I'd love to hear how you share the important issues of life and salvation with your kids? I've been impressed lately how very important it is to talk about Jesus freely with our kids (I didn't grow up that way) and also not just leave it up to our lovely Christian school or even Sunday school. I've been at home a lot more lately and I find I'm embracing motherhood so much more and taking my responsibility more serious! Feeling a lot of rejection from family and friends has been hard but has taught me the important things in life - Christ, my husband and my kids!

So let's hear it... how do you broach serious topics, or simple faith topics with your kids. Do you have special "devotion" time where you go over it or is it discussed throughout the day? Do you have any good books to suggest? Like bible story or kids' devotionals? I've heard good things about the Jesus Storybook Bible... thoughts?

We started talking about the Lord with our kids as soon as they were born, literally. We got to church...bible study/prayer, Sunday School, worship, and gospel time. However, we talk about the Lord a lot woth the kids on a day to day basis. He is real in our lives and circumstances and so it comes up a lot. We don't do a formal "study time" with them, it's more on a day to day general conversation basis. They bring up a lot of questions about things, some things that amaze me, and we talk, look up verses, pray about it until we find an answer. We pray with them before bed every night from the time they are born, and talk about salvation, Jesus loves you, from that time too. Both dh and I want the Lord to be a practical part of our kids lives, someone they KNOW, not just know about. That he is their friend, Lord, helper, protector. They shame me with their faith a lot of times. In fact, just tonight... our 1 year old has had a red eye and some discharge and I was saying to dh at the supper table that I really hoped it wasn't pink eye and he could pray about that specifically. I looked over at our 7 year old and she had her head stuck under the table. I asked her what she was doing and she popped up and said she was praying and didn't want the others to bother her. It just melts my heart! I feel like I fail so often and fall short of the mom I should be and how I should be teaching them, but then I get moments like these that are such an encouragement. My 9 year old ds asks hard questions too, today he asked me what the old nature and the new nature are. :mrgreen: It is great as a parent because you really have to own your faith and know what you believe. I guess my best advice would be to bring the Lord into everything in your daily lives. We have never used a children's bible or devotional, just the KJV and it is amazing how much they understand. We felt, for our family, that we wanted them to becime familiar with the regular Bible, esp. since all we use at church is the KJV. I'm not saying you shouldn't use a children's Bible or devotional, just look at is closely to make sure it is accurate. We also tell the stories to our kids using our own words, but keeping the lesson clear.

Ditto what Jen said. We homeschool our kids and bring Jesus and the Bible into all the subjects. We also start off our school day with prayer, Bible reading (from KJV) and then Bible journalling. For salvation - other than everyday conversation - we went through a great book 'The Way of the Master for Kids'. Very simple, takes them through the ten commandments, how we can't live up to them therefore we aren't perfect and can't get to heaven without Jesus.
God convicted me a couple years ago with the daily Bible readings to start at Genesis 1:1 and work our way through to the end of the Bible. That way they are getting the entire Bible and not just sections - plus not just the 'exciting bible stories'. It's meant alot of questions (like 'what is a man lying with a man mean?' - that is like when a man kisses another man which is not what God designed for us). Some questions are curly, but I am reminded that the Israelites were told to teach the books of the law to their children from a young age.

I know I can only comment from the child side... my parents gave me my own Bibles and children's praise music, made sure there were Christians in my life of all ages, prayed I would have a heart for the Lord, and modelled Jesus to me in their own lives (a lot of kids are having hypocrisy modelled to them- parents with evil rolling of their tongues or having sex outside of marriage or worse, then they probably wonder what went wrong when their kids grow up to be even worse off, and totally lost??) My dad reads his Bible every day, seeing that every day made an impact too. Anyhow, my folks approach, laid a decent foundation for us. They lived and loved the Lord in the way they wanted me to grow up to do!!

Only thing I can think of that would have to change: I usually brought up the harder topics, but looked into most of it on my own.. that's probably not best though, especially now! since they have the Internet to look for answers and most of those answers will be unbiblical anymore. And with church culture being anti-discernment, eeks. Info saturated culture = parents need to bring things up and teach from the Word in a way that may have been more casual pre-Internet? Seems so?

The Way of the Master for kids sounds great:mrgreen:.

We really enjoy the Jesus Bible Storybook here. [lovesign]