I recently shared about how we must be cultivating intentional time with the Lord and we must be training our children to do so as well. This is not something that only starts when they are old enough to read, but it is something that should start before they are ever even born. But no matter where you are at in your relationship with the Lord or in your parenting journey, it's never too late to start.
Train Them Up
The Bible commands parents to "train their children in the way they should go." We are to train them to pursue righteousness and in order to do so we must study God's Word. We must study who God is and we must cultivate time spent in His presence. This may not be something you are used to doing in your home, but I want to encourage you to start now.
Today I am sharing what it has looked like in our home to sit and savor at the Lord's feet and some practical ways you can do so as well, no matter what season of parenting/childhood you and your children are in.
Time With God In Every Season
Before You Were Formed
Before our children were ever even a thought in our mind, God knew who they would be and had a plan and a purpose for their lives already planned out.
Before my husband and I ever had children, we prayed over them. We prayed over who they would be, what they would do for the Lord, their personal relationship with Christ, among numerous other things. We thanked the Lord for the abundant blessing their life would be and we continually prayed that the Lord would equip us to train and disciple them in the ways of the Lord.
Once each of our children were conceived, we prayed and declared the promises and truths of God over them. We continued praying the same types of things that we did before we even were pregnant with them. I would read to them and talk to them. We spoke words of life over them and declared no weapon formed against them could prosper. My children would know my voice and my heart and the Father's heart for them before they were ever even born.
My husband and I developed a closer and more personal relationship with Him by making time spent with the Lord a priority so that we could be firmly rooted in Christ and have Him and Him alone as the foundation of our home. Before our children took their first breath of air, their foundation was already established.
Infancy
Once our children were born, we continued to pray over them and declare the truths and promises of God over their lives. The same prayers we prayed over them in the womb became the prayers we prayed over them as we held them and tended to their needs.
We were now able to read to them and talk to them as we held them. We told them stories of all the Lord had done. We read them books and Bible stories and once again had the immense honor to love them and care for them as an extension of the Father's love for us.
Toddler/Preschool Age
As our children become toddlers, they were now ready for their own time with God. Each day, when I would do my own quiet time with the Lord, my children would also have their own time with God. Even though they couldn't read yet, by having them sit down and spend time the God, we were training them to make God a priority in their lives.
For this age, this looked like "reading" their own Bible storybooks and doing Bible themed activity or coloring sheets. We would provide them with the resources and they would quietly look through the pages of their storybooks and color their papers right beside me while I read my Bible. They were instructed they had to do this quietly, gently reminding and encouraging them that it was so important to spend time with Jesus. The storybooks we provided them were ones we regularly read together at bed so they had already been familiar with the stories and found great enjoyment in "reading" the stories on their own.
I remember the first week of doing this with both my kids and not just my oldest. My son was freshly two and my daughter was four. The first day we made it 3 minutes, the second day 5 minutes, and by the end of the week he was quietly looking at his "pick-cha" Bible for a solid 7-10 minutes each day. He was so excited to be just like us and I was so excited that their stamina was growing so quickly.
It was during this age we also began to have them pray over our meals and before bed. I have so many fond memories of our bedtime prayers together on mommy and daddy's bed. Their sweet little prayers for others, for each other, and for their own needs were some of the best prayers ever. I can still hear their squeaky little toddler voices.
But this wasn't the only time we prayed. Prayer was (and still is) woven into the culture of our home. God isn't only our lifeline in times of need or want, but is our lifeline for daily and consistent gratitude and praise offered up all day long.
This dedicated time, training them to cultivate their own time with the Lord, significantly impacted their relationship with the Lord for good and both my children had accepted Christ as their Savior and had a truly personal relationship with Him by the age of 5.
Beginning Reader
This age looked differently for my son than it did my daughter, but the goal stayed the same: hearing the actual Word of God. My daughter has been a voracious reader since she was 4 years old, but my son didn't start taking an interest in reading until he was closer to 8 and we didn't push it until he was ready.
As my daughter learned to read and moved beyond reading the Bible themed storybooks, she moved onto reading the NIrV version of the Adventure Bible. She would spend a significant time each day reading through her Bible. And while the NIrV (the readers version of NIV) is written to be more readable for kids, we all agreed that we didn't like how watered down it made it. We are firm believers that ALL children are capable of understanding the totality of the gospel message, not just the "cutesy" story parts. She did learn a significant amount from reading with all the extra facts and information in the Adventure Bible, but for any future children we would move right into a full and complete version of the Adventure Bible.
Because it took longer for our son to catch on to reading and actually enjoy it, his Bible time with the Lord during his early reading years was spent listening to the audio version of it from the Bible app on my phone. He would listen to several chapters a day while the rest of us read from our actual Bibles. When he finally got to the point where reading wasn't frustrating for him, he was gifted an Action Bible and ravenously devoured the entire thing in one month, and then again the next month. He was hooked and wanted to learn more, at which point, he moved right into a full and complete version of the Bible.
It was also during this time that we began to study God's Word together. In addition to reading through the Bible in chronological order, we would study different stories and passages and used resources like 24 Family Ways, Long Story Short, and God's Big Picture Bible Storybook to help us grow in Godly character and stature.
Proficient Reader
And now that they are both proficient readers, their Bible time is spent studying God's Word on their own (in addition to our family studies) and prayer. My 12 year old daughter has read through the complete Bible two times now and my 10 year old is half way through reading it. Their "Bible time" as we call it is something they look forward to and is completed every day, no matter what. We do not assign a set amount of chapters or pages or time, but rather encourage them to listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit. We continue to encourage them that He is not a checkbox and is worthy of our undivided time spent with Him, studying His word and in prayer. They both read from the NIV version of the Bible, but we are moving them to ESV versions soon.
They spend time praying to God before and after they read, making their hearts ready to receive what God wants to speak to them through His Word and then allowing the Word to transform their hearts and minds to be more like Him. This is something we have modeled for them daily since they were born. It's not something they just automatically knew how to do, but we taught them and cultivated this time with God. We also modeled it ourselves.
We encourage them to learn and study who God is. We teach them to not only read the word, but to do the word-to live it out and be transformed by it. They each have their own journals they use to record things they find interesting or things God is teaching and telling them. They both have their own sticky notes and highlighters and use them to study their Bibles. We have encouraged their own interaction with God's word and have not dictated how they should study it, beyond simply looking for God's character, who He is, and what they can learn about Him through what they read. The Bible isn't a book about them, but about who God is and His love for His children.
The Time Is Now
I want to encourage you in this: You can start cultivating a passion for God's Word and time spent with Him in any season. There are different ways to incorporate time with God in each season of parenting and each season of childhood and if you haven't started yet, I hope what I have shared above will help you to get started. The time is now. It's our jobs to train and disciple our children in the Lord and that includes making time with God an important part of your ENTIRE family's day, not only when they accept the Lord as their Savior, but from before they are even born. And if you didn't come to the realization of the importance of it until they were toddlers or older it's ok. Start now. The only wrong thing to do is to not start at all.
