Tag Archives: jesus

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God’s Love for You

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Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

One of the strongest and clearest messages throughout the Bible is God’s love for us. We are reminded that God doesn’t forget us (even though many of us feel forgotten); that God is close to us (even though He often feels far away); and that not only has He created us in His image, but He knows us, and that doesn’t scare Him away (although we always fear that the moment someone truly understands us, they’ll bolt.)

And yet, many of us still struggle to believe God loves us.

We believe that God loves the world and that, through Jesus, God will redeem and restore it; however, we struggle to live as if this is true. 

So we run, hide, put up fronts, wear masks, beat ourselves up for past mistakes, try to earn God’s love, and try to prove ourselves worthy of God’s love. All the while, God’s love sits there.

If you’re like me, you can relate to this.

The problem for many of us is that we read verses about God’s love for the world and us (John 3:16), that Jesus loves us (John 15:9), that God predestined us in love (Ephesians 1:4 – 5), that God sings over us (Zephaniah 3:17), that God loved us first (1 John 4:19), that God draws us to Himself (John 6:44). We read the apostle Paul saying over 160 times that as a follower of Jesus, we are “in Christ”, and yet we live every day as if God is disappointed in us, indifferent towards us, mildly happy with us or “likes” us.

We’ll say, “I know God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.” Or, “God loves me, but I can’t love myself.”

When we say those things, we have made love and forgiveness something it is not. We have based that on our definitions and life.

Over the last two years, if there is one message that God has put on my heart for me to learn, it is this: His gracious, unrelenting, never-stopping love for me.

I keep returning to Luke 15 and the stories that Jesus told: a shepherd who goes after a lost lamb, a woman who searches for a coin, and a father who runs out to meet his son, who doesn’t deserve grace, let alone a party. Through this passage, God has softened my heart, enabling me to understand and feel His love.

Some of us (at least I did) balked a little at this because it seemed too emotional, making God too close and personal, and we feared it would diminish His transcendence and power. He’s God, Creator of the universe. Yes, and He’s also a personal God who created you in His image and sent His Son to die in your place so He could rescue you and so you could know His great love for you.

Here’s my challenge to you. Spend as much time as you need, months or years. Dive into Luke 15, Ephesians 1, and the passages listed above and ask God, “Show me Your love for me; help me to understand and feel Your love for me.”

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Where Your Heart Is (The Parable of the Sower)

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

One of the struggles many people have is trying to figure out where their relationship with Jesus is. 

There are seasons and moments when things feel like they are going well. You are in community, spending time with Jesus through prayer, reading scripture, and practicing other spiritual disciplines. And then there are times when those things fall off, and we wonder, “What happened?”

It isn’t just about practices or disciplines but about where our heart is or is not. 

But how do you know?

Because discerning our hearts can be very difficult. 

Yet, many of Jesus’s parables address this idea, helping us to see where our hearts really are. 

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the sower, seeds, and soils. While this is often called “The Parable of the Sower,” the parable is, in many ways, about soils. Through this lens, we begin to see where our hearts are or are not. 

James Montgomery Boice has a helpful lens of these four soils: 

  • The hard soil = The Hard Heart
  • The Shallow Soil = The Shallow Heart
  • The Strangled Soil = The Strangled Heart
  • The Open Soil = The Open Heart

The Hard Heart

The hard heart wants nothing to do with Jesus or the things of God. 

They are completely turned away from God. They love their sin; they love being in charge of their life. 

Paul described this person in Romans 1 as suppressing the truth of God, being spiritually ignorant or against God. They love their sin. 

In many ways, our culture is like this. 

But it isn’t just about sin; it is about ruling your life. This parable and many others that Jesus tells are about the kingdom of God. 

Who is the king of the kingdom of God?  God. 

This is the key to the hard heart, the one who wants to be king of their life. 

The hard heart is not just someone who doesn’t attend church. Many people who sit in church every Sunday have a hard heart. This is the person who says, “I know what God says about money, sex, loving my enemies, forgiving those who hurt me, but ____,” and then they tell you why they don’t have to follow that. 

That’s a hard heart.

Do you have a hard heart? What about this soil resonates with you right now? Is there anything you need to confess?

Is your heart hard towards God?

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The Shallow Heart

This is the person whose faith cannot handle difficulty. 

Much of their faith is built on emotion and their feelings about God. How they evaluated Sunday mornings or Bible readings is based on whether they “felt God” or had a “good feeling during worship.” Did the hair on my neck stand up?

The shallow heart is here for God’s promises and “the best life now” that Jesus promises, but the moment that difficulty comes, I have to take a stand for Jesus. They tap out if God doesn’t answer my prayers the way I prayed them. 

Another example is the person who has attended church for years and is still a spiritual infant. They have experienced no growth. 

Do you have a shallow heart? What about this soil resonates with you right now? Is there anything you need to confess?

Is your faith shallow or deep?

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The Strangled Heart

Jesus is very specific with this soil: They are unfruitful and choke the word out because of the worries of the age and the deceitfulness of wealth. 

The worries in every age and every culture. A few things to consider are: What keeps you up at night? What things give you that empty feeling in your stomach? Do you worry about your health, wealth, kids, or other relationships? This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t worry about those things, but it does start to reveal what takes up space in your heart and mind or things you are trying to control that you need to hand over to Jesus and trust Him. 

Another one is the worry you feel about the upcoming election. Will you be okay if your candidate loses? If the answer is no, as a follower of Jesus, that reveals something in our hearts. 

Do you have a strangled heart? What about this soil resonates with you right now? Is there anything you need to confess?

Is anything strangling your heart instead of trusting God?

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The Open Heart

As you read through the parable in Matthew 13, you see that all of this leads to the soil where the seed takes root and grows, “the open heart,” as Boice calls it. 

An open heart that receives the word of God and obeys. When it says “hears,” that means “to obey.” 

Not just in one ear and out the other. 

This means that when we hear the word of God, read the word of God, and feel the move of the Spirit of God in our lives, we obey. We don’t say, “That doesn’t apply to me. I don’t feel like doing that.” We do it. 

This parable warns us against superficial hearing. And shows us what real hearing is. 

Hearing the word of God = Obedience.

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Fruit comes from obedience. 

But how do we know? How do we know if we have an open heart?

The fruit. It produces fruit. 

The fruit of a changed life evidences an open heart. 

The fruit of a changed life evidences an open heart.

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I love that Jesus says, “Some will be a hundred, some sixty, some thirty times what was sown.”

The fruit that comes from your obedience might be a world-changing fruit that is 100x. 

It might not. It might be thirty. 

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “Shoot for 100 times.”

He says, “There are different levels of fruit, and they all matter and are important. One is not better than another.”

This truth should free us from having to produce what someone else does. 

Jesus doesn’t judge us on a curve or compare us to others. 

The question isn’t, “Did I produce what the person next to me produced?” The question is, “Did I produce the fruit I was supposed to produce?”

Do you have an open heart towards God? Here’s how to know.

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The Healing Power of Jesus

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Sunday, I wrapped up our series, Questions Jesus Asked, and looked at a question that Jesus asked a man who couldn’t walk at the pool of Bethesda.

Before getting to the question, some background.

In John 5, Jesus is walking by the pool on the Sabbath. The pool is a place where possibly hundreds of people who were blind, deaf, lame, etc., would wait for the waters to stir. They believed that an angel was stirring the waters when the waters stirred, and the first person in the pool would be healed. The man that Jesus encounters has sat there and waited for 38 years.

38 years!

I don’t know what it is like to be an invalid or live in chronic pain for 38 years. But imagine that.

This is important for the question that Jesus will ask this man.

What do you want Jesus to heal?

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I wonder, did this man give up hope? Did he think, this is what life is like?

I think this can be easy to do when we think about places in our lives that we’d like to change or heal. Some of this might be being realistic, but other times, it might be a way that we protect ourselves from disappointment.

Because this man can’t get into the water, it seems like he is all alone.

So, Jesus asks him in John 5:6, Do you want to get well?

Do you want to get well?

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For some of us, I think Jesus asks this question because we have to ask ourselves, Do I want to get well? Some of us don’t want to get well.  Or, we don’t want to get well if it requires anything of us. 

We want to heal from emotional wounds without doing any work. We want to recover from relational wounds without dealing with anything from our past. We want physical healing without doing any work. 

Now, sometimes there is nothing we can do to heal. But sometimes, we play a role in our healing. 

I wonder, would Jesus ask us, “Do you want to get well?”

Healing is not something to be flippant about. 

How Jesus heals us.

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The thing we want healing from is something we have potentially carried and dealt with, prayed for, and cried out to God about for years. Just like this man. I wonder if Jesus is also asking, “Have you given up? Do you still believe healing is possible?”

There comes a moment when it is hard to believe healing is possible. There comes a moment where it is hard to believe and hold out hope that anything could change. 

Something else can happen. This man was here for 38 years. He knew what it was like to live like this. He knew how to get through the day as an invalid. It possibly was part of his identity. The thing we want healing from slowly becomes part of who we are. 

Our brokenness can become a part of our identity and what makes us who we are.

Jesus tells him in verse 8, “Pick up your mat and walk.” Instantly the man was healed; he picked up his mat and walked.

I wonder what this moment felt like. 

Instantly he got well. Did he feel it right away? Did he feel the muscles move in his legs right away?

Jesus healed him, but the man also had to believe and stand up. 

At some point in our faith journey, we will have to take a step of faith. We will have to trust the impossible and believe in the power of God. We will have to respond.

As we apply this question, here are some things I believe Jesus is asking us beneath the surface:

  • Do you want to get well?
  • Have you given up hope on healing?
  • Is there a part that you play in your healing?

How Jesus heals us.

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What the Storms of Life Teach Us

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One of the things that many people struggle with at various points in their spiritual journey is wondering where they stand with God. This can look like working to feel and know God’s love, wondering if there is something you have done or left undone that is affecting your relationship with God, or even asking, “Can you or have you lost your salvation?” These struggles are real and can be debilitating. 

I remember in college feeling the constant struggle of wondering where I stood with God. I asked if this sin or that sin did me in. Looking back, I realize now that I didn’t have a clear picture of God’s grace and mercy and the power of sin. But that doesn’t make the questions any less painful in the moment. 

Thankfully, Jesus tells us some important things related to salvation and being able to have certainty about where we stand with God. 

In Luke 6 and Matthew 7, after giving what is known as The sermon on the mount, Jesus answers this question. Now, the context is critical. The sermon on the mount is where Jesus lays out what life is like in the kingdom of God, where Jesus is King, and we follow after him. He talks about what is truly blessed in the kingdom of God, which is different than the world around us. He talks about money, sexuality, judgment, and so much more. But all of that is in the context of following Jesus as Lord, Savior, and King. 

The first question a follower of Jesus must answer is, “Is Jesus my Savior, Lord, and King?”

Is Jesus your Savior, Lord, and King?

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Jesus asks in Luke 6: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do the things I say?” What is Jesus referring to when he says, what I say? I think he is referring to what He has just said in the sermon on the mount. Jesus says a disciple listens to the words of God and acts on them, does them. They don’t push it aside, think it was for someone else, or it doesn’t apply to them. 

A follower of Jesus is one who hears the words of God and does it.

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So, the first question we need to ask ourselves is, “Do I read my Bible and do what it says?” While this seems straightforward, it is easy to get out of it. 

  • Think back over your recent times in God’s word. Has there been something you read that you didn’t think applied to you?
  • Has there been a moment when you felt like the Holy Spirit was moving you to do something, say something, or not do something, and you brushed it off?
  • Take a moment to confess that and bring that to our God of grace. 

Then, to help us apply this on a deeper level. Jesus tells a story about two men who build houses and get hit by a storm. One of the men built his house deep into the rock and had a solid foundation, and his house stood. This man, Jesus said, “Listened and acted on the words of God.” The second man built a house on the sand that collapsed when the storm came. This person heard the words of God but did nothing with them. 

A storm reveals our faith better than anything else.

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Take a moment and pull out a journal or a piece of paper:

  • Think back on a recent storm you walked through. It could be health, relational, at work, or at home. Write out what happened. 
  • What did you learn about yourself from that storm? What did you learn about God from that storm?
  • Would you say that your faith was built on Jesus and stood the storm, or did it collapse?

Jesus tells us that one of the ways we see our faith is how it responds in a storm. 

A storm has a way of revealing where we stand and what is happening in us. It shows how quickly we turn to God or how easily we try to manage our way through a storm. 

A storm reveals where we stand and what is happening in us.

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How to Build a Life that Matters

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All of us build our lives on something.

And that something is the thing that determines what our lives become. The people we become, the places we go and the impact that we make.

The problem for us, is many of us never stop to ask what we are building our lives on. We keep going, keep pursuing, keep moving, but we rarely question, “Am I building on the right thing? Do I like where I’m going with this life?”

What life are you building?

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Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL player, in his TED talk said:

If you were on your deathbed today, knowing that you were doing to die tomorrow, and you wanted to measure what kind of man you were and what kind of success you had in life, it’d come down to two things and two things only.

The first is this: On that deathbed, you recognize that all of life is about relationships. It’s about the capacity to love and be loved. What’s it mean to be a man? It means you can look somebody in the eye and say “I love you” and receive that love back.

You know what the questions you ask at the end of your life are? They’re not about awards or achievements or applause or what you accumulated. They’re all questions of relationships. What kind of husband was I? Wife? What kind of father? Mother? What kind of son or daughter? What kind of friend? Who did I love and who did I allow to love me?

The second comes down to this: At the end of your life you want to be able to look back on your life and know that you made a difference. That you left some kind of mark, some kind of imprint that you were here. All of want to leave some kind of legacy behind.

You might choose family, kids, hobbies, career choices, vacations, and trips, or your 401K to build your life on.

What many of us find if we’re honest is, we overemphasize things that aren’t that important.

We overemphasize things that aren’t that important.

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If we’re honest, most of us have more strategies on how to make a career than we do on how to build a life.

Most of us have more strategies on how to make a career than we do on how to build a life.

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In Matthew 7 Jesus said,

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash.

What Jesus is getting at is a wholehearted devotion.

Jesus wants us to see the difference between merely saying something and doing something, between hearing and doing.

Jesus wants us to see the difference between hearing and doing.

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To help us see, he compares two people who build a house. One on the rock, the other on the sand.

What is fascinating about both of these guys is they are both building a house, building a life.

You and I can build something, really anything.

Let’s say you and I each build a chair.

How will we know if that chair is done? If it is completed and will work?

By looking at it?

No, by sitting on it.

How do you know if a house is built and will last?

When a storm comes.

What happens when you get hit with a storm in life?

You see what matters to you. You look at the relationships you have invested in, you know the faith you have built or not built.

Right now, you might be in a storm. Your finances, marriage, career, maybe one or all of them is not where you thought it would be. Life is harder than you expected. Right now, my wife Katie and I feel like we are in a sprint that we didn’t stretch out for.

In those moments, those places, you find out what you built your life on. You find out what matters to you.

Think about it like this, have you ever experienced a storm in life and didn’t like what you learned about yourself at that moment?

I know I have.

All of us can know the words of Jesus, but belief is a different thing.

You can know something and not believe something.

Belief is not required to pass a test, just knowledge.

Dallas Willard said, “To believe something is to act as if it is so.”

To believe something is to act as if it is so. -Dallas Willard

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Building your life on Jesus means that you do what Jesus would do if he were you. It means desiring that to be true of you, even when you miss it which you will.

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What Christmas Tells Us

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The emphasis on light in darkness comes form the Christian belief that the world’s hope comes from outside of it. The giving of gifts is a natural response to Jesus’ stupendous act of self-giving, when he laid aside his glory and was born into the human race. The concern for the needy recalls that the Son of God was born not into an aristocratic family but into a poor one. The Lord of the universe identified with the least and the most excluded of the human race. -Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ

The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ

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Links for Leaders 11/3/17

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It’s the weekend…finally. The perfect time to grab a cup of coffee and catch up on some reading. Below, you’ll find some articles I came across this week that I found helpful as a leader and parent and hope you do as well.

Before diving into those, in case you missed them this week. Here are the top 3 posts from my blog this week that I hope you find helpful:

Now, onto the articles I came across that I hope will help you:

Trevin Wax shares The Boy Scouts and the Disappearance of Paths as they’ve recently announced they will now allow girls to join the boy scouts. As my kids have gotten older, we’ve talked more and more about paths, passages, etc., which I think are crucial for kids and something that is lost in our culture.

Hiring is difficult for most pastors and leaders. Marty Duren has 15 questions to ask a potential hire at your church. Many of these are normal ones most churches ask, but there were a few that were new to me.

I’ve mentioned before that Katie and I have been spending a lot of time talking about technology and the role it plays in our family and with our kids. I’ve really appreciate the insights from Jon Acuff on this and he shares The first social media challenge your kids will face, that is incredibly insightful.

I’m reading Sam Storms new book Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life, which has been incredibly helpful. He wrote a post this week about the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit that is great and I think a very overlooked part of Christianity. 

I have a daughter and so dating is something I’ve been thinking about and how I prepare her for it. Most of what Christians, especially dad’s have to say on the topic is ridiculous and fear based. With good reason, but that’s why I appreciated this article from Jen Wilkin on On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors. I love how she champions raising a strong woman. We need more of that, not less.

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Tuesday Morning Mind Dump…

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  • It was so great after 6 weeks off from preaching to be back on Sunday.
  • The buzz and excitement in our church right now is so obvious.
  • With the addition of Derek to our staff team, REVcommunities launching soon, school is back in session.
  • It’s a good season.
  • I told someone recently that it feels like our flywheel as a church is picking up speed, which feels nice.
  • I got to share some celebrations on Sunday from what God did over the last 6 weeks in our church: In the last 6 weeks we’ve had 42 first time guests, 23 3rd time guests, 216 next steps taken in sermons, 7 first serves and 19 first time givers.
  • And we had someone take the step of following Jesus on Sunday.
  • That never gets old.
  • If you missed Sunday as I kicked our series The Bible, you can watch it here.
  • And if you’re struggling with reading the bible, here are some questions to help you.
  • And if you’re looking for more resources on the bible, here you go.
  • This Sunday I’m unpacking the story of the Bible, what is the Bible about.
  • If you miss what something is trying to tell you, you will end up lost.
  • I think this one thing causes more frustration for Christians and confusion for people when they come to the Bible.
  • Our daughter is going into 7th grade, which is a big deal in the way that we school our kids. Things begin to pick up and change for her.
  • Which is exciting and scary at the same time.
  • Crazy to think she is in 7th grade and will be 12 next week.
  • Every year I meet with a group of guys in our church to focus on leadership and help them grow as leaders, personally, at work and in their family.
  • This year, I might do 2 groups, but the exciting thing is that I switched up what we’ll cover and how we’ll do things.
  • Can’t wait to try it out.
  • I find that when I try to pass on things I’ve learned to younger leaders, I grow a ton by their questions, push backs and searching.
  • As much I have loved my big green egg, I haven’t smoked anything yet.
  • Well, that changes this week.
  • Wednesday I’m smoking a pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon.
  • Then, on Friday, I’m going to smoke a pork shoulder for over 8 hours.
  • I’m trying it out on some of our oldest friends so if it tanks, pizza won’t be a huge disappointment.
  • So excited to try it out.
  • Last week I got to speak to 2 different groups outside of Revolution.
  • On Thursday I was on base talking to a group of non-commissioned officers about work/life balance.
  • On Saturday I got to talk to a group of parents about how to become an intentional family.
  • Tons of fun and lots of great questions.
  • Then, Saturday afternoon we intentionally avoided the heat and rain and went to see Despicable Me 3. 
  • If you haven’t seen it, it is exactly what you expect it to be.
  • Good times for sure.
  • I love that my kids love movie trailers before the movie as much as I do.
  • Well, back to it…
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Tuesday Morning Mind Dump…

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  • After 6 weeks away from preaching, it feels nice to be writing a sermon.
  • It was nice the last 2 weeks just being at Revolution and not preaching. So good for the soul.
  • I love summer for the vacation, the down time, but also the reading time.
  • Here are some of my favorites from the summer.
  • I can’t wait to kick off The Bible this Sunday and spend the next 3 weeks answering common questions about the bible.
  • I can’t say enough, how much the last 6 weeks off from preaching have meant and how helpful they have been.
  • Pastors, you need to take time off in the summer.
  • It doesn’t have to be 6 weeks, but you can’t have a sustainable rhythm and last in ministry if you preach 48 or 50 times a year.
  • I know because I tried to do it the first 3 years of our church.
  • It was great to see how much Joe and Erik have grown as communicators as they got the chance to preach while I was away.
  • But I’m excited about spending the next 10 weeks preaching again.
  • 10 weeks is my limit right now for how many times I’ll preach in a row.
  • That’s another thing a pastor and his elder team should figure out, what keeps a pastor fresh. For you it might be 6 or 12.
  • After we do The Bible series we’re going to spend most of the fall walking through 1, 2 and 3 John.
  • We had our newcomers lunch yesterday and it was packed.
  • Blown away that we have grown over the summer.
  • Always amazes me.
  • Speaking of growth, I am so excited about the addition of Derek to our team.
  • He spent his first 4 weeks working while I was away, but the last 2 weeks working with him have been incredible.
  • Someone texted me while I was away and said, “Derek is exactly what our church needed” and I couldn’t agree more.
  • His gifts and personality are a perfect fit for what we needed and God’s timing in it has been cool to watch.
  • I’m in the middle of book 4 of the Harry Potter series with our kids.
  • We took a break from Lord of the Rings after The Two Towers to read this and it’s been fun.
  • The writing it so simple and the storytelling captures you.
  • I’ve been asked how our kids are handling it. Our kids haven’t seen the movies so their imaginations are driving what they see (which I think makes a big deal).
  • The conversations we’ve had about witches, wizards and spells have been great too.
  • I’m speaking Thursday afternoon on base to a group of young leaders in the Air Force about purpose and mission.
  • I’m getting more and more chances to speak on base and I love the time with them.
  • Then Saturday morning I’m speaking at Vail Family University on how to build an intentional family.
  • If you’re there, come say hi.
  • Lots happening, so back to it…
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7 Ideas to Help Your Kids Grow Spiritually

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How do you help your kids grow spiritually?

As our kids have gotten older, this is a question Katie and I get on a regular basis. It is one we’ve gotten right in certain seasons, and in others we’ve wandered around lost. Sometimes things that we do work really well, and other times they fall apart.

Here are seven ideas for you as a parent to help your kids grow spiritually:

7 Ideas to Help Your Kids Grow Spiritually.

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1. Model your spiritual life to them. The reality of anything related to parenting is that you pass on what you do. If you want to pass anything on to your kids spiritually, you must model it for them. They will watch you for 18+ years. They will see you read your Bible (or not), how often you pray and what your prayers contain (so much is taught in this), how often you attend church and how important spiritual things are to you.

2. Involve them in a church. Just like the first one, they will often do what you do. So do what you’d like to see them do.

What if they don’t like church? Many parents will talk about how their kids don’t like to attend church, attend a worship service or something else. Many times I’ll hear parents say, “I don’t want to force spiritual things onto my kids.” This is often from a place of fear as a parent because you don’t know what to do, but also the fear that your kids will reject it and want nothing to do with Christianity. The problem with this is that we don’t apply this to anything else. We force our kids to do math, learn a language, eat broccoli, turn off their electronics and take a nap, often when they hate every moment of it.

If you don’t involve them in a church, when do you think they will learn that? If they don’t understand an aspect of a worship service, explain it to them. If you don’t know what to tell them, do some research together.

I think it’s important as often as possible for kids and students to be involved in small groups, serving in a church and attending the worship service in a church. Is every kid different? Yes. Should you force your kids to do something they dislike? Sometimes.

Our kids take out the trash and dislike it, but they still do it. I don’t think they’ll be scarred as adults because of that.

3. Read the Bible together. Part of why kids dislike church is they don’t understand the relevance of the Bible and the things that happen at church. It is something their parents do, apart from them. So do it with them.

I know this is difficult, and they don’t always want to sit still, but doing something is better than nothing.

For our family, we’ve tried things like the Jesus Storybook Bible when the kids were younger to using a catechism now so we have a question each week we are working through as a family. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do something.

4. Read books to them. One of the things you can do is read books to your kids and discuss the spiritual themes in them. Whenever we watch a movie, we always talk about how it is like the one true story we see in Scripture. What are the themes and how do those themes influence us?

5. Listen to their questions. This might be one of the most overlooked aspects of your kids’ spiritual life because it is out of your control as a parent and doesn’t come on a schedule. But your kids have questions, and when they ask them, engage them. Don’t shoo them away or scold them for asking a question. If they are skeptical or have doubts, talk with them.

This is an incredibly powerful message you are sending them as their parent. You are telling them it is okay to ask questions, to wonder about something, to be unsure.

If you don’t know the answer, tell them and then study it together.

Ask them why they are curious about that. This engages their life. Is it in a book, a show, from a friend? This is an important window into their world.

6. Interact with their friends and talk with your kids about how to pick friends. Don’t sit on the sidelines when it comes to their friends.

You have an enormous impact on their spiritual lives, but so do their friends. Be involved in that.

7. Pray for them. If you’re a follower of Jesus you know this, but it is easy to overlook the power in it.

If you aren’t praying for your kids, who do you think is?

If you aren’t praying for your kids, who do you think is?

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Pray for them. Pray with them. Ask them what you can pray for, even if they say nothing, which will often happen as they get older.

7 Ideas to Help Your Kids Grow Spiritually

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Are these sure fire ways to make sure your kids grow spiritually? No.

There isn’t a sure fire answer to almost anything in parenting, but parenting is about involvement and trying and faith. Lots of it.