Bible Study

One of my New Year's resolution was to be more intentional in bible study with the children. I think we do a pretty good job in incorporating Jesus into our daily lives but I really wanted to go a little deeper into carving the words of Jesus on the hearts of the Timo and Cameron, hoping that they would look back on them to provide wisdom as they grow older. So we set up a daily bible study, typically at night, and started bible verse memorization with them.
I think the Lord heard my resolution, or better yet, knew my heart, and sent and amazing woman to our church as a guest speaker the first week of January. Ann Iorg, wife of Golden Gate Baptist Seminary president Jeff Iorg, spoke for two hours about helping children become followers of Jesus. She reaffirmed some ideas I already had in my head as well as gave me new insight into how the mind of a child works and what they are learning spiritually at different ages. She was able to point me in the direction of some great material and I came home excited about teaching Timo and Cameron a more Biblical worldview.

We started nightly bible study instead of bedtime stories (we moved story time to the afternoon, after nap)and started verse memorization with very simple verses. Their first verse was the first verse in the Bible..."In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1. Here is Timo and Cameron saying their verse. They learned this verse about 8 weeks ago but still remembered it a few nights ago when I recorded this.

Untitled from Sara ko on Vimeo.

And here they are saying the verse from last week...I'm so proud of them. "I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God" Isaiah 61:1

Untitled from Sara ko on Vimeo.

We spent the month of January on the beginning of creation. Now we kinda skip around from bible story to bible story...usually trying to apply it to what we did that day or a truth we feel the kids need to learn in the moment. Sometimes the kids want to read the same bible story three nights in a row. Timo's favorite is David and Goliath and Cameron's favorite is Jesus walking on water. I'm amazed at how much they have learned so far and how much they really enjoy it. Some nights I'm so tired and just want to put them to bed without story time but they always remind me, "Mommy, we didn't do our bible study yet."

A few weeks after we started, I was telling my mom how it was going and that I wanted to create a "space" for each of them to sit to listen and pray...to make bible study something special and separate it from regular story book reading. That's when she came up with the idea of making them bible study pillows! As I mentioned in my earlier birthday posts, she made each of them personalized pillows to sit on for bible study and prayers. They love them and we've used them every night so far.
Now don't get me wrong...this hasn't changed my children into little angles! I'm still waiting for their actions to catch up with words we learn in our lessons. And I'm still exhausted at the end of each day trying to deal with two typical 3 year old's temper tantrums...But I just keep telling myself we've started a good habit...and that's the most important part.