Why you should help your kids learn to listen to God’s Word on their own (and some practical suggestions for starting).
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, that aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God to the end of the street, from the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Welcome to another episode of “Gospel Shaped Home.” I’m Andy Owens, pastor of family discipleship here at Providence. Today I am joined by my brother, John Erwin, our executive pastor here at Providence. John, welcome.
John Erwin
Thank you. It’s good to be here.
Andy
Yeah. Glad you’re here, man. So tell us a little about your family before we dive in today.
John
Yeah. I have an incredible wife, Sarah, of 20 years. We met here at Providence in 1998 and then were married in ’99. So we’ve been here a while together. And then we have two teenage sons, Caleb, who is 16 and Samuel, who is 13.
Andy
Okay. So you have some experience parenting future men. You’re in the midst of the teenage years, the two boys.
John
Yes.
Andy
So today we’re going to talk about developing this most important, most essential, most crucial habit your kids will ever develop and that is the habit of reading, studying, memorizing, meditating, ultimately listening to and living by faith in God’s word. So we’re talking about the Bible and your kids. But before we talk about practical ways to help our kids develop a habit of reading God’s word, let me just take a minute and throw out this question, “Why?” Why should we care that our kids learn to read the Bible for themselves?
John
Andy, that’s such a great question because oftentimes motivation is everything. I think we could quickly and easily answer that question by saying, as Christians that’s just what we’re supposed to do. But at the end of the day, that sounds more like obligation and drudgery rather than being helpful. I think as parents, the last thing we want to impart to our kids is some false belief that reading the Bible is an obligated task that proves that we’re actually followers of Christ and somehow earns our acceptance before God. That’s just not true at all. What we really want to impart is we want our kids to know God personally. We want them to understand His love. We want them to meet the Savior, Jesus Christ. We want them to understand the gospel and then find joy in walking with Him. So motivation is key. When I read the gospels slowly, I see Jesus is constantly teaching the scriptures. It’s a priority to Him. When He comes upon a crowd, He most always teaches them. He does heal from time to time and cure, drive out demons, but most often, He’s teaching them. When I ask myself, “What does this tell me about Jesus? Why does He always start here?” I conclude that because He knows that’s the most loving thing you can do for them, to teach them the scriptures.
Andy
It’s what we need more than anything. Even the very word disciple, it’s a learner. We learn from our master, from our teacher, Jesus. We’re talking about discipling our kids, discipleship in the home.
John
Yeah. So out of His love for them, Jesus wants them, the crowds, to know God. He wants to reveal Himself to His disciples and to them. He wants them to have wisdom for living. So if we take that motivation as parents, we can see that the teaching and the training of our children to read the Bible for themselves is probably one of the most loving things that we can do for them.
Andy
That’s good. I mean when you’re talking about for their own joy, I think of John 15 when Jesus is giving this illustration of we’re branches, He’s the true vine. We can do nothing, bear no fruit apart from Him. He says in verse 11, “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.” Jesus speaks His words to us so that we can have the very joy of the son of God in ourselves. He wants us to be happy in Him. Anything else on that one?
John
No, I think keeping that motivation is key though.
Andy
Yeah. Yeah. And then we could talk for an hour more, honestly, of the benefits of our kids learning to read God’s word for themselves. I mean new spiritual life starts by hearing the word of God. We’re strengthened, sustained, sanctified by the word of God. We’re equipped for every good work by the word of God. I mean there’s the list goes on and on and on. So it’s central. It’s essential. It’s crucial. So how did you guys encourage your boys to start spending time in the scriptures on their own? How old were they? Yeah. What were some first steps?
John
Yeah. I think every child will be different based on how God has created them and wired them and their different seasons of maturity. We have two sons and honestly, sitting still, the task of reading is just not on their priority list most of the time. But when they were younger, say, toddler age up to around 10 years old, we would seek to have devotions before bed separately three to four nights a week. That was our goal. We would do them separately because every time we put them together, it wouldn’t go well. They would get ended up getting tickled and laugh and I would get frustrated because I had this profound insight I wanted to impart to them.
Andy
You said separate. Did you and Sarah both sit with Caleb and then Samuel separately or is it like, hey, you-
John
No, we would divide and conquer.
Andy
Divide and conquer, okay.
John
And we would try to switch it up back and forth. And then as they moved into their pre-teens, early teens, we would encourage them to read on their own. And then we would gather as a family and do the devotion together.
Andy
So they’re reading ahead of time the content for the devotion?
John
Yes.
Andy
Okay.
John
Yep. And then sitting down all four of us together. Now that they’re both teenagers, we encourage them to read daily on their own. And again, if you keep the why, the motivation in mind, every parent with that motivation will gauge the maturity of their child and move in that direction to getting them reading on their own. But overall, I would say that by 13 to 15 years old, kids should be reading the Bible, feeding themselves from the Bible.
Andy
Okay. So were there any other resources, whether it’s journal, Bible-reading journal, or there are lots of resources out there to help kids spend time in God’s word, devotional books, anything that you guys found helpful for equipping your boys to be Bible readers?
John
Yeah. We did, but they were quite simple. We looked at a lot of Bible reading plans, some of the most common ones versus those provided by Providence versus I think Robby Gallaty even has one for teens. But for each one, I found for my boys they were a little too much, too much scripture to digest in one setting. They may work for some, but they didn’t work for us. So what I would do is I would just create our own each month for a book of the Bible. I usually cover about 10 to 20 verses a day and we would just slowly walk our way through a book of the Bible. I think what’s helpful is to have a time each day, not every day, but most days, five to 10 minutes where you just digest it together. As a parent, one of the things I found most helpful is just to ask probing questions to help them, to make sure they’re developing a thought process, just not being able to recreate a story. And then we would find one application from that text and pray together around that.
Andy
So you’re kind of modeling for them by that in that daily time to process together how to read the Bible, how to seek to live in submission to it, application.
John
That’s right.
Andy
That’s good. Good. Okay. I’m sure there were obstacles. Any that you’d be willing to share, like challenges that you guys faced in trying to cultivate this habit in your boys’ lives?
John
Yeah. There are always obstacles. Some are small and some are like brick walls. I think there’s a lot of contributors. I think sometimes it’s just was my failure as a father to keep it in front of them or check in as regular as I should have or continuing to remind them of it. Sometimes they just didn’t want to talk. Maybe it was a rough day. Maybe there was challenges going on and they just didn’t have a lot to say, which is fine. I think sometimes when we’re raising our kids, we forget our own experiences. We expect them to be this checklist perfect, read it every day, and that’s just not life. That’s not life for us. That’s not life for them. So I think grace and perseverance are huge. There’d be times when we’d break it open and one of my boys would say, “You know what? I got behind this morning. I didn’t get to read it.” “That’s fine. We’ll get it tomorrow.”
Andy
That’s good. I think that’s a really helpful mindset. We can easily begin to show ourselves a lot more patience and grace than we show our kids. We don’t remember, like you’re saying, that, hey, it took me a long time to develop this habit or to fight against this sinful tendency. Sometimes we expect our kids, “Hey, I told you to stop doing this. Why didn’t you stop? I told you to read your Bible. Why aren’t you doing it?” I think it’s really important to not come at Bible reading, probably at most things but especially Bible reading, as this is something you must do, this kind of heavy-handed authoritative, but rather don’t you want to find treasure? Look what kind of treasure God has put here in this book and let’s go find it together.
John
Yeah. That’s a great analogy. It’s sort of a treasure book. I think the last thing we want to do as parents is to instill with them that the Bible is some rule book that sucks the joy out of life. No, we want to see it as a gift from God and a privilege to read it, not a duty.
Andy
That’s right. Okay. Any other thoughts or encouragements on this topic for our parents?
John
The last thing I would say is just reminding them of Paul’s words out of 2 Corinthians chapter one, verse 24. He’s talking to the church at Corinth there and he says, “Not that we lorded over your faith, but we work with you for your joy because it is by faith you stand firm.” So as parents, we don’t want to lord it over them and require discipline, spiritual discipline as a means of our acceptance. But we want to work with them for their joy.
Andy
That’s a good word to end on.
John
As parents, we’re just constantly reminding ourselves that we’re laboring for their joy.
Andy
That’s right. That’s good. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you joining and sharing some of these thoughts and we hope that you will, in reliance on the God of grace, help your kids develop this habit of listening to His voice. Thanks for joining today and we’ll see you next time. Lord willing.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.