Schedules + no schedules,
Rules + Free-time,
Bible reading + Family Devos
...what to do??
Enter: Lauren making your life easier.
We do ultimately have to trust God to spiritually grow our children. What that doesn’t mean is that we trust others to do our part for us. It doesn’t mean that we file the work of their hearts under the churches responsibility. Church is wonderful, and it builds up the family, but the family is the unit where things are cemented and lived. God takes care of the watering that comes from the church and other influences, and He consistently shines his truth on them. The family unit is responsible for the sowing of truth into the soil of their everyday lives. It is our job as parents to leave a spiritual heritage. So many of us aren’t sowing God's word into them because we haven’t faithfully done it ourselves. Let this serve as some accountability.
Here is where I make your life easier...I know everyone started reading for that reason.
I've created a 9 week summer verse plan for families. It includes a verse to learn and meditate on for the week, conversation starters, activity suggestions, and even a coloring sheet for each week.
One thing my kids have proven over and over is that they aren’t too young to understand serious theology. In fact, their faith is much more pure than mine, so if I can couple that with God’s word in their life, I am setting them up for growth.
I’d love to start a devotional that will be insightful for every single day of the summer. But I know we will fall short, and that will leave me feeling unaccomplished. That wouldn’t be the truth, but it’s still how I would be left feeling, and I would hustle and try to hurry through to get it done instead of worrying about what actually impacted my children’s hearts. Meditation on scripture works.We have done this for the past five summers, so I know how this will work and will impact their hearts. Hiding God's word in their hearts will be what comes back to them to fight temptation and grow fruit in them for the rest of their lives.
At our house, we print out each week of questions for my kids to answer and they have fun illustrating the verse some way, painting it, using one of the color sheets I've added for each week, making it out of Legos, it is easily adaptable for different ages and varying personalities. When my kids were too young to write, I printed the verse out for them and they glued it in their journals and colored it. These are just a suggestions, the only rule is to not hold this rigidly. I repeat: make it work for your family!
We always write the verse on our big chalkboard so that it’s in front of us all week. If you don’t have a chalkboard display the kids verses on the refrigerator. My older kids like to display theirs on the bathroom mirrors so they can read and work on memorizing the verses while they brush their teeth. There are tons of ways you can tweak these ideas.
Some ages will need more help than others, but this is totally doable for Preschool through Middle School. Figure out how it works for your family. You can write the verse in their journal on Monday, pray it on Tuesday, answer questions on Wednesday, illustrate it on Thursday, and play a memory game with it on Friday. Do something different the next week. Take a copy of the verse and put it in the car to memorize together when in the drive-thru line. Let them come up with a prize for memorizing it. There are so many ways to tailor this to your individual family. One year we even ordered temporary tattoos of our verses!
If you'd like to receive this summer family plan,
click on the link below which leads you to my website,
then click on the Hidden in Their Hearts button
Please share this blog with your friends! I'll be posting it on Instagram @laurenmitchellwrites as well so you can share it easily there.
SUMMER IS HERE!
o
