Two New Children's Books

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know I love to share with my readers about resources for children. I'm always looking for new books and resources to help my own children grow in their understanding of God and his word. And when I find them, I share them here. Today, I have two new books to tell you about.

God's Very Good Idea: A True Story of God's Delightfully Different Family

Here's a really good idea: let's teach our children that God created each of us in his image, whether we have straight hair or curly hair, light skin or dark skin, or whether we like reading or enjoy riding bikes. That's the premise of Trillia Newbell's new children's book, God's Very Good Idea. 

"We are all different, but we are also all the same. Everyone you see is different than you, and the same as you. They might look different or speak different or play different. But they are all made in God's image, and so they are all valuable."

This picture book is gospel-centered, explaining to children how God made us to love him and love each other. But since the Fall, people ruined God's very good idea. Because of sin, we don't love God or each other as we should. We treat those who are different from us badly. We are hurtful and unkind. The book goes on to explain that God had a plan to rescue us through Jesus. He paid for our sin on the cross and gave us his Spirit to help us love him and love one another. One day, we will all be together in heaven, loving God and one another perfectly. The book ends by talking about the church, filled with people who are all different, who love Jesus. 

God's family is filled with people of every race and nationality, men and women, children and adults, people with every skill and talent imaginable. Let us teach our children about God's great idea. And let us love our brothers and sisters as Jesus has loved us. 

Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids

The past couple of years, I've been working with my children on the importance of being in the word—reading, studying, meditating, and memorizing it. I encourage them to read it on their own and we study it together in devotions and during homeschool. They've been learning to go through a passage and unpack it verse by verse. That's why I'm excited about David Murray's new book for children, Exploring the Bible. Exploring the Bible is a Bible study for kids and takes them on a journey through the Bible, highlighting the main parts and giving kids a big picture view of Scripture.

There are 52 lessons in the book, for each week of the year. Every week there is a verse to memorize from the week's readings. Then each day of the week, there is a passage to read and a question to answer about it. On Sundays, they bring their book to church and use it to take notes on the sermon. Exploring the Bible gets kids in God's word on a daily basis and helps them begin the habit of reading and thinking through what they have read. At the end of the year, they will have a good overview of the Bible. 

A parent can sit with younger children and do the study along with them (for younger elementary students) and older elementary through middle school age students can do it on their own. I'm excited about this study for my children and if you've been looking for a way to help your children learn to study the Bible for themselves, this is an excellent introduction and a great way to build a lifelong habit of learning and growing from God's word. 

I highly recommend both of these new books to you and your children.

Note: I received copies of these books for free in exchange for my review. The thoughts and opinions are my own. I am a member of the Amazon Affiliates program and links to books in this post are connected to my affiliates account with Amazon.com. 

Family Devotional Resources

With a new school year starting up, we find ourselves getting back into routine. We dig out the calendar that's been collecting dust all summer and start filling in the boxes again. We organize school supplies, set alarm clocks, and lay out the lunch making station. 

As much as we enjoy the lazy days of summer, we all know how important routines are for our children and for ourselves. Without routines, we bob from one thing to the next, like tubing down a river in the hot summer sun, directionless, spinning and swirling, at the mercy and whim of the current.

One of the routines that is easy to get out of is that of doing devotions with our children. Of reading Scripture with them and talking about what it means. Of theological instruction. Parents are a child's first and primary teacher and disciple-maker. Sadly, much of our disciple making gets set aside for the more urgent tasks of getting ready for school, homework, and driving to lessons and practices.

The truth is, we all have enough time in our day to spend doing devotions with our children. Some families might choose breakfast as their time, others might do it after dinner, and still others mind find bedtime to work best for them. Whenever you schedule it and however short or long you make it, make it part of your routine. While many other things we do with our children have temporary benefits, investing in their hearts has eternal significance. 

If you are looking for devotional resources to use with your children this new school year, here are a few of our favorites:

Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism

This is one we've used over and over and so often that the cover is bent and folded back! Each week there is a question from the Westminster Confession Shorter Catechism and throughout the week, the devotions explain the question and provide verses to look up and read. The author also has a similar devotional based on the Heidelberg Catechism. Age range: elementary to middle school, possibly even older.

The Ology: Ancient Truths, Ever New

This is a picture book that has short sections explaining theological concepts. Age range: elementary school.

Wise Up: Ten-Minute Family Devotions in Proverbs

This is a Christ centered devotional based on Proverbs that helps children understand specific proverbs but also how Christ is the only Wise One. Age range: elementary to middle school.

God's Names (Making Him Known) (Children Desiring God)

There are multiple books in this series. This one is a study on the names of God. Each chapter is only a few pages long and contains illustrations. It includes discussion questions and activities. Age range: elementary school

My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God's Word in Little Hearts

This is one of the first devotionals we ever used. It has a Bible verse for each letter of the alphabet and an accompanying story about a child learning lessons about God and his word. There is a separate coloring book and curriculum we used as well. Age range: preschool to early elementary.

Big Beliefs!: Small Devotionals Introducing Your Family to Big Truths

This is one we are currently using. It goes through sections of the Westminster Confession and unpacks different theological concepts. The devotions are brief and include a passage of Scripture to read as well as discussion questions. Age range: upper elementary, middle, and even high school.

The Radical Book for Kids: Exploring the Roots and Shoots of Faith

I shared about this book a few months ago but because I love it so much, I wanted to share about it again. It's not a traditional devotional but we used it during our morning devotions. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Christianity and explains the faith using engaging graphics and illustrations. It includes sections not only on the gospel and specific theological terms but also Biblical history, missionaries, and my favorite—why children should clean their rooms. Age range: I read this to my elementary and middle school children.

Discovering Jesus in Genesis (Covenant Promises for Covenant Kids)

We used this book, as well as the one on Exodus, when the kids were younger. Each chapter is a story about three children and lessons they learn about God, his word, and his covenant with his people, as they spend time with a neighbor who teaches them about the book of Genesis. The children in the story apply what they've learned to daily struggles in their lives. There are discussion questions at the end of each story. Age range: Great for early elementary.

Grandpa's Box: Retelling the Biblical Story of Redemption

This is an old favorite of ours and one we did more than once. A grandfather has a box filled with little wooden figures he has carved. Each figure represents a story in the Bible. Each time his grandchildren come to visit him, he takes out a wooden figure and tells the story from the Bible it represents, helping the children see how each story fits into the bigger story of redemption. Age range: For use with elementary to possibly middle school.

One Year of Dinner Table Devotions and Discussion Starters: 365 Opportunities to Grow Closer to God as a Family

This is a devotional by Nancy Guthrie. If your children are beyond picture books and needing illustrations to look at, this is a great resource for devotions and for engaging in discussion with your children. Age range: middle and high school.

Note: I am a member of the Amazon Affiliates program and links to books in this post are connected to my affiliates account with Amazon.com. 

The Promise Keeping God

Most believers have a favorite promise in Scripture that they have memorized and cling to during hard times--often even more than one. Personally. I have always been partial to Isaiah 40, in which we read, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (v. 10). I remind myself, on a regular basis, of this biblical promise as well: “…nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

The promises that God gives us are almost too numerous to count. He promises to provide our needs (Philippians 4:19), forgive our sins (1 John 1:9), produce fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), grant eternal life in Christ (John 11:25-26), and to be with us always (Matthew 28:20). Some Christians look at such promises and say that we must claim them in order for them to be true for us. We must believe them with all our heart and they will come to pass. As though we can click our heels three times, squeeze our eyes shut, and recite a verse over and over and the next thing we know, God’s promises are delivered into our hands.

God’s promises are not true because we believe in them. They don’t come to pass because our faith is great. God’s promises will come to pass simply because God said them...to read the rest of this post, visit Christward Collective.

GPS, Spiritual Laziness, and God's Word

Since I moved last year, the GPS on my phone has become my constant guide. I follow it wherever it leads. Traffic can pop up unexpectedly at any moment, and since I still don’t know the roads, I let the GPS tell me the way.

The problem is, I use it too much. I don’t pay attention to where I am going. I just blindly follow wherever it tells me to go. As a result, I think it is making me lazy. I haven’t learned the names of the roads. I couldn’t tell you which way is north, south, east, or west. If I lost cell service, I would be stuck. Helpless. Lost.

Blindly following anything is usually not a good idea. We should know where we are and where we are going. There are parallels in this to our spiritual life. How often do we pick up a devotional to read before reading the actual Bible? How often do we let other people tell us what Scripture means before learning it for ourselves? How often do we listen to what sounds good, feels good, seems good, rather than what actually is good and right?

GPS has made me lazy. Not studying God’s word for ourselves makes us spiritually lazy. If we only know Scripture that has been regurgitated and spoon fed to us, we’ll never know how to taste it on our own. “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:12-14).

Knowing God’s Word is not only vital for spiritual health, but for spiritual life as well. If we can’t read God’s Word for ourselves and grasp the main idea, how can we identify when someone is twisting the truth? 1 Peter 2 warns about false teachers and prophets who lead people astray by things that sound good to the ear but are in fact false, “just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them…many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words” (vv. 1-3). It is all too easy to just follow what someone else says without verifying that it is true. The Bereans didn’t take Paul’s teaching at face value. They wanted to see for themselves whether what he said was true. So they compared his teaching to God’s Word (Acts 17:11).

Lastly, I should want and desire to learn my way around so I am not dependent upon my GPS. After all, it is my home; it's where I live. It should become familiar to me. I should desire to know it like a resident, rather than a visitor. Likewise, I should also value and love God’s Word. I should find it worthy of my time to read and know it. It should be familiar to me, like knowing my way around my hometown.  

My kids and I recently read Corrie Ten Boom’s biography. The one thing she wanted with her in the concentration camp was her Bible. She went to great lengths to keep it and hide it. Corrie read it to the women in the camp with her. She and her sister praised God for the lice in their cabin because it kept the German guards from inspecting it and finding their Bible. As I thought about this, I wondered about myself and my own heart. Do I love God’s Word that much? Is it the spiritual food that sustains me? Would I hunger and thirst for it if I did not have it? Or would I get by on a substitute, a fill in, a watered down version of the real thing?

My GPS is helpful for getting around town and avoiding the frustrations of traffic. But I shouldn't be dependent upon it. I should take time to learn my way around for myself. In a similar way, may we know God's Word for ourselves so we can navigate truth and identify falsehood. May we develop a taste for its rich food, rather than always being spoon fed by others. And may we value the truth it contains more than anything else.  

Getting Up Close with God's Word

I still remember the moment when I first glimpsed the Rocky Mountains. I was sixteen and joined a group of friends from my church on a journey from the east coast to Colorado. We drove for hours and hours from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., past cities and small towns, through the farms and plains of the Midwest (and strange features called buttes), until finally out of nowhere rocky peaks jutted out from the flat pasture that had been our roadside companion for what seemed like days on end. 

It was an extraordinary sight, like nothing I had seen before. The Appalachians were my only prior mountain experience and in comparison, the Appalachians were like gentle rolling hills. But we were still hours away. Even though the Rocky Mountains seemed so big and magnificent from our position on the road, we still had a long drive before we actually got there.

Imagine if we had stopped at that point in our journey and said, "Well, we've seen the Rockies. Let turn around and head back." It would have been crazy. Sure, we saw the Rockies, but from a distance. We hadn't truly seen them. We hadn't been up close to see the jagged peaks. We hadn't walked its trails. We hadn't camped on its ground or smelled its flowers. We hadn't felt our lungs struggle for oxygen as we increased in altitude.

To turn around at first glance and say we had seen the Rockies would have been like saying we had been to a state simply because we had flown to an airport in the state and made a connection there before going on our way.

As crazy as that all sounds, we often respond that way to knowing God and his word. We step back and take in the big picture and think we know all there is to know. We are satisfied with merely a taste of who God is and then we think that's all we need. We are content with never going deeper and further in our knowledge of God. Like viewing the mountains from a distance, we learn a few things about him and then move on.

On that trip to the Rockies we saw the mountains up close. We drove to the top and saw the view from 14,000 feet. We camped in Estes Park and hiked from the bottom to the top, experiencing each change in elevation and in ecology. We saw the wild flowers in the tundra and the marmots scamper across the rocky terrain. Then we saw the mountains from the bottom, in a river raft, as we moved swiftly through the canyon over swirling, foaming white water. At the end of that trip, I felt like I had truly experienced the Colorado Rockies.

We can't say we've been somewhere if we've only viewed it from a distance. We can't say we are friends with someone if we've never spent time with them. We can't say that we love someone if we don't even know what matters to them. And we can't say that we know God if don't bother to be in his presence. If we don't take time to read what he has written to us and respond to it in prayer. If we don't taste and see that he is good.

There is more to know of God than we could ever know in a lifetime. Even in eternity, we'll never plumb the depths of his magnificence. Even so, we shouldn't hold back on learning about him now. Paul prayed for the Ephesians, that they "may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (3:18-19). This ought to be our prayer as well. May we never be satisfied with just a cursory glance from afar, rather may we always yearn and seek to know the breadth, length, height, and depth of our Savior God.  

When Words Hurt

We were in the car late one afternoon and my children were doing their normal back and forth sibling thing in the back seat. (I would call it "bickering" but was told by someone in my family that "bickering" is an old-fashioned word). I grew frustrated by their behavior. Then I got sarcastic.

Later, after returning home, I noticed my children were irritable. One was downright angry. I finally got them to talk and learned that my sarcastic comments hurt them both. I apologized and they forgave but the exchange was a glaring reminder that I do not have control over my tongue. And because I don't, I hurt my children.

Small Yet Mighty

James says that though the tongue is small, it is very powerful. "So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell" (James 3:5-6). 

Proverbs has a lot to say about our words as well: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits" (Proverbs 18:21). "Those who guard their lips preserve their lives, but those who speak rashly will come to ruin." (Proverbs 13:3). "Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body" (Proverbs 16:24).

I know that words are powerful. As a writer, I know words can persuade, mislead, attack, comfort, or resonate. I know that words can build up or tear down. They can open doors or slam them shut. They can connect or rip apart. They can bring hope and healing or destroy altogether.

The Real Problem

What do we do when we realize we have a problem with our words? In the case with my children, I could resolve to be kind. I could have that guilty feeling I felt propel me to curb my sarcastic ways. But like the resolve we all feel at the first of a new year, on its own, resolve isn't enough to transform our words.

That's because the real problem is with our hearts. 

Words are one of the greatest reflections of what is going on in our hearts. Jesus said that "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). James 4 says that our problems and conflicts stem from our disordered desires, our idolatry, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight" (vs. 1-2). 

A struggle with words reveals what we really love most. It reveals what we worship, what we've set our hearts on. Unkind words are not the problem but a byproduct of the real problem: idolatrous hearts. Deep down, we want life to be all about us. We want to be on the throne of our lives and have everyone else serve us. Our words reveal our selfishness, pride, self-righteousness, and envy. They show our desire to rule our own kingdoms. And above all, they reveal that God is not first place in our hearts. 

As Paul Tripp wrote in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God:

"There is no escaping the message of Scripture: word problems are heart problems. There's an organic consistency between what is in my heart and what comes out of my mouth. The struggle of words is a struggle of kingdoms; a war between the kingdom of self and the kingdom of God. The kingdom that rules your heart will dictate your words." (Kindle edition, Location 633, 641).

God's Word Shapes Our Words

When our words hurt others, what we need is the same thing we need for all sin in our life: God's amazing grace. We need his grace, through the person and work of Christ on our behalf, to forgive us, cleanse us, and make us new. We need the surgery spoken of in Ezekiel, where we are given new hearts, hearts that desire God above all else. This new heart is what we've been given through faith in Christ. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

One of the main ways God is doing the work of new creation in us is through the ministry of his Word, applied by the Spirit. Not only do we come to faith through the hearing of the Word (Romans 10:17) but we are changed and transformed by the Word as well (Hebrews 4:12, John 17:17). It is God's active and living Word that cuts deep into our heart, reveals our sin, points us to truth, and transforms us from the inside out. In doing so, God's Word shapes our words. Sinclair Ferguson wrote, "The more I awake in the morning and feed myself with the Word under a biblical ministry, the more the Word of Christ will do the sanctifying work in me and on me, and consequently the more Christ will train my tongue as his Word molds and shapes me" (The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, Kindle Location 1008). That's why David wrote, "I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you" (Psalm 119:11).  The more we dwell on God's Word, the more it overflows into the words we say. Just like our children often repeat what they hear us say, the more we listen to the Word of God, the more we will sound like him in our speech. And the opposite is true, if we have been distant from the Word, neglecting the Word, we can expect our own words to change to reflect whatever our hearts have turned toward. 

Because word problems are heart problems, we need God's grace to change us through his Word applied to our hearts. We need to be saturated by the Word until it fills every corner and crevice of our heart. Then the words we speak will reflect and sound more and more like that of our Savior, the Word made flesh.  

Note: This post may contain Amazon Affiliate links.