Several months ago I felt the need to teach my almost 4 year old Bible verses. I am linking them in with her behavior to reinforce positive behavior and help her to understand her sin. If you missed it, you can see how I introduced Scripture with discipline.
This time I chose a verse from James. You might notice that it is not an actual version of the Bible, but I reworded it a bit to be better understood by my daughter.
"Whoever knows the right thing to do and doesn't do it sins." ~James 4:17
One day during naps, I wrote out the new verse on a different color of paper and hung it on the pantry door. Upon awakening, M noticed the new verse right away.
The first few days we discussed it a lot, and she seems to understand it well. Want to hear something funny though? She still quotes Colossians 3:20 (the first verse we learned). She will even go up to the new verse and run her finger under the words while saying, "Children obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." It cracks me up!
I have noticed that with the busyness of summer, I wasn't nearly as diligent in incorporating this verse into our daily lives as I was with Colossians 3:20. Maybe it just wasn't a good choice? I'm don't know. I do think it is important for young children to understand what the Bible says about sin, and not just what Mom and Dad call sin.
I'm not sure what verse we will use next, but I think I would like it to focus on God's forgiveness and love. Any suggestions?
5 comments:
That's an excellent verse to start with. We've been gearing up to do it (and have been rather lazy with it, admittedly) but this blog post was just the kick in the pants I needed. THanks!
I love this idea. I've been doing a little of this too. We talked about Ephesians 6:1 "Children Obey your parents in the Lord for this is right" and then I showed Eli examples in the Bible of what happens when you don't obey (Adam & Eve). I'm hoping that these scriptural truths are planting themselves in his heart.
Annette Lisa Welchel's (sp?) Book Creative Corrections has some really neat ideas on how to do exactly this. She even goes in stages according to age if I remember correctly, it's been a while since I've read it.
Sounds like a great place to start. When our oldest were little, they learned verses about salvation - Rom 3:23, Rom 6:23, John 14:6, Rom 10:9-11, 2 Cor 5:15, Rev 3:20, and John 3:3. Then, we progressed to others depending on the situation and child. Some of our children liked learning verses to music or sign language. Yes, we made games out of it, too (no disrespect intended). Now I'm thinking perhaps our littlest needs some work in this area as I must confess to not being as diligent with him. Thanks for this post!
Always good to encourage children to get knowledge and information about gos and is preachings.Will have a very sound and good impact on them.
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