Teach Your Kids About God: 7 Ways You Can Do It

Teaching a child is difficult for me, and raising two girls with learning disabilities, neither who enjoy reading or even doing their homework has presented a HUGE challenge: How can I teach them about my faith?

I’d really rather sit down and spend an hour doing advanced calculus than 10 minutes instilling lessons in my kids but as their only Christian parent, I’m solely responsible for their spiritual development so I’m writing a series to take inspiration from mothers in the Bible. One took huge risks to save her child’s life. God then raised him up to be one of the greatest leaders in the Old Testament, Moses.

We don’t know much about Jochebed from the Bible, but she had 3 children while her Israelite nation was enslaved in Egypt. During her 3rd pregnancy, the Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew babies that were born be put to death immediately. Can you imagine the terror for expecting couples?

She must have been terrified but…

Moses was born, and like any loving mother, Jochebed looked at him and fell in love. At great personal risk, she kept him hidden but by the age of 3 months, Moses was not quiet enough to hide anymore. She put him in a makeshift boat to float him down the river. Think about what courage and trust it took for her do that to her “beautiful child”! (Exodus 2:2)

The story does not end there, of course. Moses floated down the river, was picked up by Pharaoh’s daughter who also took to him – possibly because she wanted an heir to the throne – and decided to raise this Hebrew baby. His sister, Miriam, ran behind and offered a Hebrew wet nurse, so the daughter agreed to pay this woman. In this way, Jochebed got her baby back until he was weaned. What can we learn from Jochebed’s story?

Lesson 1: Your love for your child is rewarded.

Jochebed had such great love for her child that she would do anything to save her boy. God rewarded that by not only rescuing his life but choosing him as the man to save their nation from slavery in Egypt. When you think about teaching your child in spite of your shortcomings or their disability or limitations, let your love for them be your guide.

Lesson 2: Your trust in God will be fulfilled.

Jochebed could not have known what would happen when she put Moses in the river. The Nile runs through the location of where the Israelites lived, Goshen, and eventually flows north into the Mediterranean Sea. Pharaoh’s daughter lived upstream and Jochebed must have known he would pass where royalty dwelled. He could have been easily killed by little boat capsizing or the Egyptian guards, but God protected him and eventually he was sent back to Jochebed. I’m sure their parting was painful but how she must have treasured their time together when all around her, mothers missed their dead children. Her faith and trust in God’s plan were fulfilled. If you are faithful to teaching them the word, He will be faithful to protect those seeds you plant in them, even if you think they won’t understand.

Lesson 3: You can do this even if you have nothing.

Jochebed was a woman in a nation of slaves. You can’t get a much lower position than that. She probably had very little in the way of worldly possessions and certainly, there were no holy texts yet, since Moses himself wrote the first 5 books of the Bible. In fact, because he was schooled as an Egyptian prince, he had all the tools he needed to lay down the beginnings of our Scriptures. You need nothing to teach your kids, just your own strong faith and values and the Bible, a tool neither Jochebed nor Moses had to teach their own children.

7 Tips to Help You Teach Your Kids About God

Throughout the story of this Biblical mother, God shows us that with faith, courage, and love, we can teach our children what they need to become a believer who serves God’s purpose. These tips may help you:

1. You CAN be creative.

I love music and I write, so despite the fact that I always feel intimidated by this, I created a little song for Zoe based on part of James 1:17. Here are the words if you want to use them:

Every good & perfect gift, good & perfect gift,
Comes from Father God above, Father God above,
Who gives gifts in perfect love, gifts in perfect love from….
(this is where Zoe says or sings “GOD!”)

What is your gift or talent that you can use to teach your children?

 

2. Do anything and everything.

That first thing ONLY happened because I tried everything: books, stories, reading, apps, videos, you name it. Sometimes with a kid with special needs, the only thing you can be certain of is when they are disinterested, so you need to keep on plugging in different things to help them learn about the faith…just like if you are teaching math to a kid who doesn’t get it. Try anything you can think of to teach your kids.

3. Sacrifice.

It had been on my heart to get my girls into a church that can serve them and it a LOT for me to stop attending my very beloved home church (where I’d been nurtured and taught for over 2 years) to send them to a church that can meet their needs in child care and teach them about Christ. This was really hard and I didn’t want to do it but everything in me says it’s right when I’m back to sitting in pews. Now I have to work on sacrificing time to plan lessons teach the kids about God. What sacrifice is God asking you to make to teach your child?

4. Start memorizing Scripture.

My kids don’t like to read so when I’m fumbling through the concordance at the back of the kid’s Bible, I lose ground FAST. But I can easily share with the (few) verses I’ve memorized – and that goes a long way towards training a kid who DOES. NOT. WANT. TO. READ. Start with something simple, like John 3:16.

5. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

Ask any parent who’s on their 1,000th viewing of “Frozen” – kids are less turned off by repetition than adults. Not only that but in my last 2 years of Bible study, that you don’t get to know anything very well unless you go over it – over and over. With my kids, that’s just fine. Pick one short lesson to teach your kids about God and review it nightly. With Amelia, I was reviewing “light” scriptures in the Bible and after just 2 weeks, she now knows that God is the father of lights (James 1:17), that Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12) and that we can pray, “The Lord is our light” (Psalm 27:1).

6. Teach your kids what you’ve just learned about God.

That whole light lesson came about because the Monday before last, we studied how God is the light of the world in adult Bible study. I was already doing James 1:17 so the first scripture was easy, then I picked few more from the study and a concordance, and Genesis 1:3 for good measure, since we had talked about creation recently. In that way, my daughter is learning to associate God with light. I thought of that by myself SURELY with the Holy Spirit putting that lesson in my mind.

7. Keep praying with faith.

None of this would have happened had I not been praying for them nightly for years, including asking God HOW I can teach them. Pray before you teach your kids for God to set His Word in your child’s heart and allow it to take root. Pray He will give you the lessons He wants them to learn. God will bless our best efforts, even if our kids can’t read, sit still, communicate, or acknowledge what they have heard. Keep in mind, too, that it’s generally believed that Moses himself had a stutter, yet on occasion after occasion, he stood up – to Pharaoh, to the nation when they sinned, to rebellions within the nation – because he trusted God to handle things despite his fears. Never doubt that God can’t use your child with special needs.

Kids with special needs and learning disabilities need to know and understand God’s word as much as any other child and it’s your duty to figure out how to do that in a way they can hear. That’s all you need to do: make sure they hear it as best you can. God will do the rest. Imagine my joy when I at prayers last night I asked Amelia, “God is the father of??” and she said, “LIGHT!” I could feel God’s pleasure in my heart. You too can do this too!

Use These Resources To Teach Your Kids About God:

I recommend the Bible App for Kids (and download the Bible App for yourself, too!)

Another AWESOME resources is the “The Bible Made Easy – for Kids“, which is easy to understand, beautifully visual, and times the Old Testament to Jesus and the New Testament! Here are my affiliate links for all these resources: