Spiritual Habits for Little Hearts

This episode comes from the following programs:

"The Power of Praying Scripture for Your Children"

"Reflecting the True Story"

"Healthy Rhythms in a Family"

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Dannah Gresh: Are you a mom? A grandma? An auntie? Or part of a church family with young families you can partner with in discipleship? I think that probably covers most of us! That means today’s episode is for you!

I’m your host, Dannah Gresh, and you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This summer, one of the most joyful experiences a grandmother can have . . . My name is NanaDannah, not Grandma, by the way. My first two granddaughters came to know Christ. They attended one of my True Girl live events, and that started a conversation with their mom and their mom nurtured it for several weeks, and they surrendered their hearts to Jesus. You know, I have been looking for all the tools to continue and to do my part of discipling their sweet hearts. Today, we are going to help you with that for the people you live in your life—your grandchildren, your children, your spiritual children.

Today we’re looking at three sweet and simple habits you can implement to bless the little ones in your life and point them to Jesus. First up, Donna Avant encourages you to pray Scripture over them. Second, Kathryn Butler praises the power of read-alouds that point to the gospel. And last but not least, Kevin and Trisha DeYoung share about the importance of perseverance in family devotions—even when they look pretty imperfect. 

Donna Avant is kicking us off. She’s a mom, grandmother, speaker, and author, and she’s got a powerful testimony about the living and active Word of God. She chose a unique passage to pray over each of her children as they grew, and there’s no doubt about it—the Lord heard Donna's prayers. Here she is in a conversation with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. 

Donna Avant: My oldest daughter, Christi, when she was ten . . . She’s a typical first-born. She’s a strong-willed child, has a lot of passion, like her dad. I began to pray this verse for her; it’s found in Philippians. I began to pray this verse in Philippians for her because Christi had an attitude (as a lot of ten- and eleven-year-old kids will have).

She had an attitude! I was studying through the book of Philippians, and when I came to this passage, I knew this was Christi’s life passage,

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence . . . Continue to work out your salvation . . . for it is God who works in you to will and act according to his good purpose. Christi, I pray that you would] do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, a child of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you will shine like a star in the universe as you hold out the word of life (adapted from Phil. 2:12–16).

So Christi’s story is: I started praying that for her when she was ten. Again, I wrote it on a card. I put it away and I would pray it for her nearly every day. And so, when she was sixteen and she announced that God was calling her to do musical theater . . . We didn’t even know that she could act!

She immediately landed her first role in a big, huge high school thing, and my husband and I just looked at each other. And then again, I remembered what I’d prayed. We always knew she could sing, but we didn’t know she could act.

God called her. She majored in Musical Theater. She spent time in New York doing theater and in Georgia doing theater. She’s currently a theater teacher at a school, as she’s in the time of her life where she’s having babies, and I just saw that verse played out in her life!

I saw her beginning to shine like a star in a very dark world, and I saw God begin to use her in that theater culture to point others toward Christ. And I just stood amazed. I was like, this is not anything I had done; this is just God’s Word coming to pass in her life!

Nancy: God’s Word is alive and powerful.

Donna: Yes!

Nancy: And you’re planting it like a seed in your children’s hearts, unbeknownst to them, and the Holy Spirit’s watering it and causing it to bear fruit.

Donna: Yes. Now, when they turned eighteen, I cross-stitched their life verses and gave that to them as a part of just the celebration of them becoming an adult. My daughter Amy is just such a precious young woman and loves people so much. I wish I could love people like Amy loves people.

I began to pray 2 Corinthians 9 for her—a whole passage. I won’t read the whole passage, but basically I just began to pray, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all you need, you will abound in every good work” (from 2 Cor. 9:8).

And God called Amy to be a nurse. She was NICU nurse for many years. Being a NICU nurse is a ha-a-ard job! And people that know Amy know that she is a hard worker, that she loves people. Again, Nancy, I couldn’t have done that if I tried! I couldn’t have dreamed this up or made this happen. This was just Jesus working His life out.

Now, the challenge—the big challenge—was the “baby,” Trey!

Nancy: The boy!

Donna: Great young man, but we had moved when he was sixteen, and before we moved he began to maybe not make some great choices. And then when we moved, he really didn’t make some good choices. We were meeting with an educator, and they were wanting to do some testing on him.

And my husband was like, “No, his problem is, he’s lazy. He has a ‘lazy disorder’! He needs to work hard.” There are children that need those tests and there are children that have issues, but we knew in our hearts that this was not a learning disability; it was a heart disability.

I just got some note cards and began to write down every verse I could pray about laziness and what laziness produces in a life.

Nancy: There are a lot of those in Proverbs; did you find some of those?

Donna: Yes. Lots of verses in Proverbs. I began to pray those over him. He had no clue that I was praying those verses for him, none whatsoever. Because, see, if I tell them that, then it’s about me. So I didn’t want them to know what I was praying for them. I wanted it just to be in my momma’s heart and with the Father. I began to pray that for him.

His freshman year at Louisiana Tech (right before the school year started), he texted me and he said, “Momma, you’ve got to come outside.” (I was in an orientation meeting.) He said, “Mom, you got to come outside!”

I was like, “Okay . . .” This was a kid who barely graduated from high school with a “C” average, okay? Just got by, by the skin of his teeth.

And he said, “Mom, you’ve got to come outside. I need to tell you something really important!”

I said, “Okay, Son, what do you need to tell me?”

He said, “Mom, I need to change my major.”

I said, “Honey, you’re not even a freshman yet. How can you change your major?”

He said, “I’ve really prayed a lot about this, Mom.”

And I said, “Okay . . .” That got my attention, that he had prayed about something.

He said, “I’m going to study law. I want to be an attorney!”

And I laughed. And then I realized, “Oh, I can’t do that to him!” And I said, “Okay, Son, do you understand that in order to go to law school that you have to make really good grades, and you have to . . .”

And he said, “Yes, ma’am. Yes ma’am, I do.”

Nancy, he graduated with honors from Louisiana Tech, and he went on to get offers from several good law schools. A year ago he graduated from the University of Houston Law School, and now, he passed the Bar. This is a young man who has an incredible work ethic!

Nancy: God changed him!

Donna: God changed him; not Mommy. Yelling and screaming wasn’t going to do it.

Nancy: Right . . . so good!

Donna: God did it! It was hitting my face before God [i.e. “fall on their face before God”] and calling out to Him and lifting my son up before the Lord. There’s a verse that talks about taking your hands and lifting them up before the Lord and calling out on their behalf. That is my job as a mom. There is nobody in the world that is going to hit their face for my three kids like I do! And that was my job—to hit my face.

If you’re struggling with praying for your children, I encourage you to ask God to give you that heart, that praying heart, and to pray verses. Put their names in passages and call out to God for the lives of your children.

Dannah: I absolutely love Donna’s heart to pray God’s Word over her children. There were times I didn't know how to pray for my children. That's when I opened my Bible, and that' what I want to encourage you to do. When you don't know what to pray, go to God's Word.

You know, that conversation made me think about how important it is that we know our Bibles. If you are in the Word, as you’re walking with the kids in your life, God will bring specific passages to mind. 

Say your child is struggling with fear and insecurity. When you’ve spent time meditating on Scripture, you might just turn to Psalm 34, verses 4 and 5 and read:

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.

You can pray that your child or pray that for them, that they would seek the Lord—that they would behold Him and truly believe He makes them radiant. You can pray that God would eradicate shame in their life and make them beautifully confident in Him.

If you want to dwell more deeply in God’s Word, to become more and more at home in the pages of your Bible, then I want to mention Nancy’s book, A Place of Quiet Rest. It’s all about cultivating the rhythm of regular time with the Lord. You can request a copy right now when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com/donate to do that.

Next up we’re hearing from Kathryn Butler. She and her husband, Scott, live in Massachusetts. They have a son and a daughter, and Kathryn has authored several books, two draw on her experience as an ER doctor, and a trilogy of fantasy books for middle school readers called The Dream Keeper Saga. 

At True Woman '22, Kathryn led a breakout session about how great stories can help us point children to the most beautiful, best story of all, the gospel.

Kathryn Butler: I first glimpsed the power of great read-alouds to enrich our gospel teaching while reading The Fellowship of the Ring with my kids. They were eating peanut butter and jelly, and we reached the point where they are in Moria, running away from their enemies, and the Fellowship blast across the Bridge of Khazad-dûmwith the Balrog, the ancient demon from the deep in hot pursuit.

And Gandalf pauses and whips around to face him so that the Fellowship can escape. And in that great face off, if you remember from the movies, “You shall not pass the staff.” He puts his staff down, the bridge gives way. He shouts back to the Fellowship, “Fly! You fools. Save yourselves.” And then the Balrog descends, and his whip lashes around Gandalf’s ankle, and the beloved wizard is drawn into the abyss.

And I paused. I looked at my kids and worried. I thought, Was this too much? Was this going to overwhelm their sensitive minds? Was I going to be nursing them through nightmares tonight?

So I held my breath, and my son (you’ll catch a theme here) chews and swallows, and he looks at me, and he’s, like, “Mom, I think he gave himself to save the others, kinda like Jesus did for us.”

Whew! 

So moments like this have been at the pulsing center of our read-aloud time over the years and have offered such joy and such opportunities to talk about the truth of Christ.

I’m going to list off some examples, and you’ll hear, again, a lot of Tolkien and Lewis, but there will be others I’ll talk about during the talk.

So, an abridged version of Oliver Twist elicited comments about how we’re made in God’s image, and how we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, and how we’re to have special concern for the orphan and the widow.

And, actually, Dickens is ripe for these discussions all the time. If you pick an abridged version that you trust, it’s wonderful to have these kinds of discussions.

The Ring of Power in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is a fantastic metaphor for sin where we actually get a visualization of what sin does to us: that it entices us even as it corrupts and destroys us. We see how Frodo is burdened by it even though he feels more and more bound to it as time goes on. We see how it deforms and corrupts Gollum into a creature that’s unrecognizable.

It offers kids a tangible understanding of: this is what sin is. We crave it. We want it. But it destroys us.

My son was scared during the pandemic. Stories actually also served us as a life raft. So early in the pandemic in 2020, I went back for a short time to work in the I.C.U. because cases were surging in Boston, and the governor had asked physicians to come out of retirement to help. My kids were old enough to understand what was going on and to be scared. And specifically, my son was very worried for my welfare.

It was early in the pandemic. We didn’t know how COVID was, how communicable it was. We just knew it was making people really, really sick very quickly.

We were so ignorant. I had a bucket of bleach (this is embarrassing) in my garage. I’d come home, and I’d wash myself in bleach because I didn’t want to pass anything on to my kids. It was just very early.

He was scared. It actually churned up a lot of doubts about God’s goodness in his head. And our first stop was to the book of Job, which we went through over the course of that year, which was so vital because it gave him a framework and understanding for the fact that God’s goodness endures even in the face of suffering and that He’s at work in ways that we can’t comprehend. He’s at work for our good and His glory.

But what also helped in the moment was that I continued to read aloud to my kids. I was working nights. I’d come home and crash. I’d get up, be with my kids, and then I’d go back to work. We were reading The Return of the King. And it was that fantastic scene when Minas Tirith is under siege, and it’s described as gloom and despair. All seemed lost.

And then the Rohirrim come sweeping in over the plains. And Tolkien’s language is gorgeous. He described the air changing and a wind coming in off the sea and dawn breaking, and the morning had returned.

And I read it, and I started to cry again. I looked at my son who was in tears. And I said, “Bub, what’s going on?”

He said, “It just makes me really hopeful.”

And I said, “Do you know what? You’re absolutely right! And do you know what it reminds me of? Where’s our hope? Our hope is in that Jesus will make all things new, that no matter what we’re going through right now, however dark it is, just like Minas Tirith. He will return, and He will wipe away every tear from every eye, and death and suffering will be no more.”

And that was a life raft for us. It got us through that day. It got us through the next week. And it was all because we had Scripture. We clung to Scripture, and we could see echoes of it through the stories we read.

We read Robinson Crusoe, and my son and I rejoiced along with the main character in God’s amazing provision and providence.

So I would say that literature, from the nineteenth century especially, if you have kids that are old enough that you can walk through the original version, are really rich with very overt frank references to God’s goodness. When you read the abridged versions, they scrub it all out. But if you go back to the originals, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Heidi have very beautiful, to-the-point, detailed descriptions of God’s mercy and providence through some hard things. They were wonderful to read together.

One night we read Voyage of the Dawn Treader on the couch. I had my moment. My daughter, who was only six at the time, had hers. There’s that great scene where an albatross appears in the sky to guide Lucy Pevensie and her friends out of danger. And then, Aslan’s voice booms over the sea and says, “Courage, dear one.”

My daughter looks at me, and she’s, like, “Mom, that kinda reminds me of the Holy Spirit and God coming out of the clouds.”

And I said, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Our hearts broke at the sacrificial love of Helmer in The Green Ember Series. And we rejoiced when the rabbits returned to the mended wood again and when the rightful king returned to the throne.

We similarly had moments of discussion and gratitude and rejoicing when we read The Wingfeather Saga, and how Janner gives his life for his brother at the end and how the lost kingdom is restored and everything is named as the king comes as the second Adam.

I’ve spoken much of Tolkien and Lewis, but the fact is that stories from a multitude of traditions and authors can offer these riches provided they touch upon the right themes—provided they touch upon truth with themes of sacrifice, redemption, love, and radical hope, and provided they remind us of the Savior who laid down His life for us.

No fiction can replace God’s inspired Word, but the right stories, those that applaud goodness in the face of terror, hope against all hope, and celebrate the just, the true, and the lovely, can help point our kids to the one true story.

When we apply the truth of Scripture to conversations about great books, we open our children’s eyes in fresh ways. They can see God’s majesty, His mercy, and His incredible grace at work daily. In other words, we point them to the gospel.

And so, in some way, reading and discussing great books with our kids and weaving our knowledge of Scripture into it can be a ministry unto itself as we disciple them and point them to Christ.

Dannah: Amen. That’s Kathryn Butler with a beautiful perspective on the power of literature for discipleship. Good stories can be shadows pointing our kids to the greatest story—the story of redemption. So grab a read-aloud, snuggle up on the couch, and get reading! You never know what gospel conversations a well-written book might spark today. 

Now to bring us home, Kevin and Trisha DeYoung are exhorting you in the spiritual habit of family devotions. Together, they have nine children, and Kevin serves as the Pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. They’d be the first to tell you discipleship in the home is rarely picture-perfect. But here’s the good news: You don’t have to do this perfectly. Here’s Nancy to kick off this grace-filled conversation.

Nancy: If we were to come and visit your house, apart from the chaos—we’ve talked about that—what are some of the things we might see you and Kevin doing to try and cultivate that atmosphere of grace?

Trisha DeYoung: The simplest is just to read the Bible. There are a lot of good story Bibles, too.

Nancy: So how do you guys do that? You’ve got kids ten, eight, six, four, two, and newborn. What does it look like for you guys?

Trisha: I just bought a new storybook Bible so I could have some fresh material. We’ve done The Jesus Storybook Bible, and we’ve got another one—The Big Picture. We read in the evening time, right before bed is a nice time. It’s also nice that the three older kids are in school, so there are times in the day when I have just two of them (and in January we’ll have three). I can read to them alone. It’s nice that there are some readers in the family, too, and they can read to the younger siblings.

Nancy: Do you try to get everybody together at some point during the day to be in the Word as a family? How does that look for you?

Trisha: I think typically, it’s after a meal. Especially when Kevin’s around, he’ll lead it. When he’s traveling, it’s easy for me to think, Okay, break from dinner. Go ahead and clear your plates and let me get some of that. But before bed—that’s the ideal time.

Kevin: We have done some of that before in the morning, but more recently, we do it after dinner. We’ve tried everything. I think what really weighed me down at first, in leading devotions for us as a couple, was feeling like I wanted to try to do everything.

“Okay, we’re going to sing one hymn, and we’re going to memorize one verse, and we’re going to read something from a catechism, and we’re going to read one story, and we’re going to pray for one country from Operation World." It just became too much, so we simplified it. 

Sometimes now it’s reading a devotional, sometimes we’re singing a song, sometimes we’re taking prayer requests, sometimes we watch a little video app that does some lessons. We just find the important thing is to be in that habit of, “Here we are; we’re going to talk about things.”

Nancy: I was going to ask you about these family devotions, which is more something of a bygone era, sadly. When we grew up, my parents tried to have some kind of semblance of family devotions, but with a lot of children it was chaos . . . just crazy! I’m so thankful they kept at it. It was more consistent in some eras than others, but when you’re sitting down with those five little ones—and some of them have awfully short attention spans—does it feel like failure to you if they’re not all sitting with their hands folded, soaking it all in?

Trisha: It feels less than ideal, but I think we feel like, well, we know that the toddler might be kind of teary after she gets scolded a little bit. She'll need to be in Mom’s lap so she’ll be able to sit a little longer. We kind of feel like we’ve gotten used to the expectation of “these ones might sit better; these ones might not.”

Kevin: It’s not the calm serenity we would hope for; not like, “Yes, pastor Father, please tell us another lesson.” It’s sometimes, “Are we done yet?” and scooting around. But every once in a while in the midst of the chaos, you get a little nugget of, “Oh, he’s really listening,” or “That prayer that she just gave—that really seems like it was from her heart,” or “They’re picking up the things that we value,” or "They just prayed for their friend to come to know Jesus," or something.

So, we’re the poster family for kids on the table: “Sit down, get down, finish your food . . .” Yet I would encourage you to just press on. You miss a few days, keep pressing on. You don’t do it for two weeks, just press on; not as a means of earning your favor or determining your kids, but just showing thankfulness and the importance of being in God’s Word.

Over time, at least we’ve found, it’s been fits and starts, on again, off again, but it’s slowly gotten more consistent and a little easier and a little more fruitful.

Nancy: As I think back on my own upbringing in this area, I do think it’s not so much that family devotions was this great highlight of our day or lives, as much as that the take-away was, “The Word and the Lord matter to our parents, and they want it to matter in our family.”

This wasn’t highly regimented, and I’m sure we made it feel much less than ideal for our parents, but it was that the sum total take-away was, “This is a priority. Our lives, our family are built around the Lord.” It wasn’t something you’d really write a book about, how well it went. But I look back and I say it was a really positive long-haul. And that’s the other thing you said, Kevin, you’ve got to take the long view, don’t you, with parenting?

It’s not just about this moment—and with life, with our own sanctification—it’s not just about this momentary slice of life, but it’s about the trajectory and the process of what God is doing over time. So if you want immediate results—immediate satisfaction and gratification—you’re not going to get it in parenting, are you?

Trisha: No, and Kevin has had to encourage me. I get discouraged about certain patterns in my kids’ lives, or certain attitudes they pick up or behaviors. It’s just helpful to say to remember God’s faithfulness in our kids, “Oh, he used to have this particular issue, and the Lord has brought him out of that, and now we see so many different layers of his heart.”

Kids are humans. They’re complex, as we are, and it’s good to see God’s faithfulness. It’s good to say, “We’re in a hard spot, and I’m going to have to ask the Lord for help, to go the long road.”

Kevin: I think it’s tempting for Christian parents to figure the most important things I have to give my kids are skills or knowledge. We want to do both. But you just hit upon perhaps the most important thing we give them are the habits. However they’re schooled, if somehow they missed out on the story of Samson or something, or they don’t know all that, they can get alone and read a book and learn it.

But it’s those habits that they’re forming. Habits of going to church every Sunday. Of knowing that this is a family in the midst of all our failings, they at least see Mom and Dad know that the Word of God is important. It’s all of those things that become second nature to our kids. It's what is shaping what normalcy is—a sort of counter-cultural Christian environment, however weak and feeble we are. This can make the biggest impact—even when there are gaps in what their abilities are and what they’re doing, and about a whole list of things. Those things tend to stick with kids more than we realize.

Dannah: It’s true! I have always said, "Children are great observers, but they are not always great interpreters." That's why we need to help them interpret things with the truth of God's Word. That was Kevin and Trisha DeYoung, encouraging you to persevere in family discipleship, even when it’s a little chaotic.

The small spiritual habits we talked about today—things like praying Scripture over your kids, reading them literature rich with gospel themes. These practices may not bear fruit in an instant. In fact, they rarely do. But in a year, five years, ten years? I hope you have the joy of seeing those little ones blossom in Christ.

Next weekend, we’re talking about some more spiritual habits. I’m excited about this episode because we’re gonna be focusing on the ones we kinda forget about. Have you thought about fasting recently? When’s the last time you memorized a passage of Scripture? Oh yeah, we’re going there! I hope you’ll come back to join us.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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