Leading Your Children to Love the Word

Jeannie Vogel: Okay, ladies, we're going to get started.. I'm Jeannie Vogel, Ambassador for New York State. It's wonderful to see you all. I want to start by introducing our moderator today, Bob Lepine, who has been a very, very special friend of Revive Our Hearts. He has been with Revive Our Hearts from the beginning and is the chairman of our board and a pastor in Little Rock as well.

He wears many hats, but he's been a great spiritual influence for Revive Our Hearts for many years. I know you're going to enjoy getting to know him. He's going to introduce the rest of the group. So thank you and have a wonderful session.

Bob Lepine: Thank you, Jeannie. Hello, ladies, and panelists, come join us up here at the table. We are glad to have all of you here with us this afternoon and just trust that the last, I was going to say twenty-four hours, but—how many were here for one of the pre-conferences? You came to one of those? Good. So it's been a little more than twenty-four hours.

I trust that this has been a good twenty-four hours for you, and just trust that the next season, as we go into this evening and into tomorrow morning, that God will continue to be at work, as we have seen Him in this place.

Let me introduce our panelists to you. We are going to talk about how we help children and grandchildren—for those of you who are in that category—develop a love for God’s Word.

So I think you all know Pastor Kevin DeYoung, who spoke last night. Kevin is a pastor in Charlotte, North Carolina. Christ Covenant Church is where he pastors. He’s an author of many books and has podcasts and has a ministry called Clearly Reformed that I would commend to you. You can find it online, and it’s kind of the repository for Kevin’s collected works—sermons and writing.

When I am looking for theological clarity expressed in grace and winsomeness, I turn to Kevin DeYoung as a source for that, and would commend that to you as well. When you want to know what does the Bible say, and you want it expressed in a way that demonstrates grace and winsomeness—although winsomeness has kind of become a dirty word in the culture today—but do you own that word “winsomeness” for yourself?

Kevin DeYoung: Yeah, I was using it before it became a bad—before it became a curse word.

Bob: Yeah. All right. I understand the danger, just like empathy.

Kevin: Yeah, there we go. We could do that too. That can be used badly, but sure.

Bob: This is Sarah Perez, who is in the middle. Sarah is a mother of six. She and her husband Jonathan live in suburban Chicago. He is the worship pastor at Wheaton Bible Church, and Sarah is also a songwriter, recording artist, and sings with her husband and is a part of the worship ministry that you have. Pick up your mic—you have CDs available, right?

Sarah Jerez: Yes, probably not here, but online.

Bob: And all in Español, yes?

Okay, so when they minister at Wheaton Bible, your husband sings English, you sing English, but in the Dominican Republic, other places you go, much of your ministry is in Spanish.

You’ve also written a children’s book, right?

Sarah: Yes.

Bob: What is that?

Sarah: It’s called El Dios que adoramos, which is The God We Worship. It’s based on one of our songs that’s known in Spanish. We wrote a children’s book from it to teach children, because the song goes through the history of redemption and talks a lot about the character of God. So, we use it as a tool to teach children the truth behind the song.

Bob: And you’ve got songs for kids, or just songs for grown-ups?

Sarah: They’re for adults, but we get a lot of videos from kids’ choirs. We do have a version of that song for children when we released the book.

Bob: Great. This is Elizabeth Urbanowicz. And Elizabeth gives leadership to a ministry called Foundation Worldview. And rather than me explaining it, I'll let you explain what you're doing.

Elizabeth Urbanowicz: Yes, so Foundation Worldview is a ministry that's designed to equip Christian parents, Christian educators, and Christian church leaders with practical tools to get children between the ages of four and twelve to think critically and biblically. Because in one year of our kids' lives, they're going to be faced with more competing ideas than most people throughout human history have faced in their entire lives.

So from the earliest of ages, we want to equip them with transferable skills to carefully evaluate every idea that comes their way and understand that Scripture is true.

Bob: And Elizabeth has a book that's down in the Resource Center that's called Helping Your Kids Know God's Good Design: 40 Questions and Answers on Gender and Sexuality. So she's dealing with an issue that is coming up here and there in the culture these days, right?

Elizabeth: I mean, this is the flashpoint. In fact, as young adults are deconstructing, this is the issue that is leading to deconstruction. So getting our kids to understand God's good design on these issues is a part of that foundation that has got to be poured to protect them, because they're going to get pulled in a lot of directions. So that's available in the Resource Center as well.

Bob: Kevin, I want to start with you. As we talk about helping our kids cultivate a love for God's Word, we have to start with the acknowledgment that that is a work of the Spirit in a child's life. And until the Spirit does that work, none of us love God's Word—until the Spirit causes us to love God's Word, right?

Kevin: Yeah, that’s a great clarification. I was planning on saying that, so I’m glad that you said it. The one good insight I was going to bring here was to say, the simple answer to the topic of this seminar is: you can’t. What can you do to make your child love the Word of God? You can’t.

But the longer answer—why we're here—is there are patterns, and there are things that you can do to put your children in the way of God’s Word, that God might, by His Spirit, move, because His Word never returns empty. But it is really important—not just as a theological plank, but really in our hearts. It’s both hopeful, humbling, and helpful to remember: we cannot cause our children to be born again.

It’s one of the things that God is always teaching us as parents. Especially the older they get, you realize how many things you really can’t control. Any of us with multiple kids have had the experience of saying, “Wait, you had the same mom and dad. You’re exactly the opposite. How did this happen?”

You realize there’s genes, and there’s lots of nature, and then there’s mysterious things. So you’re right—we’re going to talk about some of the good things we can do, maybe some of the bad things we can avoid. But only God can really help any of us to love His Word.

Bob: How many of you have boys? Moms, you have boys? Okay, lots of moms. How many of you would like for your boys to grow up loving God’s Word the way Kevin DeYoung loves God’s Word?

So what did your parents do to help you?

Kevin: vI like that question, because I'd rather talk about what my parents did than what I’m doing—or not doing. So I was telling my kids that I get to do this seminar. They were saying, “Do you want to have a conversation with us about the Bible before you go, so you have something you can share with everyone?”

So yeah, that would be helpful to give you some good examples. You know, my parents are both still living. They still live in the same house we grew up in since 1985, in Grand Rapids. They’re both in their seventies, and I’m very thankful for them. Like many of you, I have that wonderful, boring testimony that we want our kids to have—that they never knew a day when they didn’t know Jesus.

And so, yeah, there are some clear things. Like, they brought us to church—morning, evening. We went to Wednesday, we went to Sunday school. I always say, I'm glad church wasn't open other days, because we would have had to be there too.

And most days, not every day for sure, but a lot of days, we read the Bible after a meal. This was before the great proliferation of wonderful books and devotionals and things. I mean, I just remember it was a chapter that Dad read: “Any questions? Let’s pray.” But it was a chapter.

And, you know, over many, many years, even though you miss some days, you get to the whole Bible. Were there a lot of times I was sitting there thinking, This is so boring? Yes. Was I staring at my peas or my meatloaf that I wasn’t eating? Yes. But it was there.

So, we have to always be careful not to reverse-engineer parenting theories based on the way that we parent, which I think is what a lot of books end up doing. I think it was Alistair Begg I heard say one time—he was talking to a man who had no kids, he had six theories. And once he had six kids, now he has no theories of parenting.

So with nine kids, I want to be careful not just to tell you what we’re doing, because there’s a lot of different ways to do things. But here’s one of the things I do believe: being a parent who raises kids to love the Lord and love the Word is, like most things in our Christian life, a lot easier and a lot harder than you think.

If there’s one big idea in a lot of my books, I think that’s probably it—Crazy Busy; Just Do Something; Hole in Our Holiness; Impossible Christianity—it’s all kind of the same thing. Now, you just get one of them and you don’t need to get any of the others.

I saw this thing one time about all the Pixar movies. It was like: A Bug’s Life—what if bugs had feelings? Cars—what if cars had feelings? Monsters, Inc.—what if monsters had feelings? Inside Out—what if feelings had feelings?

So my books kind of have that big idea of “being a Christian is easier and harder than you think.” It’s harder, because dying to yourself and following God is the work of a lifetime, and you won’t finish it. And yet it’s easier, because God doesn’t give us impossibilities. I mean, He wants us to follow Him.

So all of this is landing here on your answer. I think—What did my parents do? Well, I would say this if they were in the room. There’s lots of things they didn’t. I don’t remember my dad sitting me down and having “the talk.” Now, you probably should—I’m really glad he didn’t—but there’s different things you have to be aware of. I mean, we didn’t have any of the Paul Tripp . . . I love Paul Tripp. But we didn’t have any Paul Tripp conversations about “What’s the gospel moment in this?”

I didn’t realize this, but looking back, I think: it wasn’t a lesson, but you just picked it up.

I knew my mom and dad loved each other. They loved us. They loved Jesus. They loved the church. That doesn’t guarantee your kids are going to do the same, but I think ’because hopefully they have a lifetime to read all the good books . . . I want them to read now. I want them to get Worldview. I want them to do Foundations. But hopefully they can do that for a lifetime.

You get however many years you have with them in the house, that hopefully they pick up the lesson. This is the good news, and maybe the hard news for some of us—you are teaching them. You are catechizing them, whether you have family devotions or not. They are picking something up from you. And what our kids learn is what normal is. They just grow—they think that’s normal.

If my wife and I love each other, and the kids know that, and they know we love them, and they know we love Jesus and the Bible and we love church . . . I don’t know that guarantees they’re all going to follow the Lord, but I think those are the most important planks that the Lord will use to get them on a lifetime of faithfulness and loving the Word.

Bob: You talked about family devotions, and I want to just mention, I remember a conversation with Don Whitney, who has written extensively on this subject and is good on this. But he said, as he was leading his kids, most often he felt like, “This is going nowhere. I’m failing. They’re bored.” But he persisted.

I gave up—I just thought, This isn’t working, so why try? But he persisted. When his daughter graduated from high school and was a commencement speaker, she started weeping at commencement about the faithfulness of her father to lead them in family devotions. And he was sitting in the audience going, “Wait, what? You never wept when we were doing this! You were rolling your eyes and yawning and your head back like this.” But that faithfulness made a statement even louder than whatever the daily devotion was.

So there’s something to what we’re patterning and the repetitive nature of that. 

I want to ask you about a lot of these women who may be going, “I wish my husband would take more leadership in this area of spiritual training and development than he’s doing. I’ve tried nagging, and that doesn’t work.” Do you have other strategies you recommend to me?

Kevin: You’re right, nagging does not work. And it goes both ways, because sometimes when I talk to men who will say, “Well, my wife doesn’t respect me,” or “She doesn’t follow my lead,” I’ll say to those men, “You’re not going to get it by saying, ‘Honey, respect me. Follow my lead. Submit to me.’” Keep leading, keep being loving. And even if she says, “Well, I don’t want this spiritual leader,” show her what kind of spiritual leader you are.

So conversely, many men—I'm sure not your husbands, but some I’ve encountered—they can just tear it up on their weekend warrior soccer games, or be super ambitious at their workplace, and they may have lots of ideas and feel totally confident to get under the hood of the car (I don’t do that myself). But then, when it comes to this, it feels very uncomfortable.

None of us like to—well, very rarely do we like to—do things we don’t feel good at. I think especially as men, we don’t like to be embarrassed—especially if we feel like our wives are better at it. So you’re right, nagging is not going to work.

You know, encouraging other sorts of habits where maybe others could speak into a husband’s life—but even then, there’s only so much you can do. If you nag every week about going to church or going to a small group or a Bible study? . . . I think a well-placed, “I’d be happy to watch the kids if it enables you to do this,” can go a long way.

Because really, a man needs other men to speak into his life. He can learn things, and he should listen to you as well, but he needs other men to challenge him in this area.

So, if you have a husband who is just very passive in this area and unwilling even to open the Bible or one of these many good devotionals and read it, then perhaps ask if he would be willing to pray or open in a word of prayer.

It’s really important—especially for young boys as they grow up—if they sense that this is something “for women,” that this is not something manly men do, it just has a very, very deleterious effect on young boys and young men in particular.

You think of 1 Peter 3—it’s about one won over, often without words. Won over by prayer. Won over by the steadfastness of your attitude and your grace and your humility and leading in what ways you can. Offer some low-hanging fruit to a husband to participate, hopefully, in some way.

I’m sure you’re thinking this already, but absolutely do not embarrass him or shame him when he does not know something, or when he gets something wrong, or when you’re frustrated by how little he knows or how obvious that was to you. Because that’s just the quickest way to make him think, I tried this once. I’m not trying this again. I don’t need to be put in my place and feel embarrassed. I already feel like a little boy, and I don’t know all these things that you know.

Encourage whatever small little efforts are there. And because there are so many good resources—check out the bookstore here—it really has never been easier than now to have some good resource that’s going to explain the Bible, do a devotion on the Bible, or even have a prayer.

So when I did with The Biggest Story Bible Storybook . . . It was a friend of mine—who’s much better at family devotions than I am—who said, “Please include a one or two-sentence prayer at the end, because I have talked to a lot of men who feel very uncomfortable praying. It feels too intimate. They don’t know how to do it. Include two sentences for someone to pray.” So I put that there.

There are lots of resources that can help take those baby steps and encourage whatever small steps your husband might be taking. And that could just be, “Honey, would you read the story from this one—you know, The Biggest Story Bible Storybook? Just read it to the kids tonight and have them pray the prayer at the end.” And it’s simple. All he has to do is read the story. You can’t fail at that. 

And before you move on, I just want to encourage you—this is not false humility—we are not family devotion warriors at our house. I wish we were. There are people who are better at it. You should know my good friend Jason Helopoulos. He has books on family worship. I know he does it every single night.

We are your poster family for struggling. I don’t know that I will ever write a children’s book, but I always tell people I have the title. The title: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. That’s the title.

So our problem is, like many of you, it’s very hard to get around the table and all sit down. We have kids ages five to twenty-two. It’s very difficult. When we do, we do something. Doing something is better than nothing. Doing two minutes is better than no minutes. Doing thirty seconds is better than a plan that you do once every six months, when you pull out the book and try to do a half-hour service and realize that didn’t work. Some small thing, whenever you can, is better than grand plans that don’t materialize.

Bob: I see you moving the mic toward your mouth. Go ahead.

Sarah: Just about family devotions—for example, in our house, we don’t do it every day at all. My husband reads precisely from the Bible every night before they go to bed, and then we do devotions on Saturday morning with breakfast. That’s our “come together” time. We do it once a week.

But I actually was hopping on to a question you didn’t ask me, but I want to answer anyway. My parents are actually in the room, and it might be encouraging to you, too, to hear from someone who didn’t grow up with parents who were believers from the time I was born. They were born again when I was in high school.

To encourage you, that even if you didn’t start when your children were very young, your faith can still have a huge impact on your children. For me personally, what impacted me was seeing the before and after in my parents’ lives.

They were people—talking about loving the Word—who would take God at His Word. They would see something in Scripture and immediately submit their life to it. They would change what needed to be changed. They would obey what needed to be obeyed.

That was of huge impact in my life—to see how they used to live and how the Word of God coming into their lives, embracing Jesus Christ, came with submitting, loving, trusting, and taking God at His Word.

My mom is here; she’s the director of Revive Our Hearts in Spanish. The Lord has done so many things in and through them. It’s really been through their embrace of God’s Word. I think that your kids seeing you submitting to His Word—not just reading it, not just teaching it to them, or reading verses with them—but seeing that you really believe what this says, and that your life follows suit; that will have a huge impact.

Kids smell hypocrisy from a mile away. It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about never making mistakes. It’s about being open with them about those things because they already see them. That’s already clear to them. So just being able to say, “Even in my sin, even in my struggles, I love Jesus and I love His Word. I’m willing to submit, embrace, and do what He says—even when it’s hard.”

Bob: Your mom, by the way, came to the very first True Woman event in Schaumburg, Illinois, seventeen years ago—with me, with you, and with a number of women from the Dominican Republic. She came away from that saying, “We must have this in Spanish.” God birthed that at that event, and she’s given leadership to it for the last seventeen years. In fact, in some ways, what’s going on in the Spanish-speaking world is growing bigger and faster than what’s going on in the English-speaking world. Your mom’s commitment to that has allowed God to use her in a great way, and you can acknowledge that here.

Sarah: Thank you for that.

Bob: And I’m just curious about when you saw your parents’ conversion. . . I’ve said for years that your kids may do what you tell them, but they will become what they see. So make sure that what they see matches what you’re telling them. In fact, if what they see doesn’t match what you’re telling them, those are seeds for deconversion or deconstruction later on. The authenticity of what they see needs to match up with what’s going on.

When you were in high school, when they were converted, how did you get introduced to God’s Word being part of the family structure? Or was it part of the family structure?

Sarah: Yes, obviously, being new believers, they were so excited about everything. They really dove into being part of a community. I remember the church we were attending at the time, when they were born again, had a class introducing you to the whole Bible and walking you through it. It was kind of like hermeneutics for beginners—for people who had no clue even what to do with this book. They took me to it as well.

They did try to do some family devotionals. I actually attribute my conversion to one of those nights. They did very few—it barely happened. I think we did it like a few times, and on one of those nights, I was born again. So even with the “Loaves and Fishes” approach—the one time you do it—who knows what can happen? But it was mainly through their involvement in the local church as well. They always brought me to everything. They forced me. It was not optional. Thankfully, we were in a church that had a really high view of Scripture.

Bob: So how old is your oldest now?

Sarah: Fourteen.

Bob: Okay, let’s say your oldest gets to sixteen and says, “I don’t want to go to church. Do I have to go? I want to go to a different church.” What are you going to tell him or her at sixteen?

Sarah: I know this is very countercultural. “You’re gonna go anyway. You’re coming with us. And when you are of age and want to be out from under our roof and make your own decisions, then you’re free to. When you start paying the cell phone bill, the car insurance—you can go. Totally, totally.

Bob: Is that the right answer?

Sarah: I’m gonna do it anyway. I’m not as good as my parents were. Maybe it’s more complicated. We have twice as many kids—that’s my excuse. But, you know, to get all the kids to youth group, to Sunday school, morning, evening, every week 

But there are some non-negotiables, and certainly Sunday is one of those. And they just know. The Lord is probably not going to send a lightning bolt the first time you skip church for the baseball tournament.

If you want to talk about idolatry in our churches, this is really where the rubber meets the road. And I get it. I have kids. I love sports. They have the weekend stuff. And you try, like, “Well, maybe you could do this one. It’s at one o’clock and you could do this.” But you’re going to have to draw the line somewhere.

If you expect your kids to value church when you are telling them now that you don’t value church, they won’t value church. You are giving them the pattern. So, yeah, you make decisions based on—is this a once-in-a-lifetime thing? Okay, maybe. But you just see parents who are sowing these seeds two weekends out of the month, ten weekends a year.

Really, if you tell me, “Well, we’re going to church, or we’re listening to your sermon,” it’s not the same. I’m glad it’s better than nothing, but it’s not the same. And so, yeah, my kids if you know they’re going to be out of the house someday, I hope they’ll make those decisions.

I told one of my kids . . . Now, I’m sure we have people with tattoos in the room, so I’m not making an absolute statement about you and your tattoo. I’m just giving you my convictions and what I told my kids. One of my sons was talking about how his friends were getting a tattoo. I said, “Well, I can’t even give you a foolproof, absolute answer, but I can just tell you that this dad does not pay for college for children with tattoos.”

That’s just my rule. When you’re done, suppose you can do it and show off your little fish or somewhere on your back. I’m not making an absolute judgment. But parents can be afraid. I know you have all those questions—how are you going to fight on every article of clothing and that thing? But church is one of those things you say, “In this family, we go to church. You’re a part of this family, and as long as you’re a part of this family under our roof, we’re all going to church.”

Once you start negotiating . . . The first rule of negotiating with terrorists is: don’t do it.

Bob: You know, the concern on the part of these moms is, “They’re going to harden their hearts toward God. If I make them go, that’s going to turn them bitter toward God’s Word. If they’re sixteen and they’re sitting there with their arms folded and teeth clenched, hating being there, I’m somehow sowing seeds of rebellion and future deconstruction. Should we not worry about that?”

Sarah: I think it’s all about the way you do it as well. It’s not like, “You’re gonna go because I said so.” Hopefully not, though that might happen sometimes. But if you have a conversation with your kids. Maybe you haven’t been doing this in the past, and now you’re going to correct and start going more often. They’re going to struggle with that.

It’s having a conversation where they’re going to say, “You know what? I apologize to you, because I have not been faithful in putting God, His Word, and His people first in our family. And because I love you so much I know this is what is good for your soul, eternally. Even now, because I love you so much, you’re going to come with me on Sunday morning, sit with me there.” You can be praying for the heart of your child as they’re sitting there with their serious face. But I think it’s all about the way and the explanation behind it.

When they’re younger, I’m just like, “You’re part of the Jerez family. We love Jesus, and go to church.” I love what Pastor Kevin was saying about idolatry. As families, our kids know our idols, and those idols in our homes. It might be sports. It might be academics. Or it might be the happiness and success of our kids and other unspiritual things.

I think, in general—I know it’s not a rule—but our kids usually end up loving what we love. Usually you don’t have to convince a family of diehard football fans or soccer fans to have their kids love playing soccer. I know it’s different. There’s sin involved when it comes to spiritual things and spiritual blindness, but when there is a joy in following the Lord and embracing His ways, even when it’s hard and you’re obeying, it’s difficult telling your kids, “Jesus is better.” When they see that you’re willing to tear down idols out of love for Jesus, I think those are the things that really shape your family.

I love curriculum, I love books. My husband is scared of the resource center because. I think it’s because ultimately, in my heart, I believe that that is what’s going to do it. You know, if I pick the right book, if I pick the right curriculum, that’s what’s going to finally reach my child. But really—and we see it in Deuteronomy 6—it’s: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. The word shall be written on your heart, and then you teach them diligently.” It makes a huge difference when it’s an overflow.

I asked my daughter when I was coming here, “What would help you love the Word?” And she said, “You know, I like when we do devotionals or things like that. But honestly, my favorite thing, and what I think really helps me, is when we just have conversations.” So I do believe that it’s both intentional, but the organic is probably even more important.

When you walk—by the way—when you rise up . . . exactly. The earlier you start, the better. But even as they’re older, a lot of times they really do want to talk about things. You might not feel like it. You might not tell right away. But even starting little by little, talking. If the Word is in your heart, that’s what’s coming out. It’s not nagging. It’s not just catechizing—although we do catechize our kids—it’s really an overflow of, “This is what’s true, this is what’s good, this is what’s beautiful.” That’s why I give it to you—not because I have to, not because this is just what we do, but because I really know that this is what’s best and most wonderful for you.

So maybe to simplify things, I think it was Elisabeth Elliot who said, “It’s simple, but it’s not easy.” I think things are a lot simpler than we think, and we kind of overcomplicate it to avoid doing them. I think the simplest things are the things that impact our kids: just talking before bed and being able to bring God’s truth to the things they’re struggling with.

Let me say real quick about the heart: if your child is seventeen and their heart’s already not in a good place, having them go to church is not the cause of their heart. Now, it’s possible that we can sin in response to their sin, and we want to avoid that. We, as parents, need to be wise to try to discern what the issues of the heart are, because there can be that sort of, “I hate everything about this. I’m already rebelling in my heart.” Or maybe they just don’t go to bed on time on Saturday and in the morning they’re dead tired.

Or your son loves basketball, and all of his friends are doing the basketball league, and they have their tournaments on Sunday morning. If you storm at your son and say, “Don’t you love Jesus more than you love basketball? We go to church in this family,” that’s not the way to do it. You want to try to understand and let your children understand that you understand you’re asking them to do something hard.

“I understand all your friends are doing this, and their parents are Christians, and they let them skip church. I know we’re doing something a different way. I know how much you love basketball, so we are asking you to do something that is difficult. And that’s part of being a Christian—you do things that are difficult.”

Now, does that solve all of it? No, but sometimes, just to help our kids realize there are trade-offs in life. We’re asking them to do something that’s going to have a cost. We shouldn’t pretend that it’s all just great, and that we’re not asking them to do anything difficult.

Bob: Is there a problem reading Bible stories to a five-year-old?

Elizabeth: I would say no, there is not a problem reading Bible stories to a five-year-old. But what I see a lot of times in our ministry at Foundation Worldview is a lot of parents take children’s Bibles, and that’s the only thing they immerse their kids in. There are a lot of great children’s Bibles out there, and they can be very helpful, but our children are not too young to be immersed in God’s Word.

What we want to do is, even from the youngest of ages, read Scripture with them. It doesn’t have to be a whole chapter, but just so they’re getting used to hearing Scripture. Another thing that we hear a lot of times from parents who write into our ministry is that their kids don’t really understand what the Bible is. We want to help them understand the Bible as one continuous story. Pastor Kevin did a great job last night going through nine different themes that help us understand the Bible as a unified story.

We don’t just want to teach our children “David and Goliath” or “Daniel in the Lion’s Den.” A lot of times, if we’re reading those in a children’s Bible—and not all children’s Bibles, but many—those Bibles lead kids to put themselves in the story. When we read the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, that narrative is not in the Bible to teach us how to slay our giants. That narrative is in the Bible to show us that God is the faithful covenant keeper.

God was being faithful to the covenants He made on Mount Sinai with His people, and David trusted Him. God was fulfilling His promise from the Garden in Genesis 3:15 to eventually usher in the One who would crush the serpent’s head. God was setting David up to be on the throne, to eventually usher in the Davidic kingdom, which was going to be the line of Jesus.

So it’s so important that as we are reading Scripture with our kids, we are helping them understand it as one big story of God’s grand plan to rescue us from our sin.It’s not just these little isolated narratives where we learn moral lessons. Do we learn how to live as moral people from Scripture? Yes. God has given us His moral law. But we want to help our kids understand the entire narrative of Scripture.

Part of that involves even teaching our kids how to soundly read, interpret, and apply Scripture. For example, think about how you were taught to read. When your teachers or your parents were teaching you how to read, they could have given you a list of words to memorize, and you would have memorized those words. Could you have read after that? Yes—you could read anything that contained the words you had memorized.

But what would have been the weakness with that? Any time you wanted to know a new word, you would have had to go to somebody else to learn what that new word was.

So instead, what your teachers or your parents—whoever taught you how to read—did is they taught you twenty-six different letters. They showed you the shape of those letters, told you the associated sounds, and then they taught you to put those letters together. Eventually, you could read any word you encountered.

We think about immersing our kids in God’s Word the same way. We want to make sure we’re giving them some tools, some transferable skills, so that one day they can read the Bible on their own. We don’t want them to be dependent on us for their spiritual nourishment. We need to get in Scripture with them and model how to soundly read, interpret, and apply Scripture so that, Lord willing, by God’s grace, they might become self-feeders who actively seek God through His Word.

Bob: Okay, what you’re describing sounds like what you do with high school kids, not with four-year-olds. I mean, four-year-olds want to learn about slingshots, rocks, and chopping off giants’ heads, right? They want to act that out in the living room. How do you teach them the hermeneutical principles you’re talking about with a four- or five-year-old? What do you do?

Elizabeth: Yeah, so there’s this special vitamin that you give your kids to make them super—no, I’m just kidding.

No. So obviously, God has designed our children according to a certain pattern, and we have to look at God’s design. Your four-year-old doesn’t know how to read yet, so you’re not going to teach your four-year-old to read God’s Word on their own. But you can still read Scripture with them at that young age.

I still remember back when I lived in Chicago. I was babysitting for my pastor’s kids one night—and actually, my pastor’s wife might be in the room right now, I’m not sure. They had asked me to just pick up where they were that night in John. So as I was getting the kids ready for bed, I was reading in John—Jesus’ high priestly prayer—and their three-year-old goes, “Jesus is praying to himself?”

That question never would have come up if we weren’t actually reading that portion of Scripture. I knew they had taken—or were taking—their kids through the New City Catechism, so I asked one of the questions: “How many persons are there in God?” Their five-year-old chimed in right away: “There are three persons—the one true and living God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”

I said, “Exactly. So who is Jesus in that?”

“That’s right, He’s God the Son.” 

“And who is He praying to?”

“God the Father.”

Even when they’re little, it’s just really developmentally appropriate things. Once your kids get older, though, you can do simple things that you notice in culture.

For example, how many of you have ever seen a mug, a T-shirt, or maybe a tote bag that says “God is within her; she will not fail?” How many of you have seen that? Yeah, that’s like the faux girl-power verse.

So I recommend—once your kids are old enough to read—you can say, “Oh, look at that jacket over there that says “God is within her; she will not fail.” You know what? When we get home, let’s read that Bible verse in context.” Context means reading some verses before it and some verses after it.

Then, when you’re at home, you can read through that passage. I might get this wrong, but I think it’s Psalm 46. As you read through it, you learn that the “her” and the “she” in that verse is a city of God—it’s not any individual female. That psalm is about God being faithful and keeping His covenant with Israel.

And so even from young ages, we can just do little things here and there. It’s not sitting them down for an hour a day and having Bible class with them, but just little things as you’re tucking them into bed, as you encounter different things in culture—teaching them the skills so that they are slowly learning how to approach God’s Word.

Bob: You have thoughts about music and how we incorporate it? I mean, I’m looking at Sarah, who is a musician. I’m just thinking how big music was in our home, how much Scripture our kids know because there was a melody attached to it. Thoughts on that?

Sarah: Yes, I love music, and I echo the words of Martin Luther. He said, “Next to the Word of God, music is worth the highest praise,” and I really believe that to be true. I think God created music for His glory, for our joy. It’s really one of the greatest instruments to absorb information. I think we sing about what we love, and we end up loving what we sing about. It’s just such a powerful tool that was meant to stir our feelings for God.

But obviously the enemy, as with everything, has corrupted music as well. The truth is, music can make anything sound or feel true. So I’d say, first of all, in the negative sense, you really need to think about the songs that your kids are listening to. In our house, we do listen to secular music. We’re not like, “Yeah, we don’t have specific rules about that,” because we really love music in general, but we do have filters. We use that as an instrument to think, “Okay, what is this song saying? Is this true? Why or why not? What does God say about that?”

Sometimes you might be doing work at home, trying to be in the Word, but they’re in their room twenty hours a week listening to songs that completely contradict what you’re teaching them—and that is really going straight to the heart, because music is powerful.

On a positive note, at least in our home—we’re music people . . . I do have friends who are like, “We never listen to music at all, we just don’t like music.” I don’t understand that. But in our home, it’s on all the time. We sing things that are true. We have worship on, but also those memory songs. There are some albums—I think Nancy has mentioned them on her podcast— Hidden in My Heart: Scripture Lullabies. We’ve been listening to those since before Zoe was born.

I remember the other night—we were talking about one of those organic moments—I was going to teach on Philippians. I mentioned Philippians 4, and my daughter just cited it in front of me. I was like, “Oh, when did you . . .? I didn’t teach you that. Did you learn that at church?” And she said, “No, it’s in these Scripture lullabies we hear at night. I know all the verses.”

“Oh, great,” right? But it’s just an easy way to get the Word in your kids’ hearts. One of our theme verses in our house is Colossians 3:16, which says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another through songs, hymns, and spiritual songs.”

So I think not only should we use songs to teach, but songs actually teach. It’s just a fact. Even practically, you can have songs that you use when memorizing verses, which I also suggest off of what Elizabeth was sharing: give context to the verses you’re memorizing. Don’t just memorize random verses. 

I’ve talked to older women who say, “Oh wow, I didn’t know what that verse was about. I just memorized it when I was a kid.” It would be great if, when you memorize a verse, you give context: who wrote this, who did he write it to, why, and what were they talking about?

There are so many resources nowadays of Scripture songs, even for really little kids. Our kids still sing a song that we sang when they were tiny:

“Where is God? Everywhere.
Where is God? Everywhere.
God is everywhere.”

And they still sing it to this day. So the melodies are just so important when you’re trying to memorize God’s Word. Something practical you can do is pick a song that’s really important to you, or that they sing at church, and make that your song for the month. Sing it before bed every night, and then discuss it line by line—maybe one verse each week—and talk about what it means. Sometimes kids know all the songs from church, but they don’t really understand what they’re talking about. That was part of the heart behind the book we wrote too: helping kids understand the truth in the songs they sing. Walking through each verse slowly allows them, as they sing, to really grasp what they’re singing about.

Bob: Kevin, Elizabeth mentioned the New City Catechism. I know you were involved in that project, and each of those questions and answers has a song attached to it. So it’s a great way for kids not just to memorize a catechism, but learn it through the songs. Should parents be catechized? Should we be looking for those questions and answers—like, Who made you? God made me. What else did God make? God made all things.

In the history of the church, catechesis has been the predominant way one generation passes the faith to the next. In the Western church, most catechisms consisted largely of three things: the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. There’s lots of other things we can do, but if your Christian school, homeschool co-op, or church isn’t doing something with those, then you’re out of step with what the church has done for most of history.

Even if you haven’t used the New City Catechism or other catechisms, those three areas are the core:

• The Apostles’ Creed—what are the core doctrines of the faith?
   
• The Ten Commandments—what does it look like to obey God and live a life pleasing to Him?
   
• The Lord’s Prayer—how do we talk to God and live in communion with Him?
   

Kevin: There are lots of good resources. I grew up in the Dutch Reformed tradition, so I memorized large parts of the Heidelberg Catechism. I commend that to Presbyterians. Today, we also have the Westminster Shorter Catechism and children’s catechisms, which are great shorter versions. Find something that is theologically sound and fits your tradition.

Now, will every kid memorize everything perfectly? No. Some will become “superstars,” and others won’t, but they’ll internalize more than you realize. Child psychology shows there are ages where it’s easier for children to memorize than adults. My kids now have had to memorize things like the Gettysburg Address, portions of the Declaration of Independence, and FDR’s speeches in school. And yet, they can get Scripture through songs and catechism at a young age.

I’m so grateful I learned the Heidelberg Catechism as a kid. Questions like: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” or “What do we mean by God’s providence?” It is His almighty and ever present power by which He upholds, as with His hand, heaven and earth and so rules over all creatures, etc.

If you get five of those in your head, it's amazing how often you come back to those five.

Bob: And Elizabeth, you've looked at the developmental stages of kids four to twelve in particular. So help these moms who have kids that age. What are they capable of? How do you focus in on those different developmental stages?

Parents have probably seen our kids are capable of so much more than we give them credit for. But really, in that age range from around three to six or seven, you know, just depending on where they are developmentally, that's the age when they're just like sponges. They can memorize so much. So that is the age when you want to start those memorization tools. You know, whether it's scripture through song or longer passages of Scripture or catechism, that is how God has designed our kids' brains at that time.

And then usually around the switch from seven to eight, that's when our kids developmentally are able to consider a perspective outside of their own. Now, it happens at different ages for different kids. Some start early around seven. Some it goes a little bit later, around the age of nine. But our kids are able to start thinking critically and considering how other people are thinking, somewhere between that seven to nine age range.

So we want to encourage our kids to ask questions, whether it's about Scripture or about other things in life, because they're naturally curious during those early developmental stages when they're young, but also in that seven to nine, even up to ten range. And so it's really important, because there's so much information thrown our kids' way, and especially once they get to be about eleven or twelve, and they care more about what their peers think. There's so much information thrown their way, we want to make sure that we have developed really good, open lines of communication with them.

And so if, as you've been going through this session, and you've been thinking, Oh my goodness, I have a lot to learn about Scripture if I'm going to lead my kids in Scripture," that's a good thought, because we can't teach our children. We can't pass on to our children something that we don't have ourselves, and so we ourselves need to be immersed in God's Word.

But what I see is a lot of times is parents get scared when kids start asking questions, for one of two reasons. Either they think, Oh, my goodness, my child is questioning the faith. This is the beginning of the end, or they think, I have no idea how to answer that question.

Well, when our kids ask questions, it is not a bad thing, because God is the God of the universe, and Christianity is actually true, and so we don't need to be scared of questions.

So when our kids ask us questions, even if your child comes to you and asks you a question about Scripture or about something in society that just shocks or horrifies you, it's a good time to keep your poker face on, keep a smile, and say, "I am so grateful that God has given you a mind that thinks so carefully. Thank you so much for coming to me with that question."

Because when we affirm our kids' questions, we let them know that we are a safe and loving place to bring those questions to. And who do we want them to bring their questions to? Do we want them to bring them to Google, to TikTok, to friends, to a teacher that probably doesn't know Jesus? No, we want them to bring their questions to us.

If your child asks you something, and you're like, "I don't know. This is a Bible question, and I should know the answer, and I don't, and I just feel completely stupid right now." Don't freak out, because you know what? It is a huge gift when you do not know every single answer.

If every time your child comes to you and asks you a question, you have the perfect answer, or you fudge a perfect answer, what you're training your child to do is you're training them to blindly trust you. And if you train them to blindly trust you, that blind trust is one day going to be transferred to someone else. And we don't want our children to blindly trust any fallible human.

So if your child comes to you with a question that you just don't know the answer to, it's not a bad thing. You can say, "Oh, I am so grateful that you came to me with that question. That's a really good question. Do you know I've never actually thought of that before? And here's the truth, I don't know the answer to that question. But you know what? There's an answer out there. Let's find it together."

And you might not have time. Your child might ask you this right before bed, and it's a stall tactic. And you're like, "We do not have the next forty-five minutes to debrief this. You just have to go to sleep." But you can say, "That's a great question. And you know what, tomorrow after dinner, or tomorrow when you get home from school, or this weekend, whenever it is, we're going to carve some time out, and we're going to find an answer to that question." Giving your kids skills to find solid answers is so much more valuable in the long run than just hoping that they're going to blindly trust you.

Bob: If folks want more information about the stuff that you've developed, because it's for homes, not just for schools, go to your website. Is there stuff in the resource center?

Elizabeth: Yes. So if you go to FoundationWorldview.com, you can find all of the information there. We also do have a booth in the resource center.

Bob: Kevin, if God loves everyone, does he love Satan? I just thought I'd throw one of those kid questions at him and see what he does with it.

Kevin: No, would be my short answer. I'm trying to think of how would I say it to my kids? I would say, first of all, there's no verse in the Bible that talks about God loving Satan. God loves in us what he sees of Himself and His own character. And what do we mean by love? We mean He wants what is best. He holds out hope. The devil has already so hardened himself there is no hope. His state cannot be changed.

So would God forgive anyone who came and repented? Yes. But the devil is one creature who cannot and will not. If you want more layers, you can always say, in one sense, God loves all the things that He has made, and the devil is His own creature. But I think that mainly leads our kids in a wrong direction. I think that sort of question is one that adults don't dare to ask because we think, "Well, we should already know that one." Kids ask questions that are really hard sometimes because they're so simple—they're not simple if your kid asks you.

People have asked me this before. “Jesus—He's God, right?” 

“Yep.” 

Whenever that comes, you're like, "Oh, this is going to get really confusing." “So when He came down, He was born as a baby.” 

“Yep.” 

“So did He leave heaven in order to be born?” 

The answer is, actually no, He didn't. You might think it is. You can Google Kevin DeYoung, "Did the Son of God leave heaven?" You can get the answer. I usually just point my kids to a website and just tell them to read my blog, but it's just an example.

But here's the point, especially younger kids, they don't need . . . My kids will be like, "Dad, you're giving your preacher voice." They probably will be content with a rather simple answer.

So, does God love the devil? Well, you know, in a way, God loves every creature He's made in that He always wants what is best for those creatures. But you know, the Bible talks about how the devil is God's enemy, and God will punish the devil, because the devil has nothing but sin, and God has to be angry with sin.”

Bob: Would you mind just giving us your number so that we can call you when we get those questions at seven o'clock at night, when they're asking the questions before bed?

Ladies, thank you for the time. Thank these panelists for their answers.

And I want to close just by praying for you and for your kids. Father, our kids are so much a burden in our heart. Your Word is true when it says we have no greater joy than to know that our children are walking in the truth, and there is no deeper pain than when our kids aren't walking in the truth.

And so Lord, we pray first that You would do Your work in our kids' hearts, the work that we cannot do—that You would awaken them to Your glory; that they would delight in You; that they would repent of their sins and turn to You at an early age, and that they would love Your Word, because You have put that love for Your Word in their heart, and they would follow You and pursue You all of their days.

Lord, give us wisdom as parents to lead and guide and point our kids in the right direction. Protect them, we pray, from our own mistakes that we will make, and we pray that they would be mighty in their love for you throughout their days, and that you would guard their hearts and minds in You.

And again, I pray for all of these moms that what they've heard here today, that has been beneficial, that they'd be able to take that home and implement it and begin some new pathways in their home. We ask all of this in Your name. Amen.

Thank you all for coming, ladies.