Your child's journey from age 4 to age 14 is very short. In today's world, the trip is not a safe one. Christian parents need to put God into each day's activities or their children will pay the consequences. The following ideas can make this easy.

Hang some Christian art in each Child's bedroom. Children are often quicker to respond to pictures than to words. The best choice is something with a theme, classics like "Christ my Pilot" and "The Good Shepherd" or something more modern from a Christian Book store. You may have to ask a clerk, but most have some very inexpensive prints that are not always on display. Just tell them you want something for a child's wall. My own personal favorite is titled "Come Unto Me" and features only Christ's hands.

Teach your child to pray. By the time a child is five he should be able to speak one sentence prayers with a parent. By the time he is six he should be looking for answers to those prayers. By seven he should be able to recite the Lord's prayer and have a good idea of what it means. By eight he should be praying with people outside the family — a few of his peers and a senior saint or two from church. By nine, he should have a HABIT that will connect him to a church and other Christians for life. By 14 he should have a confidence and faith that is unshakeable.

Bless your child each morning. If you want to see sudden dramatic improvement in your family and children try this for just one week. Each morning as they are leaving the house place one hand on a shoulder or head and repeat one of the following blessings.


Old Testament (Numbers 6:24): "May the lord bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you and give you peace."


The very least.
New Testament (Ephesian 3:16): "May God strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith."


Carry a copy of the blessings with you, and when the children are angry, quarreling or calling names, make them bless one another. No one, parent or child, can be angry and say a blessing at the same time ... you have to choose. The habit of blessing one another helps us do just that ... to choose between selfishness and blessing others.

Take short walks with your children. Get outside to God's world as much as possible. You can identify trees, collect leaves, capture bugs or even squeeze the petals of a flower and paint with the juice. Let creation declare the Glory of God (Romans 1:20). Give your children an alternative to the network television "muck-a-thon" and endless violence.

Adopt a plant. Fill a tire with potting soil and grow a tomato or pepper plant. The great lesson for all spiritual gardeners is "If you want to pick flowers you have to plant seeds." It is the key to all relationships.

Purchase a deck of Scripture cards from a Christian bookstore. Leave them on the kitchen table. Serve them as part of each meal. Seeing our children grow strong in spirit should mean more to us than feeding their bodies. Have each child carry his scripture card with him for 24 hours before returning it to the bowl on the table. Having a scripture in your pocket gives a child a sense of expectancy that God will make it real. If we don't feed our children scripture they will never learn to digest it.

Display your Child's Sunday School lesson on the refrigerator. Letting a youngster's efforts die a painful death on the floor of the car or in the trash is not exactly giving God's word the respect it deserves. Take care of each lesson. A lot of people have gone out of their way to get it to your child.

None of these efforts is a guarantee that our daughters and sons will know God in time to face all the pressures of being a teenager in this modern dangerous world. However, they are the least we can do ... the very least. Just like we have a minimum daily requirement for our nutritional needs, let's remember that our children have a minimum daily requirement for spiritual food.