Guest Blog: Beth Meverden
Every day on the way to school, I quote the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:14-17) and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) with my children. I throw in others to make sure they’re still hidden in their hearts
Why do I focus on those passages with my children? Because when times get tough and they start to wonder if God is with them or how to handle a specific situation, my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will bring those verses back to mind and give them encouragement and guidance.
Reflecting His Character, Sharing His Love
A Mama Heart Like Jesus: Equipping Our Kids to Bear Good Fruit
1. Know God’s Love
Before our kids can love others as Jesus does, they need to experience Jesus’ love for themselves. In John 15 above, Jesus commanded His disciples to love others as He first loved them. How can our children truly experience God’s love?
Our kids first get a glimpse of God’s love through us.
Imagine with me that you and your kids have been planning all month to go to the zoo during Spring Break. Your children used the zoo map to create a well-planned tour through the zoo, making sure not to miss any of their favorite animals. The morning of your zoo trip, you wake to pouring rain. What now?
You know your zoo has a rain-or-shine policy and you won’t get your money back. You don’t have a poncho that will fit your youngest child and you don’t want your stroller to get soaked. What are your options?
As I have been searching the Scriptures to discover what character traits Jesus taught His disciples, I have noticed that one of the virtues He emphasized most frequently was humility. I wonder if this is because we humans have such a hard time being humble, or if humility is one of the foundational character traits to acquire in order to develop other virtues, such as a servant’s heart. In order for our kids to learn to serve others with the right attitude, they must first learn humility. Here are a few ways we see Jesus teaching this important virtue to His disciples.
Knowing and Loving God, Reflecting His Character, Sharing His Love
A Mama Heart Like Jesus: Speaking Words of Life
In our Mama Heart Like Jesus series we are studying how Jesus discipled His followers as a model for discipling our own children. This month we are looking at how Jesus built close relationships with his disciples, and we discussed ways to spend quality time with our kids. Now let’s look at three ways Jesus spoke words of life to His followers.
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.
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.