One Million Arrows

I recently finished reading One Million Arrows: Raising Your Children to Change the World by Julie Ferwerda. It was recommended by some of the gals on the FIAR boards.

Most of the book talks about how we can raise mission-minded children for God.  There are a plethora of stories of parents accomplishing this task. However, there were two important details that really hit me that I wanted to share with you.

This first is that we as parents shouldn't let the church or other raise our children spiritually.  We should strive to have spriritual instruction in our homes.  This encouraged me to keep going with what we are doing with Zach and Noah.  There are many times when I think that they are probably getting enough in Sunday school, church, youth group, etc.  But in reality kids need to see the Christian life lived out in their homes.  The two things that we do is to make sure that the boys are reading the Word of God (we discuss what they read) and we have them memorize Scripture.  Right now they are currently memorizing Psalm 139.

The other idea that I gleaned from this book is to buy a Bible for each child and write notes, prayers, and words of encouragement to them to give to them when they are older.  My idea is that I could do one for each boy for their high school graduation. This means going through God's Word and highlighting and writing to them alongside the Word.  I found the ESV Journaling Bible (Tuscan Series, Terra-Cotta/Sage) at Amazon.  It has wide margins and lines to write on.  I have about four years to get Zach's ready.  I am thinking that this would be an awesome graduation gift!