The month of Thanksgiving is the perfect time to cultivate a heart of thankfulness in our children. With the remembrance of the pilgrims and how God helped them through their trials, we can appreciate how much God has blessed us and thank Him for all He has done in our lives too!
The Bible teaches that one of our primary responsibilities in raising our kids to know, love, and follow Jesus is to teach our children to be like Jesus in character.
Today we will be discussing a fourth way to reach our children’s hearts: Teaching a Dependence on God.
We live in an independent world where we grow up in a culture with a “Do it yourself” mentality. Independence is seen as a strong, desirable trait, and dependence as a weak one. But in the Kingdom of God, things are reversed. God’s Word says to rely on the Lord for everything. In fact, this builds our relationship with God when we depend on Him.
As parents we want our kids to have a relationship with God and follow in His ways, but their hearts have to be open to receiving truth and desiring a relationship with God. This is why it is SO IMPORTANT that we cultivate the heart of our children to desire this from a young age. We have been discussing 5 Ways to Lead Your Children’s Hearts to Christ, and we talked about the first way: Keeping Distractions at Bay a few weeks ago. If you missed this post, you can go back and read it here before moving on. It has some great preventative measures to help keep our children from getting distracted from their relationship with God.
Devotionals, Reflecting His Character, Sharing His Love
5 Goals For the School Year Every Child Needs
Rather than taking more of a passive role and worrying but not taking steps to help them along the way, if we are INTENTIONAL to guide them in making good choices from the beginning, I believe they will have a greater chance at doing well and following God’s ways.
Parenting isn’t easy. Teaching our kids to show respect, be kind to their siblings, live a life of contentment, and demonstrate a heart to serve others can feel like an uphill battle. There are so many distractions warring for our children’s hearts, but it is our goal as parents to lead their hearts away from those distractions and straight to the Lord. Only Jesus, by His saving grace and Holy Spirit can make a true heart change happen with our children. With that being said, here are five practices to help lead your children’s hearts to Christ.
Devotionals, Reflecting His Character
Teaching Our Kids How To Get Along:
Teaching Our Kids How To Get Along:
How To Really Love Each Other
“I had it first!” “He pushed me!” “I hate my brother!” “Why won’t she ever be nice to me?!” Don’t these comments make you want to pull your hair out as a parent? Do you ever think, “Why can’t my kids just get along?!”
As part of the preschool curriculum I am developing, A Heart Like Jesus, I am creating Character Calendars to encourage our children’s character development in fun and simple ways! Each month I will have a character calendar available for you on a specific virtue that includes ways to practice the character trait, a Bible verse to memorize, and Bible stories to read, and other fun games to encourage your kids!
I am excited to introduce you to Zachary Bell from Brave Books™, a children’s book series created to help parents promote conservative Christian values in the next generation through their creative stories and interactive discussion guides and games.
Some of my favorite verses to pray both for my relationship with my husband and with my kids are from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, where God defines true love.