DISCIPLING CHILDREN: WHERE TO START (PT. 1)

Covid has thrown everything into chaos and made us reevaluate the way things have always been done. School has changed and parents are having to own more of the process of their education. This has been the case for the church as well. Church has been a place where parents have trusted that their children are learning about Jesus, opening the bible, praying, and engaging in worship.

However, even with online worship as an option, many parents are seeing the need to invest in the spiritual lives of their children beyond Sunday mornings. I personally believe that God may be using this as an invitation for parents to step back into the position he intended for them. GOD ALWAYS INTENDED THE FAMILY TO BE THE PRIMARY PLACE OF DISCIPLESHIP. That means God intended for parents to be the first pastors and teachers of their children.

One of the most helpful and explicit statements of this idea comes from Deuteronomy 6. It says...

4 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

But where do you start? What do you do? How do you do family discipleship? It can seem overwhelming. 

You can feel unprepared and incapable. So, if you're starting to break out in hives and sweats at the weight and uncertainty of it all, take a breath. We'll unpack a quick overview and then in our next few posts we'll provide some helpful resources.
FAMILY DISCIPLESHIP STARTS WITH 5 MAJOR PIECES: READING THE BIBLE, DISCUSSING IT, PRAYING, SINGING, AND MODELING. 

1. READING THE BIBLE (HEARING & LISTENING TO GOD'S VOICE)

Reading the Bible is going to be the starting point. One of the first commands is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength and commit ourselves to his commands. I have a saying that goes "the heart can't love what the head doesn't know." We all have images and pictures and stories about who God is and what he's like. Many of them are either half-true or distorted, and some of them are completely untrue. We can make up a God that fits our categories or we can be terrified of a God that isn't anything like him. As our children are growing, this is the time for them to be absorbing the knowledge of what God is like from the words he has given us himself. 

Additionally, we don't just want our kids to learn things about God but learn to hear directly from him. As people who have been raised in the school system, we have been conditioned to read the bible a certain way. Read for information and then answer questions. Read and look for useful things to apply to your life. We need to teach our children not to read for information, but for communication and communion. This means teaching them how to open God's word and listen for God's voice. 

I'll give some practical resources in my next post on reading the bible together.

2. DISCUSSING (WHAT IS GOD LIKE AND HOW SHOULD I RESPOND)

One of the things I love about the scripture passage in Deuteronomy 6 is that it says, "talk about these things". Discussion. Talk about what you're learning together through reading the bible, praying, and singing.

I've found that the best discussions I have with my son is when I ask questions like "are there any words you didn't understand?" or "if you were there, how would you have felt?" Other times I have found that telling them a story from my own life that goes along with whatever part of the bible we're reading has opened up great discussion. I'll do an entire post on questions you can go through with your kids after you've read the bible to help you discuss it.

Additionally, the verse says to "repeat them again and again". We all need repetition to actually remember something. God's word and how it applies is no exception. So, finding ways to discuss throughout the day what we have read, or prayed about, or sung about is a powerful tool. For example, I like saying at dinner, "Hey son, tell mom about what we learned in our bible time together this morning." Or while we're driving sometimes, I'll ask him to tell me one question he'd like to ask God. 

3. PRAYING (SPEAKING TO GOD & SPENDING TIME IN HIS PRESENCE)

If you're like me, you may feel like your own prayer life is not what you would like it to be. How then are we supposed to teach our children how to pray when we feel so inept? I know that this is an age-old feeling. When you see the 12 followers of Jesus, they too felt inept. They asked Jesus, "can you teach us to pray," and He did in Matthew 6:9-13. They saw that Jesus had a powerful prayer life and seemed connected to God in a way that they wanted to experience. Jesus then gave them a model. 

I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I have found some meaningful and beautiful ways to come alongside my son and teach him how to pray. Again, I'll post what I'm learning and help provide some resources to help you begin to pray along with your family.

4. SINGING (LEARNING TO EXPRESS TRUTH WITH OUR BODIES)

There's a good chance on this one that I've either got you hooked, or I've lost you. If you're someone who is apathetic towards singing or absolutely hates it, please keep an open mind. Up to this point, if we believe that reading our bibles and doing our best to live the way God commands us to, then you will have a hard time avoiding the command to sing. It's in the Bible hundreds of times. God commands it. Why? Answers to why God commands things are almost always, because he deserves it and because it's good for us. 

There are a number of benefits that I believe God intends for us to experience through singing that I'll unpack in another post. The first is that music connects our minds and our hearts in a way that no other thing on earth can do. In my experience you often have two kinds of people. Those who are most focused on learning things about God and are highly intellectual in their faith. Then there are those who love the feeling that God is close, and their faith is highly experiential. God wants to connect the two.

He wants people who love him deeply and worship him passionately. We're like candles, we should provide both the light of truth to the mind and the heat that warms the heart.Music does this so beautifully it's almost like God designed it that way.

Our children should be growing up in homes where God is praised to music. 

5. MODELING (SHOWING WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO FOLLOW GOD TO OUR CHILDREN)

Lastly, you don't have to have all the answers or have family discipleship totally figured out. You don't have to have the most in-depth biblical knowledge and answer all their questions. You don't have to have a powerful prayer life to help them pray. All you have to do is be honest and show them that you are growing with them.

One of the best things you can do when discipling your children is be open about the things that you are learning or struggling with. Show them that following Jesus is something you never really have figured out. It's something we spend our lives doing. Model to them that living a life of being connected to God is a process that you're all on together.

NOW WHAT?!

At this point, you may be thinking to yourself, I'm such a failure! My family doesn't do any of these things well or often. Please hear me! This is not a list of things to make you feel awful. This is meant to give five simple categories to how God designed the family to grow together. 

Most of us never start doing this either because we've never had anyone do it with us or because we're not sure what it's supposed to look like.

TIPS BEFORE YOU START

You do not have to do all four immediately. In fact, I would highly recommend that you do not! It will be overwhelming to everyone involved. My recommendation would start with one element. Pick one and do it consistently. 

I love the phrase "small wins are better than big failures." Choose one element like reading the bible and do that or pick praying together and do that, but don't try all four. Get some small wins and you'll start to gain some confidence.

Prepare your family. Don't spring it on them, very few people like surprises. If your family doesn't already have a history of doing these things together, they'll need time to wrap their heads around it. Tell them why you're wanting to do it and ask them if they have any questions. 

Adjust your expectations. Don't expect a revival or the clouds to open and angels to sing. You are going to experience pushback and boredom. Your kids are just like you and there will be days they just aren't interested in engaging. There will be times where the bible passage is strange or simply doesn't resonate with them. Don't be discouraged. Just like healthy plants don't spring up overnight, they grow slowly and subtly over time. Spiritual growth is the same. 

Guard a time and create a sacred space. The other reason many of us have not done this before is because it takes time. There are a thousand demands for our time and attention. Cell phones ding, practices and homework beckon us. 
In order to make this happen we have to say no to something in order to say yes to discipling our children. That may mean saying no to scrolling on our phone an hour the night before and going to bed so we can wake up an hour earlier to read the bible together. I love the phrase that "Time is guarded, not created." Whatever you do, set a time and do it consistently.

I highly recommend  setting aside a space that will be used for doing this together. A place that is really comfortable, can be bright, and quiet. For me, it's my office with my comfy chair and a cup of coffee. I love when my son settles into the chair next to me and I can put my arm around him. It's our shared sacred space. When we come in, we know we're about to spend time with God together.

Give yourself some breaks! Literally and Psychologically. One of the things that I have found helpful is knowing which days we will take a break from the routine. For example, my son and I do our bible and prayer time on Mondays through Thursdays at a certain time in the morning. We take Friday and Saturday mornings off. I need a mental break after a week of work and it's nice to have some additional time to myself those mornings. I can sleep in if I really need it and not feel guilty. Sunday mornings are spent worshipping together so we use that as our discipleship time together.

If you miss a day, it's not the end of the world. Miss two days, again don't beat yourself up. If you've lapsed for a month, okay, fine. Just don't give up. Start again.
No devices, or only allowed for watching related videos. This is my own personal experience, but every aspect of our waking moments are filled with apps and buzzes and dings and we live distracted lives. Distraction and hurry are the two great enemies of spiritual growth. So, I recommend not reading the bible on your phones. I recommend that no one be on their devices during the family discipleship time. 

My only exception would be is if you are going to incorporate watching a video as part of your bible time or a spotify playlist for music. Other than that, turn the phones off.

Allow for snacks. Finally, if you have little ones, nothing keeps them seated like a snack. In our house there is almost always goldfish, peanut butter toast, apple slices, or milk involved. It's been that way since he was a baby and holding a bottle as I read the bible. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Did you grow up in a home that did family discipleship? What did you love? What did you learn not to do because of it?

Other Posts Coming:

• Reading the Bible with Your Child (Information)
• Reading the Bible with Your Child (Communion)
• Discussing the Bible with Your Child
• Praying with Your Child
• Singing with Your Child

What are some topics that you'd like to see me explore?