A friend of his confessed to him his greatest fear...that his children wouldn't end up going to 'Ole Miss, or the University of Mississippi.
Friend, my professor replied, of COURSE your children are going to go to Ole Miss. You and your wife went to Ole Miss. Their grandparents went to Ole Miss. Since they were born, they've been wearing Ole Miss colors and singing Ole Miss songs and going to Ole Miss games and hearing about Ole Miss traditions. All your friends went to Ole Miss and their kids are going to Ole Miss, and they have been living and breathing it their entire lives...it will be as natural as breathing that your kids will be going to Ole Miss!
My simple strategy of walking with Jesus with my kids is to be constantly talking about Him, constantly talking to Him, constantly reading and referencing His Word, constantly pointing to Him, continually asking about Him, so that as they grow, it is as natural as breathing for them to turn their hearts to prayer, a million times a day. I pray that as they make decisions, the Scripture we have learned just pops into their minds unconsciously, that as they think their thoughts, that His will be so quick to speak in.
Some of what I do probably doesn't work, and some of what I do seems like it doesn't work, until later. But I figure if I bring Him in lots of ways, lots of days, and pray continually that He would not only be protecting and guiding them, but also ministering to their hearts, then Jesus is getting to my kids.
At the breakfast table, EVEN on the crazy get ready for school days, they eat while I read our morning devotions...which is either the passage I read in my study of the Word earlier that morning, or "Our Daily Bread for Kids" or "Exploring Grace Together" or "One Year of Dinner Table Devotions" or the "Jesus Storybook Bible."
We have done some of those over and over and over again, and I just have that stack on our bookshelf and I just pick one. We change it up. If we've done several days of older girl devotions, I'll pull one better for Nora and Ben...If it's near a holiday, we'll read through Christmas or Easter passages in my Bible or the storybook Bible, if one has really been working for us, I stick with it...and if it isn't, I switch the next day.
After our devotion, we practice our family Bible verse. We don't usually do one random verse after another, but chunks or chapters. I read the first verse two or three times, and put in some hand motions anywhere possible, Nora and Sofie's favorite. Then, I read it again, two or three words at a time, and they repeat. After doing that a few times, they tell me the verse, and I give a word help when needed.
We each take a turn. We take turns girls vs. boys. We take turns each saying the next word around the circle until we are done. When we finish, we've all said the verse 10-15 times without even realizing it, and spent under 5 minutes.
Tomorrow, we all say verse one together, and I start the process again with verse 2. I never pressure Nora...she just kind of follows along, but I am always, always amazed at how much she has memorized, how much she can say. We even catch Ben babbling and mimicking the motions.
After we finish the entire passage, we say it together a few days in a row, and then start a new passage, going back to old passages a few times a month.
ANYTIME I can, throughout the day or night, if a situation arises that that section of verses speaks into, I say, "Psalm 23" or "The Lord's Prayer" or "The Fruits of the Spirit" or "the Armor of God" and everyone rattles off His Word for that moment.
We pray a short prayer for the day and everyone is off wild, and often, I wonder if those 10 minutes of Sofie climbing backward over her chair while listening or Nora asking for more jelly 13 times or Lily rolling her eyes made any impact...and tomorrow...we do it again.
It does.
It does make an impact, just as church does, EVEN when it seems like they are getting nothing from it. They ARE.
We have our main devotional time at breakfast and at bedtime because we have so many guests at dinner, but if dinner works better for you, do dinner!
Throughout the day, I take every opportunity to point them to Jesus, not just towards better behavior. When they mess up, we talk about it, from Jesus' heart. When I mess up, we do the same.
Bedtime is my favorite time with them, however, because it's not so rushed.
Every night they are all in bed at 7:15, and from 7:15-8:00, we read a chapter (or two) of whatever awesome book we're reading...sometimes missionary stories like these: (Adoniram Judson, William Carey, Mary Slessor, Hudson Taylor , Gladys Aylward, George Muller, Missionary Stories with the Millers) and sometimes classics from their school curriculum like Caddie Woodlawn or Island of the Blue Dolphin or A Long Walk to Water.
They have to be laying down, and lights have to be out. No other rules :)
By the time we finish reading the book, they are listening and calm, and we dive into another devotional, lately "Between You and God", but we have also read this fantastic storybook Bible from cover to cover several times (takes us about a year to do). These always make the girls think and ask questions, and we have had so many spirit-filled, meaningful conversations before they fall asleep. Sometimes Daddy comes then and plays us a worship song or two on his guitar, sometimes Mommy does (due to being in Haiti, this is how we teach them some hymns and praise songs from our culture, in English), and then one of us prays out loud over them...walking through the day and identifying and thanking Him for the ways we saw Him, praying for the burdens on our hearts, asking the Lord to fill the room, hold us close, and protect, guide and fill our hearts, minds, and bodies.
I've had to discipline myself through the years not to rush through those evening hours...leaving the dishes, leaving the visitors, leaving whomever, whatever, and filling this 45 minutes before they drift off to sleep with worship, prayer, reading and Bible study. HowEVER crazy our days may be, however many people might be in them, even when we are traveling, we have this time.
Oh man, this got longer than I thought! Final word.
I talk about Jesus with our four a lot.
And while it might be possible to talk TOO MUCH about Ole Miss, if the kids one day complain that their mama never stopped talking about Jesus...I'm ok with that.
They will hear me talking about Jesus in every circumstance until I'm with Him...and they'll hear me talking about Jesus in their minds and hearts after I'm gone. I hope and pray that it will be as natural as breathing for my kids to follow hard after their Creator!
Side notes: my sweet niece is in the hospital with pneumonia again, and my sweet country is struggling, too...thank you for praying!
Thank you!!!
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