Bible Study – Parenting Like Hannah

Through What Are Your Children Filtering the Things They Are Taught?

Let’s say your children are told a new bit of information…. “Dogs prefer green jello.” Your kids need to decide whether or not this information is accurate, true, important and worth storing in their brains long term. Since most of us are bombarded with a flood of new information all day, they need to find a way to make the process faster.

This is where the idea of filters enters the picture. Filters can include previous knowledge – like perhaps your family has owned three dogs – none of whom would even eat jello. One major filter is someone’s worldview. A worldview is a philosophy of life through which everything is filtered. So, for example, if I have a Christian worldview and I read somewhere that something happened because of a prayer to an idol, I will automatically classify that information as false because a Christian’s worldview holds that idols have no power.

Worldviews can be tricky – especially for young people. A teen might honestly believe he or she has a Christian worldview while actually having a different one entirely. So what are some popular worldviews? Christian, Deism, Naturalism, Nihilism, New Age, Postmodern, Humanism, Islamic and many more are the worldviews your children may be adopting.

So how do you know if your children have a Christian – or as some call it – a biblical worldview? Definitions vary slightly, but most would agree that someone who truly has a Christian or biblical worldview has the following beliefs:

Absolute moral truths exist
Moral truths are defined by God in the Bible
Jesus is the son of God and lived a sinless life
God is the Creator, all powerful and all knowing and is still active in the world today
Christians are commanded to share their faith with others
The Bible is true, reliable and accurate in its teachings
Salvation cannot be earned, but is a gift from God
Baptism by immersion is necessary for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit
Satan is real

Do you know whether or not your children believe these statements? If they don’t, you have a short amount of time to teach them and mentor them. Most scholars believe a person’s worldview is set before adolescence and is pretty difficult to change after the early adult years. Make sure your kids aren’t accepting a worldview that isn’t Christian or biblical. If all the philosophical conversations they are having are at school or with peers, they may be developing a worldview that will ultimately destroy their faith.

Should Your Kids Read the Bible the Way It Was Written?

Don’t panic! I’m not suggesting you teach your children Hebrew, Greek (and a little Aramaic) so that they can read it in the original languages. How the books of the Bible are presented to us has changed over the centuries. You probably realize that many of the books in the New Testament were originally letters to individuals or congregations. They would have been written as any other letter of the time – without chapters and verses marked in some way.

The earliest copies of the Bible found are written in a fluid manner, with occasional paragraph breaks – somewhat like any other book is formatted today. In the 900’s a group of well respected Jewish scholars went through the Old Testament books and put special punctuation marks at what they believed were the end of what we now call verses.

From 1207 to 1228, a Catholic bishop named Stephen Langton, took the markings from the earlier Jewish scholars and further divided the Bible into chapters. Verses were created in the New Testament even later in the 16th century by a French printer. There is nothing sacred or special about the chapter and verse markings. They were created to make it easier for everyone to find places in scripture (and evidently to make life easier for printers!).

Since they are merely markings for ease of reading, there is no reason to toss them on a scriptural basis, but is there an argument for using one of the new versions that are printed without any chapter or verse markings? I believe that you and your children can find some value from these versions – especially if your family is already reading scripture regularly.

Chapter and verse breaks can make the scriptures feel disjointed at times. Even though we know they weren’t original, a part of our brain may wonder why God placed a certain scripture in a different chapter or verse. Did that have meaning?

The other problem is that we can feel exhausted reading very little scripture. A chapter in a regular book is usually quite a few pages – often equivalent to an entire book in the Bible. Yet even short Bible books may be broken up into several chapters – making them feel longer than they actually are. Not to mention, it just feels more relaxing to read the Bible without all of the markings, making it easier to read like you might any other book – for long periods of time.

There are times when studying the Bible with chapter and verse markings is helpful. Often the Bibles without the markings are not an entire Bible, but one or more Bible books per binding. Try one and see what happens. You and your kids may find yourself reading more scripture and enjoying it more than you ever thought possible.

Fun Activity for Teaching Kids About Perseverance

Let’s be honest. The Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint. Those who don’t have perseverance won’t make it to the end and spend eternity with God in Heaven. History is full of stories of people who perhaps started out as Christians, but quit when it became too difficult. If your kids are going to be faithful, productive Christians, they need perseverance.

Perseverance requires a good kind of stubbornness. A willingness to keep living the Christian life even when it gets hard or seems less fun than sinning. The problem is how to help your children develop perseverance before they need it to live the Christian life. Fortunately, there’s a fun family devotional you can do to help your kids begin to understand the importance of being perseverant.

You will need 5 straws, a piece of paper, a plastic fork, one soda can, 6 inches tape and a rubber band for each child. Call your children together and tell them the story of the walls of Jericho found in Joshua 6:1-27. Point out that the walls didn’t fall the first time the Israelites marched around them. Or the second. Or the sixth. And even on the seventh day when the walls finally fell, they had to march around the walls seven times before they fell.

Ask your kids why they believe the Israelites didn’t give up and quit before the walls fell. Ask them to explain perseverance to you. If they are younger, you may need to explain it to them. Have your kids think of examples when perseverance can help. Explain that being a Christian is not always easy. People may tease them or refuse to do things with them because they worship and obey God. They will have to be perseverant in order be a faithful, productive Christian for their entire lives.

Give your kids the items you gathered. Tell them they are to use the items to design something that can shoot a rubber band at a target three feet away and hit it. Give them several minutes to try. When the time is up, ask if they would like to continue or give up. After you’ve had fun with the activity, talk about the perseverance needed to succeed. How can they be more perseverant when things get tough?

The Library Christian Children Should Visit Regularly

If you have children, it is likely you have spent many hours at your local public library. Libraries are a great way to encourage children to read and learn about the world around them. They can sharpen academic skills needed for success by reading lots of library books. Your children can even use books to explore who they want to be when they are adults.

Sadly, there is one library your children may rarely visit with you or independently. This is actually the best library in the world. The books in it contain the knowledge your children will need to live the best possible life. It has books that teach them how to have better character and healthy relationships with others. There are books that encourage them to serve other people. It even has books with some of the most exciting history the world has ever known.

Where is this library? In the Bible! We often present the Bible to children as one very large, extremely overwhelming book. We give it to them on a reading level far above their own. We don’t help them with vocabulary and other necessary reading comprehension skills. And then we wonder why they don’t read it or do what it says to do.

The truth is that the Bible is actually a library of 66 books. They aren’t in perfect chronological order, so they don’t have to be read in the order they have been placed. There are books of exciting history, wisdom, poetry, biography and more. You can even give your children an NIrV version written on a third grade level – making it easier for even beginning and struggling readers to read independently.

You can take your kids to this library by reading them stories and scriptures from it. You can improve their reading comprehension by explaining vocabulary words to them and discussing the meaning of various verses and passages. Ask them questions about what they read and encourage them to tell you about stories and other passages in their own words.

You can also encourage them to read books from the library independently. Start them on story heavy books like Esther, Ruth, Judges, Genesis, the Gospels and Acts. Or steer them towards books with lots of practical wisdom like Proverbs and James.

It’s best to visit this special library daily, but if you and your children have never been before (except “field trips” on Sundays), start with just a verse from a book a day to develop healthy reading habits. On days when you have more time, try to read more. On days that are hectic, that one verse will keep you in the habit of going to the library every day.

Changing your children’s perspective on reading scripture can help them develop lifelong scripture reading and studying habits. Those habits can strengthen their faith and help them reach their full God given potential.

Fun Family Devotional on Obedience

Obedience is crucial for your children to live a faithful, productive Christian life. If your children obey you, it also makes your parenting job a lot easier. Yet, it seems that from a very young age, children want to do what they want to do – even if it means disobeying you and God.

Part of the problem is that children don’t have enough life experience to understand that rules are meant to protect them. When they disobey, there will often be negative consequences in the moment or at some future time. When those consequences are delayed, your kids are even more likely to believe they can disobey at will – leading to all sorts of serious issues.

There’s a devotional you can do to help them begin to understand that obeying God’s rules and yours is necessary for living the best possible life. You will need some light weight or origami paper and instructions to make various origami figures. It can be helpful for you to practice making them ahead of time if you’ve never done it before.

Call your kids together and tell them the story of the twelve spies in Numbers 14. Instead of focusing on the lack of faith at the beginning of the chapter, look closely at the end of the chapter when the Israelites tried to take Canaan against the word of God and Moses. What happened when they disobeyed? Why is it important to always obey God? What did Moses and God know that the people chose to ignore? What do parents, God and other adults know that kids don’t know? Why do adults and God make rules for kids? What are those rules usually designed to do? What happens when kids break those rules? Your goal in this conversation is to help your children understand that rules are not made to keep them from having fun, but to protect them from something they aren’t wise enough from which to protect themselves.

Give each of your children a piece of paper. Don’t show or tell them the origami figure they will be making. Do not demonstrate how to make the folds, but read the verbal instructions, one by one. In most cases, the finished figures won’t resemble what was supposed to be created. Show your kids what they were supposed to make. Talk about how disobeying the instructions – even a little – changed the intended result. Point out that when we disobey, our lives often don’t turn out the way God had wanted them to be. We can end up with a big mess when we insist on doing things our own way and disobeying God.

Have fun making additional figures adding visuals and help when needed. Talk about how much easier life can be when we listen to God and obey Him. It’s still not perfect, because everyone doesn’t obey God all of the time, but it is much fuller and richer than living a life of disobedience.

You can revisit this topic regularly using other Bible stories and any activity that requires following instructions. Spend time making sure your kids understand the importance of complete obedience to God.