Guidance Teaching Your Children Biblical Topics

Guidance Teaching Your Kids Biblical Topics

We’ve often covered topics relating to our responsibilities as parents, and we’ve discussed this passage in Deuteronomy. “…you shall teach them [God’s Laws} diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” That’s pretty intense because you will be teaching all the time.

Teaching the Bible to your children can be challenging since you have developmental issues mixing with doctrinal issues. And I am going to tell a couple stories about myself.

When I was young, I attended a church that was very missions oriented. They had mission conferences often and people would come forward saying God called them. Lots of them talked about how they didn’t want to be on the mission field, but they were miserable not following God. I assumed if you didn’t want to do missions, then God had called you. That was the last thing I wanted, which meant I had to do it. So I said God called me to be a missionary.

The other story is about my family. Mom and Dad had a name for each grandparent. For instance, my grandmother on Dad’s side was Granddad Thomas. On mother’s side, it was Granddad Cofer. My uncle was Eugene. I never saw his name, so as a child, I envisioned his name to be U.Gene because he was my uncle. It made sense to me that the U was a shortened form of Uncle. Once I grew up and heard the name Eugene, I realized my mistake.

Both of these stories show that children think differently when they are young. Realizing their developmental stage helps to understand how our children might get confused. My guest is Jann Martin, who holds a degree in Elementary Education.