Does teaching the Bible to your kids feel really complicated?
Do you find yourself second-guessing yourself, stopping when it’s not going perfectly, and letting it go way too long before trying again?
If that’s you, welcome! This post is written with you in mind.
This post is all about how to start small when you are teaching your kids the Bible so that it’s less overwhelming and ultimately more successful. Let’s dive in!
Do you need a resource to use to teach your kids the Bible? Download the NEW Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional!
How Starting Small Will Help You Disciple Your Kids More
When we think about trying to teach our kids the Bible and how to teach our kids HOW to follow God, it can get really complicated really quickly.
There are a lot of outside voices you can listen to about this topic, and I’m honored that you’re listening to this podcast and that I get the chance to share some ideas with you.
I think it’s easy to look at what someone online says they are doing and think, “Oh, that seems nice” but then run into trouble trying to figure out how to actually make it happen.
There is so much to teach our kids about the Bible. So much to teach them about who God is. So much to still work through ourselves before we can teach it to our kids.
So today I want to give you a simple encouragement.
Start small.
If you’re not happy with how discipleship is going… if it’s just not working out the way you want it to or you’re not able to get it going at all … start small.
Here’s what I mean by that.
We don’t suddenly become experts in anything. It takes time and effort. It takes a single first step in that direction.
Sometimes a problem or an issue we want to tackle is too big to conquer all in one day or even in one season of our lives.
Sometimes a subject is too big to teach in one period of time.
But if we stop and think about how we can tackle one aspect of the problem or how to take one step toward the solution, even if that step isn’t big or grandiose, then we will still be making progress toward the solution.
If we start small, then improving on how things are right now is doable. If we try to do everything at once, we are less likely to see improvement.
I’m going to use this podcast time to give you some ideas for how you can start small with teaching your kids the Bible, and my hope is that these ideas make teaching the Bible to your kids easier and more doable.
Here is the list of ideas I want to go through with you today:
- Number 1, lower your expectations.
- Number 2, attach Bible time to something you already do
- Number 3, let someone else do the creation while you do the implementing
- Number 4, let everything else be icing on the cake
Start Small by Lowering Your Expectations
We’re all go-getters here, right? And if you’ve been in church and seen what happens in children’s church or if you’ve been on Pinterest looking for ideas for how to disciple your kids, chances are that go-getter trait in your personality is FIRED UP about having the best Bible time you can possible have with your kids … every single day … for the rest of forever.
Let’s stop right there and take that vision for the perfect Bible time and make it much, much smaller.
Let’s lower our expectations.
We are real, live human beings with real, live human being children.
We will have good days and bad days, and so will our kids. All of us learn differently, so what seems like a great method for teaching your kids the Bible might not actually go over so well. Our schedules change, and often do so very suddenly. So what’s working now might not work in six months.
And if we have grasped onto some big, grandiose vision for how we want things to go or if we’ve decided that success in teaching our kids how to follow Jesus has to look a certain way … well, we’re setting ourselves up for that scenario where we are constantly second guessing ourselves and constantly having to rework the plan and being disappointed about it.
But if we go ahead and start with smaller expectations, then this whole process will be so much easier.
So what’s a good example of a small expectation?
“We’re going to be the type of people who grow our own faith and talk about faith with our kids in some way most days.”
That’s an expectation of yourself that you can stick to no matter what it ends up looking like.
Start Small by Attaching Family Bible Time and Spiritual Conversations to Something You Already Do
This is a strategy for habit formation called “habit stacking.”
Instead of trying to reinvent yourself overnight and follow a whole new routine, you stack a new habit you want to establish onto a habit that you already have.
So let’s talk about what this could look like.
If you’ve got little kids that you read with already right before bed, grab a storybook Bible and read one story every night with your kids. Cycle through one storybook Bible and then grab another and just repeat this. Before you know it, you’ll have a habit of talking about faith every day before bed, and as your kids mature you can choose different methods to match what they need.
If you already eat a meal together most days, talk about Scripture together at those meals. You’re already at the table. You’re probably already having a conversation about something. You can really easily attach Bible time to this already existing habit.
If you already drive to activities most days with your kids, instead of sitting in silence, talk to them about spiritual things. Listen to an age-appropriate Christian podcast. Talk about what you’re learning.
The idea here is just to think about something you already do with your kids and simply add on a spiritual component to your conversations at that time of day.
Start Small by Letting Someone Else Do the Creation and While You Just Implement
Go ahead and buy a resource to use!
It’s funny, because this post was supposed to come out a few weeks ago, but it didn’t. I had to take a break for a few weeks on recording podcasts because I was deep into writing a devotional – exactly the kind of devotional I would be suggesting you look for. So this next bit is unplanned … it wouldn’t have been in this post if I had stayed on schedule, and I’m kind of glad now that I didn’t.
There’s no reason that you have to come up with something to do for Bible time with your kids all on your own. Not when there are so many amazing resources out there for you to use!
I love a conversation-based approach to teaching my kids the Bible, so the resource I created is set up to flow like a conversation. I feel like that keeps me intentional to teach my kids the Bible but also leaves room for the questions my kids will inevitably have or even some of the random rabbit trails they go off on that I wouldn’t have brought up on my own but my kids really are wondering about.
Here is where you can find the Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional.
The devotional gives you a Bible verse to read and questions broken down by age range so you can skim through those, ask the ones you think your kids would answer, and have an easier time starting and maintaining spiritual conversations with your kids.
If that sounds good to you, check it out. But if it doesn’t, there are other resources out there that you can find to help you have Bible time with your kids most of the days of the week so you’re being intentional to teach them the Bible.
Using a pre-made resource is a great way to start small. Let someone else do the hard part while you follow along. You can always work your way to coming up with what to do on your own or going through books of the Bible with your kids.
If that’s not where you are right now though, you can instantly make this process more doable just by using a devotional written by someone else.
Start Small by Letting Everything Else be Icing on the Cake
If you’ve lowered your expectations, attached spiritual conversations or Bible time to something you already do, and started using a resource to help you teach your kids the Bible, you are already winning.
You’re already doing it!
You do not have to feel the pressure of having kids church in your home every night. You don’t have to do a Bible-inspired craft every day or even every other day. You don’t have to come up with a Bible tie-in every time you do any activity with your kids.
You can let your intentional Bible time that you’re doing on most days be enough. Everything else is icing on the cake.
If you’re in the middle of drawing with your kids and one of them colors a rainbow, awesome. You can talk about how the rainbow is a symbol from the Bible. Cool! Extra spiritual conversations. That’s great.
If you’re working through a struggle your kid is having – maybe they have a conflict with a teacher or friend … you can take advantage of the opportunity to share wisdom from Scripture and teach your kid to pray for that person they are in conflict with.
But you can take the pressure off yourself that tells you you need to force EVERY situation to be a chance to teach a lesson. You can let those things happen naturally and spontaneously because you have already done the work to be intentional in a small, doable way.
And pretty soon, your faith and your kids’ faith is going to start to infiltrate more and more aspects of your daily lives and your conversations. Starting small will actually get you there faster than if you start big and huge and amazing but can’t maintain it.
Alright let’s go through those ideas again.
- Number 1, lower your expectations.
- Number 2, attach Bible time to something you already do
- Number 3, let someone else do the creation while you do the implementing
- Number 4, let everything else be icing on the cake
Take Action to Start Small with Teaching Your Kids the Bible
As always, we are going to end with an action step you can take to get started with these ideas.
Today’s action step is to think about what aspect of teaching your kids the Bible you are making too big to actually accomplish. Name it. Write it down. And make a plan for how you can approach teaching your kids the Bible in a smaller, more doable way.
- Find me on Instagram and let me know what it is!
- Leave a comment on this post and tell me about it.
I would love to encourage you and pray for you specifically!
Quick Links
- NEW RELEASE: Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional: https://faithtalksdaily.com/attributes-of-god/
- For 10 FREE family devotions on the Fruit of the Spirit: www.faithtalksdaily.com
- www.instagram.com/faithtalksdaily
- www.facebook.com/faithtalksdaily
Do you need a resource to use to teach your kids the Bible? Download the NEW Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional!