Category: Bible Study

Choosing the Best Bible for Your Children

The Bible never changes, but the variations of translations and special features available to consumers does change from time to time. It can be difficult to keep up with the alphabet soup of translations, much less things like publisher speak like thought-for-thought. You may also have questions about all of those little extras placed in Bibles today. What types of things are helpful and which might either confuse your children or quickly make them believe they have outgrown a particular Bible?

We are going to try and cut through some of that confusion and list some of the more popular versions and why we believe they may or may not be the wisest choice for your children. Then we will list what we believe are some helpful additions to some Bibles and why we believe they may add value to a purchase. So, let’s get started!

NIrV Bibles. This has been our top recommendation for a first personal Bible for independent Bible reading for many years now. This is based primarily on the fact that it has been the Bible with the lowest reading level, making it easier to understand for beginning readers and more advanced readers who are beginning independent Bible study. (There is another version at that level now, that will be discussed later.) The “r” is important because that means it is the version of the Bible written on a third grade reading level. It is not a paraphrase per se, but does appear to be moving more towards the thought for thought translation rather than word for word. The downside is that it is not the most accurate version (most believe the word for word translations are in general the most accurate), but to my knowledge the only huge difference one could argue the interpreters have made is making it somewhat gender neutral (for example people instead of mankind). Although not perfect, it is still the best Bible to get children and even many teens. Why? Because any Bible with a reading level too far ahead of a child’s current reading level will be a frustration text and convince the child that the Bible isn’t worth reading for themselves because it is “too hard”. Most of the remaining popular versions range from 7-12th grade reading levels.

International Children’s Bible (ICB). While also on a third grade reading level, this version has one major flaw… its name. Anyone who works with children and teens understands that beginning fairly early in elementary school, most young people don’t like to be thought of as children. While I did find some covers that weren’t childish, I still believe once they see the name of the version, most young people won’t be nearly as interested in using that version. Which is a shame, because otherwise it would have jumped ahead of the NIrV on our list since it is slightly closer to the word-for-word end of the spectrum.

NIV. For many people, this is the automatic choice. It is closer to a word-for-word translation that the two earlier translations on this list, but is still not even quite half way there. It also contains a lot of gender neutral words that were not in the original. The reading level is 7-8 grade, meaning it is not a great Bible for any child reading below about the 6th grade reading level (your child’s school teacher can tell you the reading levels of your children). The one benefit is that many churches read from the NIV in worship services and Bible classes, making it easier to follow along.

ESV. In recent years, this version seems have to become more popular with teens and young adults. It’s advantage is that it is much closer to a word-for-word translation than the NIV.

Teaching Your Kids About Wisdom

If your children are to reach their full God given potential and grow up to be mature, productive Christians, they will need to learn to find, respect and obey wisdom. While all wisdom comes from God, one of the problems with being young is that it isn’t always easy to apply God’s wisdom to the situations that they encounter in their every day lives. They will need wise people to help them understand how to apply God’s commands and principles to the situations they are encountering that are perhaps slightly different than those the people in the Bible encountered.

Unfortunately, we live in an age where knowledge is easily confused with wisdom. Where those most respected are those who are tech savvy and not necessarily wise at all. Where those who are older and hopefully wiser are considered out of touch and not worth listening to at all… much less asking for and heeding any wise, godly advice they may have.

To counteract that dangerous cultural norm, you will have to teach your children how to recognize wisdom and to find the people who possess it and will share it with them. They need to learn how to compare it to scripture and then follow the advice if it is a match for God’s wisdom.

You can start by having a fun little devotional about wisdom. Call your kids together and ask them who is the smartest person on Earth. Their answers will vary depending upon their ages and interests. Ask them why they believe those people are the smartest on Earth. After they explain how they chose those people, ask them who they think are the wisest people on Earth. If you haven’t talked about knowledge and wisdom much before, they may be stumped or tell you that they just answered that question.

Tell them the story of Solomon asking for wisdom and then the story of the visit from the Queen of Sheba. (1Kings 3:3-15 and 2 Chronicles 9). Point out that although there is a connection between knowledge and wisdom, one can have knowledge and little if any wisdom. Explain that knowledge consists of all of the things you learn. Wisdom is knowing how to use that knowledge to make a decision that involves applying the knowledge in such a way that it has a positive result.

For example, learning the ABC’s is knowledge. Learning spelling and grammar is knowledge. Wisdom is taking all of that knowledge and writing something that helps others. If you want to take it a step farther, godly wisdom is applied knowledge that encourages others to obey God. Ask them if they can think of other examples of knowledge and wisdom that uses that knowledge.

Explain that sometimes the two get disconnected, even when they seem to still be the same. For example someone who has a lot of technical knowledge can design a computer game. While that is applying knowledge, if it isn’t helpful or in fact harms people, then it isn’t true godly wisdom. This concept is more abstract and children may struggle with understanding the difference. Teens, however, should be able to begin to understand the difference… especially after giving multiple examples in both types of situations.

Explain that true wisdom will never contradict scripture… even if everyone else claims those contradictory statements are wisdom. Show your children some popular affirmations that sound wise, but are contrary to God’s wisdom, like “You are perfect just the way you are”, or “You deserve everything you want in life”. See if they can find the flaw in each affirmation and explain how it is different from God’s wisdom.

Take it a step farther by inviting godly older people over to your home for dinner. Let them know ahead of time that you would love for them to share a few tidbits of godly wisdom with your children. Also encourage them to tell an interesting story from their lives. Children and teens often fail to realize that the old “boring” people at church often have had very exciting, interesting lives. Hearing some of their stories will help your children begin to realize that older people just may be different than they thought they were.

If your children are teens, you may want to have later devotionals using Proverbs and Ecclesiastes – examining the wisdom and the later folly of Solomon. No matter the age of your children, regularly talk about wisdom and humility. They will need both to live a mature, productive Christian life.

Could This App Make Family Devotionals Easier?

Recently I received an email from Focus on the Family sharing an initiative they have started to get families reading and talking about scripture together. Since I am a fan of daily family devotionals as one way of parents and children interacting with scripture, I decided to check it out.

Full disclosure. I am in general a fan of many of the Focus on the Family resources. Our daughter loved the Adventures in Odyssey series when she was little and subscribed to several of the magazines they had for children at the time. On the other hand, I am perfectly happy with the Bible app I already have on my phone and am always reluctant to add any new app to my overcrowded phone unless I believe it adds real value. For this review, I did download the app, register and interacted with it as suggested by Focus on the Family.

The app is called Public Reading of Scripture. If I were involved in promoting this app, I would suggest a quick rebranding. The name sounds a bit overwhelming – especially to young Christians…. almost like a Pilgrim from the 1600’s named it. The other odd thing was that by clicking through the email to their landing page and then clicking the download app button, it took me straight to GooglePlay… not my preferred app store. I was able to find it by using the search function in the Apple app store.

Downloading and registering on the app was pretty standard. Focus on the Family suggested clicking on their icon and looking at the Daniel reading plan first. The first thing you see once you get into the Daniel plan is one of those cartoon introduction videos by The Bible Project. At just under nine minutes, it has decent information but I think is probably not something that will grab the attention of the average child or teen.

You can skip the video though and start right into the suggested reading for the first session. For me, this is where it really started going off the rails. First the graphics for the scripture reading are horrendous – like old time DOS horrendous. It’s white graphics on a black background and the five chapters of scripture are so run on, it is hard to tell where one chapter stops and the other begins. For the amount of money these groups have, I would have expected a reading interface similar to my regular Bible app. Instead it looks cheap and messy. The reading did begin with a few interesting facts, which I appreciate, but honestly they are more of a summary than actually adding facts that would be interesting to children and teens about things that would spark their curiosity. It would also have been nice to have a guiding question they could consider as they listen to the reading.

My next problem is the amount of scripture they expect a ”normal” family to read (presumably) each day. Five chapters? That’s way too much to expect from most families. It is probably more realistic to ask families with little or no current Bible reading in the home to cut each session down to one chapter. Also, many children have trouble understanding large chunks of scripture read aloud to them. Having been translated from other languages, the phrasing is sometimes awkward sounding and the text is often filled with unfamiliar words and cultural references. Telling them a Bible story covering that many chapters is difficult enough, but reading them five chapters in the allotted 23 minutes (Is that supposed to include discussion, too?) means many younger children will get little if anything from the reading.

The devotional suggests questions for the entire family to discuss and a couple of additional questions for each age group of children in the home. I like the idea of the age appropriate questions, but once again I wonder if they actually field tested these with real families unused to having family devotionals. The graphics for the questions are the same as the scripture – horrible. There were some prettier pdfs you could print on the Focus on the Family website, but that’s an extra step you are asking people to do or a second website they have to toggle to during the discussion. It’s just awkward.

The app does have an Adventures in Odyssey section under the Focus on the Family tab. It is various characters reading passages of scripture out-loud. Once again, the readings are multiple chapters and I am not sure how much the hook of a character reading it encourages young children to listen.

My conclusion? Great idea, poor execution. Maybe after a lot of improvements it will be helpful to more families, but right now I believe using family devotional books or just choosing to read a book of the Bible together and discuss it at your family’s pace will probably work better.

Fun Family Devotional on Friendship (With a Twist)

Quick. Name the Bible story most often used when discussing friendship with children and teens? If you guessed David and Jonathan, you are probably correct. Have you ever noticed though, that the story is often told from the perspective of the benefits David got from the friendship – namely getting advance notice from Jonathan that Saul wanted to kill him? What if we looked at the story – and its aftermath – from a different perspective … What kind of friend was David to Jonathan?

This is an important family devotional. Parents and ministries often spend a lot of time discussing how young people should choose friends who help them be more godly rather than encouraging them to disobey God. We may mention that they should have some of these same qualities to benefit their friends, but most of the focus is still on choosing “good” friends and not on becoming a great friend for others.

Call your children together and ask them what they remember about the story of Jonathan and David. If they don’t remember the details, go back and read over it again. Ask them how they know Jonathan was a good friend to David. Then ask them what kind of friend David was to Jonathan based on the story.

Read to them 2 Samuel 4:4 and 9:6-13. If you have teenagers and the time to dig a little deeper, you may also want to share the story in 2 Samuel 19:9-30 and 21:1-14. These two passages are more complex (and a bit gruesome), but show that David still respected the promises he had made to Jonathan, even after Jonathan’s death. Discuss how David show he valued his friendship with Jonathan in the way that he treated Mephibosheth. Remind them that the customs of the day would have demanded that David kill Mephibosheth as a possible threat to his kingship. Yet he and Mephibosheth both appeared to value the relationship between Jonathan and David more than money or power.

Ask your kids to list all of the qualities of a great friend. Have them draw a picture of a great friend. Encourage them to write descriptive words on their artwork to illustrate their definition of a great friend. Write down a master list of all of the words so everyone can see the complete list. If they miss some you believe are important, feel free to add your ideas to the list. Then ask them which of those qualities they believe they exhibit in their friendships. Are there any with which they struggle? What are some ways they could be a better friend?

If time allows, think of something nice your kids can do for their friends. Perhaps you can all work together to bake some cookies for their friends or make something they would appreciate. Encourage your children to put as much focus on being a good friend as they do in searching for good friends.

Using Fun Family Devotionals to Reduce Family Screen Time

I am normally not the type of parent who panics easily about the latest trends harming children and teens. Many times the articles are click bait about fads impacting a handful of children and teens – usually with parents who don’t pay attention to their children. However, screen time, and the impact it has on all of us, is something that should greatly concern every parent.

While I was researching our newest parenting seminar, Parenting Children In a Tech Obsessed World, I discovered so much disturbing research about the negative impact of screens on young people that I think it would be difficult to over react. Part of the problem about weaning ourselves and our children off screens is that we have become lazy about finding alternative, healthier activities to amuse ourselves and our children.

Hands-on family devotionals are a great way to engage the entire family while providing a fun alternative to using screens. They take a little more effort than a more traditional devotional, but provide more time for bonding, talking and teaching while you work on the activity together. We have lots of them you can search for in this blog, but here’s a great one to get you started.

Share Jeremiah 18 with your children. For younger children, you may not want to use the entire chapter. Older children and teens may benefit from a deeper discussion of what can happen if God finds us rigidly against Him. There are also other verses in scripture about God as the potter and us as His clay with other concepts like, Isaiah 29:16, Isaiah 45:9 and others.

Give each family member a lump of clay. The lesson works better with “real” potter’s clay, but you can use other types if you choose. Encourage each person to make something useful or decorative. As you are working, discuss how the clay must yield to the potter. Point out that we can refuse to yield to God’s instructions, commands and plans for our lives, but the results will not be as wonderful as if we had just yielded.

After everyone has finished their creation, take another piece of clay and work as a family to mold a simple pot. (Note: It will end up destroyed, so don’t let anyone get too attached and don’t tell them about the future destruction.) If it is not air dry clay, go back in a few hours and change or add something to your work. Several hours or perhaps a day later in certain climates, you will be able to etch a design on it, but changing major things will be destructive. After a time – especially if you dry it in the oven (look online for correct temps and procedure), attempting to make any changes will require destroying the vessel and reconstituting the clay with water and other intensive processes.

Point out that if our hearts remain pliable, God doesn’t have to do much to mold us. The more stubborn and resistant our hearts become to His will, the more likely He may use some painful method in order to try and save us from complete destruction. Discuss ways your family can be more responsive to God’s hand as your potter.

Taking the time to find fun, healthy, productive ways to engage your children offline is one of the best ways to convince them the “real world” – even with all of its flaws – is more rewarding than any virtual world.