he sent one or more of them on what could basically be described as an errand. Once he sent them off for a period of time to try teaching and healing on their own.

These opportunities gave the apostles time and room to process, think, pray, day dream, experiment and practice. The Bible doesn’t give us many details about what they did during these times. We know a few of their activities like fishing, sleeping, discussing, arguing and talking to those around them, but we can only imagine the other things they did during those times.

The apostles spent about three years with Jesus. Yet the teaching, mentoring and free space and time to grow helped them do just that. As far as we know, with the exception of Judas, they all became courageous ministers.

Who knows the plans God has for your kids? What Maria Montessori and Jesus knew though is that your kids need some free time. They need time to pray, read scripture and process everything they are learning about God. They need time to reflect on scripture and think about who God has created them to be. They need time to experiment with the gifts God may have given them and think about how they can be more like Jesus. They need to experiment in the ways they can best serve others and share their faith.

They won’t have the time to do these things if every moment is not just scheduled, but over scheduled. Or if their free time is spent interacting with screens. Fill your home with things they can explore, experiment with and ultimately learn. Give them enough free time without devices so they can work on becoming who God wants them to be.

This will probably mean making some tough decisions. Activities will have to be cut. Ignore societal pressure that demands every child be engaged in programmed activities every minute of every day. Yes, idle hands can be the devil’s workshop, but only if there is no godly adult presence and guidance. Give your kids the space and time to grow to be the person God created them to be. You may just be pleasantly surprised how they grow when they have the space and time to do it.

Your Child Has a Ministry

What? Your child isn’t old enough to work at McDonald’s. In fact he or she is convinced a career as super hero or astronaut is in their future. Yet, God has a ministry plan for your child…if he or she is ready for the challenge.

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10 NIV) God loves your kids. He wants them to choose to be His child and become a Christian when they are old enough to make that choice. He even has a ministry…good works…specially prepared for them to do.

Those good works are your child’s ministry. They may be big or small. In fact, some of those good deeds might be presented to them while they are still young and living at home.

Our world has us so focused on helping our kids find occupations and jobs, that we forget it is more important for them to find their ministry. Yes, they need to have food on the table and hopefully a roof over their head, but where they will truly grow and become fully who God created them to be is in their personal ministry.

Start now by helping them build strong faith foundations and develop and use their gifts from God. Talk about ways to find those good works God wants them to do. Encourage them to be as content in taking soup to a lonely neighbor as they are in going on a mission trip to Africa. Teach them how to find ways to share their faith and encourage other Christians as they do those good works.

God doesn’t give any of us a list of the good works He has prepared for us so we can check them off as we go. If I had to guess, it’s because that list is possibly based on our reaction to each opportunity as it is presented to us…or in this case your kids. What God has done is told us to be on the look out for those opportunities He gives us to do those good works.

Your child may never be a “professional” minister. His or her good works will most likely take place more in the world than in the church building. Some of them will be based on the gifts God has given your child. This isn’t a competition. It’s about being fully the person God has created your child to be – His child, doing those good works He has prepared for him or her. It’s worth the time and effort to help your child learn how to live that Christian life.

Protecting Your Kids From Predators

Stranger danger right? As much as the idea scares young parents, it is much more likely your child will be pulled away from family, friends and God by a predator. Predators are slick, savvy and often subtle at first. Not all of them are sexual predators, but they are all dangerous in their own ways.

Thankfully, there are ways you can protect your kids from being targeted by predators as their victims or their enablers (enablers are often used to help the predator recruit more victims). Predators look for some key characteristics in their prey. If your children don’t have them, predators will often ignore them in favor of easier victims.

  • Give your kids lots of emotional and physical attention. Predators look for young people who don’t feel connected to their parents. Often these kids are run aways, but predators also target kids from families where the parents are too busy with their own lives to give their children the attention and love they need. If your child is well loved and has consistent, meaningful interactions with you and your spouse, they won’t be attracted by the attentions of a random adult.
  • Give your kids a strong spiritual foundation. Many of the things predators use to attract kids and teens either won’t appeal to young people with strong spiritual foundations, or will at least set off warning bells. Kids who have a strong understanding of what God has declared right and wrong, know something is dangerous about an adult who is encouraging them to do things they know are wrong. Most healthy adults, protect young people from those things – even if they’re not Christians and participate in them themselves.
  • Reinforce constantly that your kids can tell you anything – even if they know you won’t like it. Predators often use fear of parental reaction to manipulate young people. Make it clear that if any adult asks your child to do something they know is wrong, they will not get in trouble for telling you. Often predators will blackmail kids they meet online by threatening to tell them they were spending money on video games or something similar. Make sure your kids understand that while there may be consequences for those minor infractions, you are more concerned that they are safe and not being manipulated by someone who wants to hurt them.
  • Help your kids establish and defend healthy boundaries. They should be comfortable declining to participate in activities they know are wrong and be willing to be firm and walk away to get help if necessary. (This skill set also helps with peer pressure.)
  • Teach your kids about the lobster in the pot. Or is it a frog? Either way, the heat is turned up so gradually, the animal doesn’t realize it is in danger of being cooked and eaten until it is too late. Predators don’t usually start at the end goal. They start where the person is and encourage them to stretch their boundaries over time. Teach your kids to be watchful of anyone who keeps encouraging them to go just a little bit beyond what they know is right.
  • Teach your kids to be careful around people who make promises that sound too good to be true or who flatter them too much. “Free” things often come with strings attached. Predators will often “give” kids lots of things and then tell them they owe them an impossible amount of money. They tell the young person, they can be repaid (without parents finding out) if they will “just” …fill in the blank with send nude photos, run drugs, etc. Predators also use flattery and praise in their recruitment process. If your child is average looking, being told they have the looks to be a “top model” may feel good, but many young people have lost lots of money on “modeling” lessons from predators who knew they had no real chance in the industry.
  • Teach your kids critical thinking skills. Cults can be just as dangerous as other predators. They hide their motives in words of altruism and higher purpose. Often their actual beliefs are strange – especially compared to scripture. Kids with strong critical thinking skills will often ask lots of questions before just accepting something new. Cult leaders and other predators don’t appreciate questions as it can cause trouble with those they are already preying upon. They will often reject questioners outright as “not ready” for whatever it is they are claiming to offer.
  • Teach your kids that they may not make great decisions when afraid or elated. There are very few choices that absolutely must be made in the moment. Teach them to ask for time to think about it. If the person says “no”, there is a very good chance someone is trying to manipulate them in some way.
  • Teach your kids that drugs and alcohol do not lead to great decisions. Predators use alcohol and drugs to lower the inhibitions of their prey. They know people will do things when drunk or high they would never do when sober.
  • Teach your kids to distance themselves from people whom they regularly catch lying. Predators lie….a lot. In fact, they are pathological about it. Young people need to avoid people who lie constantly – even if they aren’t predators. They just don’t have enough maturity and life experience to handle it.
  • Don’t allow your kids to view themselves as victims of others. Yes, your kids may have had an experience when they were someone’s victim. Defining oneself as a perpetual victim makes them very vulnerable to predators. Young people who allow themselves to be defined as a victim because of any number of factors, believe they have no voice and no power. That makes them vulnerable. God can help your kids process and move away from bad circumstances so they are defined by how God sees them and not as a perpetual victim.
  • Teach your kids to recognize and avoid narcissists. Predators often use enablers to identify new prey and help groom them for the predator. For some reason, these people are often narcissists. Everything is about what they need and want. The feelings and needs of others are meaningless to them. They often act in cruel ways to anyone who questions them or asks for parity. Young people don’t have the tools to handle the narcissists of the world. They need to spend as little time with them as possible.
  • Teach your kids to think carefully if friends and family are all expressing concerns about their relationship with someone. Yes, there are rare times when they will be wrong. In general though, if everyone who loves you is concerned, there may very well be something to be concerned about. Teach them to at the very least take a break from the person of concern so they can clear their head and think clearly.
  • If necessary, teach your kids to ignore any threats to you and come tell you what is happening. In the more severe cases of predators, victims are often told their family will be hurt in some way if they tell anyone what is really happening. Make sure your kids know that you will get the help you need to be safe, but you can’t help them if you don’t know they are in trouble.

No one can guarantee your child will never be approached by a predator. Doing the things in the list above though, will make your kids much less attractive to predators looking for prey.

Kids, Science and God

Full confession. I am no expert in science. In high school, I had a couple of football coaches as science teachers. In college, my biology professor is what I can only describe as an angry atheist. He seemed to spend as much time bashing God and Christianity as he did teaching biology.

In spite of those negative experiences, there is something fascinating about science. Perhaps because it is a way to examine how amazing God’s creation really is. The problem is that science and Christianity have drawn battle lines that can hurt both of them.

Science has lost a lot by refusing to accept the existence of God (as a discipline – many scientists are still Christians). Christians can miss out by refusing to let children gifted by God in science to participate in the field for fear they will be pulled away from God. This means there are fewer Christians in science today than perhaps there should be.

Your kids exposure to science can undermine their faith under the right circumstances. It doesn’t have to be that way. Taking some precautions can help strengthen the faith foundations of young people who will be exposed to scientists who are atheist or agnostic.

  • Expose your children to Christian scientists and their writings and studies. There is peer pressure in science to agree with the “party line” rather than search for truth – regardless of what it reveals. There are plenty of well educated, Christian scientists, however. At times they are kept out of the journals, because of their beliefs. They, however, are reputable and have published books and studies with a different perspective on the data. Answers In Genesis is a great resource of these writings. They have free resources as well as ones you can purchase. Many are written specifically for kids and teens.
  • Teach your children about bias and how it can impact the interpretation of data. We attended church with a gentleman who had a PhD in astronomy and ran a secular university. He had a very detailed scientific argument for why the flood makes much of the radiocarbon dating inaccurate. For scientists who don’t believe in a worldwide flood (even with lots of physical evidence) radiocarbon dating is infallible. The eruption of Mt St. Helens a few decades ago rocked the scientific world because phenomenon they had claimed took millions of years to happen, happened in a few weeks during the eruption.
  • Textbooks and science teachers aren’t always up to date on the latest studies. Even scientists who are atheists are moving away from the idea of random evolution. As more instruments can detect the intricacy in creation, they have had to admit the idea of that many things happening by accident is beyond impossible. Now, they aren’t ready to embrace God – some are crediting “intelligent life” on other planets – but it’s still a huge step away from Darwin. They have made other steps towards acknowledging God creating everything as described in the Bible – like the pre-Cambrian explosion – where all types of creatures suddenly appeared at the same time. (Of course, stopping short of acknowledging God.) Your children’s teachers may have textbooks that don’t address these shifts or they may not have read more current information.
  • Continually remind your kids God’s truths are THE truth and the truths of others may or may not be true – no matter how much evidence they think they have. If you are old enough, you have seen science declare eggs, fat, sugar and other things good for us and then bad for us in an almost dizzying cycle. Each time they have had plenty of data to support their claim…until the data came out that reversed their conclusions.
  • Science doesn’t have to reject God in order to be “good” science. In fact, some scientific fields have quite a few Christians in them. If your kids are interested in science, they may find things that help us live healthier or better lives. They just need to be aware that they will need to protect their faith against assaults and peer pressure. Discuss the ways they can do that before they begin encountering a lot of people who may mock their religious beliefs.
  • Science can point your kids to God. There is a sweet kids’ devotional book Indescribable by Louie Giglio. It contains a 100 devotions that use interesting things in science to point kids to God. Answers in Genesis also has plenty of resources for kids about things like dinosaurs that acknowledge God and contain solid science. Our parent website Teach One Reach One Ministries has free science project activities connected to Bible stories for those who want a way to do science experiments with their kids while also teaching them about God.

You don’t have to teach your kids to hate science if you want them to grow up to be faithful, productive Christians. You do need to prepare them though, so those teaching them science don’t weaken their faith. It’s worth your time and effort.