Filling up on The Word

Is one of your goals for your family to spend more time in God's Word? Do you strive to memorize Bible verses as a family? As we begin a new year my husband and I sat down and tried to create some new ways to fit more Bible into our family life. We desire to raise children that are grounded in THEIR faith and not just practicing ours. We are focused on making the Bible applicable to them even at their young age and are hoping to help them develop good habits of seeking their answers from God and not from us or from their peers.

So, here are some ways that we are using to put more of God's Word into our family this year.

1. Nightly Family Worship - We have been doing this for quite awhile now but had kind of fallen out of the habit while on vacation and through the holiday season. During our worship times we do many different things, each night looks a little different. Sometimes we sing songs, we ask the children questions about Bible facts and review Bible stories that we have been teaching them, or we take turns praying as a family. We also bought a fun interactive DVD that is a fun Bible Challenge game. It allows us to parents against children and have our questions be harder than the childrens. Another thing that we sometimes do to change things up a bit is to have the children choose a Bible story to act out and we guess which story it is.  These times of evening family worship are a precious time of learning and sharing for our family.

Sitting as a family being led in worship by Daddy.

2. A Monthly Verse - We are striving to pick a a verse each  month and work on it as a family. The children are writing for their handwriting practice and I quiz them on it through out the day. It might only be a verse a month but I am pretty sure that by the end of the month these verses will be in our long term memory.

Josiah practicing his Bible verse.

3. Use Music - Find a set of Bible verse songs that your family likes and start listening to them in the car instead of your regular music. It always amazes me how quickly children can learn songs and retain them for years to come. And if those songs are God's Word set to music it can be a great memorization tool.

4. Admonish with Scripture - It is a great habit to get into as a family to use Scripture to solve conflicts and attitude issues. Doorposts has amazing tools to help you family do this. We use their charts in our home and it helps to train the children to obey God's Word all the time. It also teaches them that what God's Word talks about how we should live.

It is important to instill habits in our children now that they can carry into adulthood. Life is crazy busy in our world and I am sure it will only get worse as our children get older. So let's start now so that it is second nature to them when they are on their own. How do you add Scripture to your family's day? What ways do you instill Scripture into your children's hearts?

Written by Happily Domestic contributor - Amanda Sikes