Raising Children to Crave Spiritual Meat

http://www.generationcedar.com

I've mentioned before that you will definitely not waste your Internet time visiting Generation Cedar.

Well, yet again, a wonderful sharing came through my reader from their blog and it's so perfect -- and so simple -- that I have to share it with you.

Memorizing portions of Scripture with your children is so important! Too many parents try to wait, as she mentions, and teach Scripture when they feel children are 'old enough' to understand it. The trouble with that has so many folds to it.

When we are older, often memorization is more difficult. As a young child, the mind and spirit is a sponge, soaking up everything it comes to contact with. That's both the good and the bad, mind you! Useless hours of even 'good' television fills a space that couls have been given over to God's Word.

As we get older, we become more 'busy' in our daily lives. Time taken, given, to God just for building a deep relationship is not so freely found as in childhood.

It's so simple to read from the Bible everyday -- yet so many professing Christians don't take that time. A dunk into water at the church once, even just being there weekly, makes you about as "christian" as my standing in a garage makes me a car.

Raise your children to crave God's companionship. Train then to have that deep and true hunger that so many adult Christians lack in churches these days. Light a fire in their souls -- and feed it regularly -- so they will rock this world and turn Christianity back to The Father, where their hearts and spirits belong!

From Generation Cedar:

Raising Children Who Crave "the Meat"
by Word Warrior

Last week, a line that I posted  from a soldier's quote about his mother has been ringing in my ears:
"Before our minds could grasp their meaning, simple formulas were fixed in our memories which should afterwards prove lights to guide our steps aright."

Memorization.  Reading of Scripture and solid, theological catechisms. 

These seeds that seem pointless in the ears of young children are in fact cultivating rich soil in their hearts which will prove invaluable to them in later years. I've mentioned the importance of reading Scripture to little ones in previous posts, and I might remind you that the author of Ten Peas in a Pod said he would go to the extreme of waking up his sleeping infants to be present at Bible reading time!

His theory is so logical we miss it!  If you never spoke words to a child until he was capable of understanding them, he would be impaired for life.  I fear we are guilty of raising "spiritually impaired" children in the same practice! 

How many adults have you heard lament that they "can't understand the Bible"?  Could this be one major reason for a church full of spiritual babes? I was singing a hymn the other day and I realized I knew the words to so many songs I heard repetitively as a tiny child; comparatively, I still have to look up the words to hymns I've only learned as an adult, in spite of having sung them many times. Those words were planted, even before I could read them or sing them.  They are still there, and now "afterwards prove lights to guide my steps aright".

One simple exercise I try to do with my children is quote Psalm 1 to them as soon as I bring them home from the hospital each time I change their diaper.  It's just a consistent time that I can remember to pour God's Word into their hearts.  (Psalm 1 is the first chapter our children memorize.)

Just a reminder–let's remember the supernatural work that is going on in those rapidly absorbing minds of our children.  It's OK to read the  cutesie stories; but don't forget the meat, because if you wait, they may never crave more than the milk!
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