Practical Ways to Disciple Your Children Every Day
What does it look like to disciple our children? How can we do it practically in the day-to-day?
Let’s face it. Life is busy. Even if your children don’t participate in an abundance of extracurricular activities, life is still busy. Keeping house keep mothers busy. There is always something left undone by the end of the night.
It is so easy to get caught up in those things that are immediately seen. You see dirty dishes and dirty floors and know you must wash them. You see unfolded laundry that needs tending to. Children need to be fed several times a day. Those needs that beg your immediate attention are often the things that you focus on caring for.
These are not bad things to care for. It is required we care for our children and homes. But, friends, too easily we lose sight of the vision God has given us as mothers. We get too wrapped up and forget the crucial, most pressing need of our children: discipleship. Not passive Bible stories or Bible coloring pages and crafts.
Rather, real, intentional, scheduled-in time to sit with our children and nurture their hearts to live for Christ.
Practical Ways to Disciple Your Children
- Work Through a Bible Study with Your Children
- Read a Book of the Bible Together
- Talk About What’s Going on in Our Country & the World in the Light of Scripture
Hard Stops to Disciple
Creating hard stops specifically for discipleship training does several things. Now, when I say hard stops, what I mean is stopping whatever it is you’re doing to meet together for discipleship. You can do this by adding it to your schedule or doing it at a specific time each day [or several times each day]. Making a hard stop simply means dropping whatever you’re doing and making it happen.
Here’s what it does:
- It shows your children learning about Jesus is important. When you specifically set aside time from each day and guard it, your children see that you value this time.
- It develops a consistent habit of training. Having this habitual teaching and training helps your children grow consistently in character and in Christ. In addition, it will keep the things of God in the front of their minds and they will more readily be equipped to apply the teachings to their lives.
- It offers direction and instruction to help your children make better choices. When we intentionally teach our children, we can often prevent bad choices or bad behavior before they develop. We are being proactive rather than reactive.
Plan to Follow Through
Planning these times are not hard, it’s following through that can be challenging. The first week can be easy because you begin with gusto. But once the second and third weeks roll around, circumstances arise that seek to steal this time. We must guard this time as precious. Keep it a priority and do not allow complacency to creep in.
Being a living example is also excellent, and necessary, but the intentional teaching with the living examples go hand-in-hand.
I could live for Christ, but if I don’t talk about Him with my children and have conversations about why I make the decisions I do, avoiding certain things, embracing others, they will not understand the foundation of our faith. They only see a mother who lives a morally dignified life. Nothing more. Spending intentional time having conversations is important. But so is setting time aside to specifically teach and talk about Christ; just as He did with his disciples.
I find that what happens when I miss a day, is that I write it off as no big deal; kind of being nonchalant about it. The problem is, because of this attitude, I do it again the next day. And the more I allow that time to slip away, the easier it is to let it go. Before I know it, our discipleship time is a distant memory that has dissipated due to a complacent attitude.
There will be days missed. It happens. And by all means, give yourself grace, for His are new every morning. But the goal is to get back to it as soon as possible.
Do not let distractions rob you of intentional discipleship with your children.
For His Glory,
Christin Slade
ChristinSlade.com
100 Words of Affirmation Your Son/Daughter Needs to Hear
Matt and Lisa Jacobson want you to discover the powerful ways you can build your children up in love with the beautiful words you choose to say every day–words that every son and daughter needs to hear.
These affirmation books offer you one hundred phrases to say to your son or daughter – along with short, personal stories and examples – that deeply encourage, affirm, and inspire.
So start speaking a kind and beautiful word into their lives daily and watch your children–and your relationship with them–transform before your eyes.
