“As a parent, I can’t think of anything more important than the privilege and responsibility of training my children in the way of God. The way my wife and I have chosen to do this is by having what we call Spirit Fire.”
(A-Team type music in the background)
For our family time with God we had to incorporate a new book. We made it through the book of Acts to help my family become familiar with the power we’ve been given. No we didn’t consult any commentaries, or read any background books first. We just entered in specifically to hear what we can do through Christ. We traveled with Peter, heard about the spreading of the Gospel to the Gentiles, saw Paul’s transformation and commission and all the signs and wonders that followed.
Because of the new crowd I’m in at church among the Assembly of God, I feel I should add that though I’m now part of a community that sees the miraculous on a regular basis, they emphasize that we shouldn’t seek the power itself, but the Holy Spirit. That being said, it was important to me that my children hear what we, as members of His Kingdom, have been given for the spreading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now that my kids could recognize the difference between God’s power and The Avengers’, it was time to move further in. We are still in the book of Proverbs, moving slowly verse by verse, and we incorporated some details to keep the books separate:
Me: The book of Proverbs was written by…
Kids: King Solomon!
Me: To train…
Kids: Kings and Queens!
Me: Now there is something in the book of Proverbs that’s worth more than all the treasure in the world. Do you know what it is?
Kids: Wisdom!
Me: Now in Wisdom, it talks about two houses. What are they called?
Kids: Wisdom’s and Folly’s!
Me: Who lives at Wisdom’s?
Kids: The righteous!
Me: Who lives at Folly’s?
Kids: The wicked, the dead!
My daughter started adding “the dead” in her cute little 4 year old voice after we’d already gone through a couple chapters. Yes it was creepy and hilarious at the same time. And for the book of Acts we started with an intro as well:
Me: The book of Acts was written by…
Kids: Luke the disciple!
Me: He wrote it to tell us about…
Kids: The Kingdom!
Me: And to tell us that we have…
Kids: Power!
I had bought some toy weapons a while back and at “Power!” we would raise swords, axes, fists, whatever we could if it hadn’t already gotten lost.
And now we just started in on our new book, Revelation. I wanted and felt lead to teach my kids about what will come to pass. I told them that though I have had many classes on this book and have read many thoughts about it, I still had little clue to understanding the details, except one- Jesus is coming and when He does, we will have the final victory. And this became our intro:
Me: The book of Revelation was written by…
Kids: John the Apostle! (There are always disagreements about whatever. We weren’t debating authorship, we were keeping it separate from the other books for my kids.)
Me: To tell us about…
Kids: The Future!
Me: And to tell us that we have…
Kids: Victory!
So far, we’ve just finished chapter 1, and we talked about some awesome things about God- Alpha and Omega stuff, and we got into John’s first vision.
Parents, it has become apparent to me how important it is for us to pass things on to our kids. Not hatred, not evil, but what they will need to equip themselves in their relationship with God for the coming age and their roles in it. We’ve been given a privilege, an honor, that the powers of this world would love to own- to be farmers of our children’s minds and hearts. Don’t fool yourself, it is a war out there.
-Brian Carter