Growing Kids in Christ

More than anything I want my boys to know Christ and follow Him with their whole hearts.  But how do you continue to put their relationship with God on the forefront of their lives?  How do you encourage them to truly seek God?

Here are a few ways that we have done this over the years.  I can't say that we have done an exceptional job, but I am relying on God to be the Great Gap Filler where we haven't provided what they have needed spiritually.

 

 Every fall we celebrate the boys spiritual birthdays with a simple treat on that day or around the time they gave their lives to the Lord.  This idea came from our pastor.  Since both boys gave their lives to God really early, our pastor suggested that remembering that day each year was important so that doubt wouldn't seep into their hearts later on on whether they had truly made the decision to follow Christ.

 

Now let's fast forward to an idea that I haven't even done yet, but plan to do for the boys when they graduate high school.  I want to get some wide margin Bibles to make notes to them and underline favorite verses for them.  My Bible that my husband gave to me over twenty is littered with notes and underlining.  It is almost like a memory book of things that happened in my life or lesson that I learned along the way.  I would like to create something similar for my boys.

The Bible that I am looking at is the Zondervan NASB Wide Margin Bible. If you would like to read more about this concept, see this post... Giving the gift of God's Word

Another idea that we are going to start this fall is creating gratitude journals.  I have been doing a gratitude journal for about three years now.  It has totally changed my perspective on life.  I now see all God's blessings instead of all the things that have gone wrong.  Because I have disciplined myself to add more to my list of blessings each Monday, I can pull myself out of a negative attitude faster by just remembering to give thanks.  I am hoping to do the same for my boys.

Scripture Memorization is another great way to instill a love of God and His Word in your kids.  Lately, I have been having the boys memorize chunks of Scripture instead of a verse here and there. When the boys were real young they would just memorize short verses.  I started with ABC verses to give us some kind of structure.

Above all, the best way to turn your kids' hearts to Christ is prayer!  We cannot control everything in our kids' lives.  We cannot control their hearts.  We cannot control the choices they make.  But we can bring them before Christ and plead on their behalf.  My greatest prayer is that my boys' relationship with God will continue to grow.  Here are several ways to pray for your kids:

Head to Toe

A Prayer Calendar for Moms

A Prayer List