When it comes to sowing seeds of righteousness, character, truth etc. into our kid’s hearts there are many ways to do it.  There are a variety of seeds to be sown and they can be sown in a plethora of ways.  We have traditionally done well with bed time routine of prayers, catechism, and Bible reading (no, not all at once, that’s craziness, but on a rotating basis).  We’ve seen fruit from that in many little and sometimes big ways, after all, even the seemingly little fruits are a big deal.  The Holy Spirit uses all of the seed-sowing we do to grow crops of righteousness and yield fruit of the Spirit.  So let’s talk about the seeds we sow.

In another post I talked about how we are all home-educators.  We all, when we become parents are  given the most important career of anyone’s life, which is to raise those children.  How we do it, and with what we do it are important aspects of that job, and we ought to be careful, and purposeful so much as we are able, to choose those tools and means with care.  Of course there is grace upon grace for all the bad choices we make, things we do in ignorance, sin we commit against our kids, etc. but that does not mean we shouldn’t be working with all our hearts to do the best we can.

As I said, we have had a strong habit of bed time routine when we come together as a family just before bed.  We at the very least, pray together, we often go through a few catechism questions, so that by now, the boys who have been learning them since age 3 have about 40-50 catechism questions and answers memorized.  I understand that the word catechism may carry some preconceived notions perhaps associated with Catholicism, or “religion” and not “relationship” but I would say that memorizing catechism is akin to memorizing scripture.  It is a seed to be sown.  Do we think that by having our children memorize John 3:16 they understand the gospel? No, but when the time comes, when the irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit has drawn their hearts to the point of decision, this living word planted in their heart will sprout, it will be as a light in their understanding, and the Holy Spirit will use it to speak to them.  They will make a connection deep within their hearts with the author of those words – the Holy Spirit. They will understand in a new way what those words mean.  We see in many of the Psalms how David, wrought with despair, speaks words of truth to himself about who he knows God is;

“My God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer me, by night and am not silent.  Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One of Israel.  In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted you and you delivered them.  They cried to you and were saved, in you they trusted and were not disappointed.” Psalm 22:1-5

So, it is important to give them these same truths so that they are hidden in their hearts as indelible grace.  So when we sow seeds of catechism, we are sowing in our children, seeds of truth.  These questions are based on the scriptures, and they are short, concise answers to build an understanding upon.  Do I believe that my 6 year old understands fully what he is saying when he answers the question:

“What is sanctification? — God making sinners holy in word and conduct.”

No.  I know that those words in and of themselves do not mean that he understands them, they do not mean that he is saved, they do not mean that he has any divine revelation, they are not fruit of the Spirit, but they are seeds.

If you are longing for moments and conversation of deep meaning and spiritual revelation with your kids, you have got to take the small, mundane, steps of sowing seeds.  You can not simply explain spiritual truths to your children in a moment you feel they most need to hear them.

We need to give them the foundation of understanding on which we can build, on which the Holy Spirit builds, we can give them tools for their hearts and minds to work with to make connections; to draw conclusions.  Can the Holy Spirit do a great work without that foundation?  Yes, of course, but does that mean we ought to neglect our responsibility as Christian parents to do our part? No. Of course not.  There is no formula to ensure your children choose Christ, but let’s admit that we have a part to play, and let’s do our best before the Lord to steward that as wisely as we can so that we can stand before Him and hear “well done good and faithful servant”.

Earlier I mentioned having deep, meaningful, spiritual discussions with your kids.  You can not contrive these.  They must be born naturally, and spring up organically.  You can not expect to have no foundation of understanding laid in a child’s heart and mind and then turn around and explain the gospel, or talk about their sinful habits.  This will not feel authentic to them, and they will not be making the connections that lead them to a deeper understanding.  Here is an example of a way I have seen this happen most recently.

I had a conversation with one of my kids that led to more than I expected.  The background is important.  My husband Brandon and I had been discussing with this child about what it means to be a leader and not a follower.  The irony is, that he is a profound leader, but with that also comes this strange temptation to be lead if he is around someone who has a stronger personality than his. We spoke to him after several situations in which he was being led by a friend to engage in things he knew we wouldn’t allow, or being encouraged to ignore instruction from me.  When it happened again, in a more serious context, I was pretty upset, and I knew that I couldn’t talk to him right away about it.  He knew I was upset.  I prayed, I asked for wisdom about what to say. I put off talking with him for about an hour.  I asked the Holy Spirit to give me words that would have an affect on his heart, and not just behavior.  I felt we had reached a point of climax about this issue, and I don’t know how else to explain it, but I felt the weight of this moment.

When we finally sat down to talk, I asked him to tell me what had happened.  In short this is what he was able to verbalize to me:  “I made the wrong choice today, I chose to do what my friend wanted to do instead of what you asked me to do.”  I reflected back to him-” you made the wrong choice today.”  Through tears he answered: “Sometimes it’s so hard to make the right choice when I really want to do something else.”  This is a broken and contrite heart, and my heart was breaking for him too.

I felt the Holy Spirit give me words.  I was able to bring up a situation from a book we have been reading together called Little Pilgrim’s Progress. (more seeds!)  It was natural, and normal, and familiar to him to discuss how Little Christian was instructed to stay on the right path, the way of the King on his journey, but sometimes wavered from it.  We discussed what it means to be a friend like Hopeful was to Little Christian, who encouraged Little Christian to make the right choices, or stay on the path even when it was difficult.  I suggested that perhaps my son’s friend is in need of a hopeful in his life to encourage him and lead him on the right path.  We talked about what it means to choose friends who can be a “Hopeful” in our life when it is we who need that encouragement.  We talked about how we have to make the choice to be on a journey, on the King’s Path and how then we can ask for The King’s help along the way.  I was able to say to him: ” I know it’s hard to make the right choice, it’s hard form me too!  Do you know I was really upset today and didn’t know what to say to you?  I wanted to use kind, gracious words with you but I didn’t know what they should be. I asked the holy Spirit to give me the right words, and I think he did, how do you feel about what I said?”   Then, after some more questions and discussion, I asked him, “are you on your journey like Little Christian?  Have you come through the wicket gate? If you haven’t, and you want to, and you want to be able to ask for help of the King who loves you, we can pray about that, and ask Jesus to forgive you and tell him that you trust him.”

And you know what guys?  With tears in his eyes, he told me he did want to do that!  It was the most amazing harvest I could have hoped for!  I had no idea that was coming when we sat down for that discipline time.  But this didn’t happen in a vacuum.  This came out of years of faithful and imperfect seed-sowing!

So what does seed-sowing look like for us?  What are some practical seed-sowing activities?  Here is what we have implemented so far that we love and our kids like too!

• Bed time routine– we rotate through loosely these few things:
• Reading a fiction book of length.  We’ve done the Hobbit (it took like 3 years!)
• We have gone through a family devotional book.
• We go through catechism questions.
•  We share roses and thorns of our day- everyone shares their rose (something good in their day, and then they share the thorn-something not so good).
• And always, we pray together.  Sometimes I will pray over each one of them individually at their bedside, sometimes we pray over all of them together, sometimes we all take turns praying.  Modeling prayer for them is important.  Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, and I teach mine as well!  We’ve taught them the Lord’s prayer, and the Apostle’s Creed.

We also try to make morning worship a habit.  We’ve done this off and on for a few years now, and we’ve recently made it more of a regular practice.  I feel it’s important because it starts everyone off on the same page: we are coming together confessing that we need Jesus, asking the Holy Spirit to help us, and lifting each other up in prayer, what better way to start our day?

• Morning worship consists of
• a hymn study: we learn a hymn verse by verse, often accompanied by American Sign Language.  (Youtube is great for this!)  I try to pick hymns or songs that I know will come up in the rotation of our Sunday Worship times.  Let me tell you, when you are in church and a familiar hymn begins and all of your kids look at you with excited eyes and huge smiles because they can participate in worship, and then they sing and sign to the Lord, every crazy morning you spent trying to focus their attention for 10 minutes is worth it 100 times over.
• we share prayer requests, and pray for one another
• we do a Bible reading, usually continuing where we left off the time before
• recite the Apostle’s Creed
• I also want to incorporate a confession time.  Our church does this each Sunday, and I find it one of the best parts of our liturgy.  We recite a corporate confession, take a moment to silently confess our sins, and then read our assurance of pardon from the Scriptures.

Those are our main family-oriented seed sowing practices, but here are other things that are sprinkled throughout our days and weeks:

• AWANA – a church near us holds AWANA meetings and it has been awesome!  My kids memorized so many Bible verses last year, and still know them!  Awana Stands for: Approved Workman Are Not Ashamed Third party validation is helpful when teaching God’s truth to our kids!
• Reading good books together like Little Pilgrim’s Progress or any of the books that R.C. Sproul has written for kids.
• Have regular discussion about sin, our heart’s, our own struggles, and point them to Christ.  These again, shouldn’t be contrived, but natural speech flowing from you and your own understanding of the gospel! It’s hard a lot of the time to slow down enough to not just reprimand them, but to speak life, but it’s worth the time and effort.
• I have found that my children LOVE to hear stories about how my husband and I were when we were children.  They love to hear stories about how we misbehaved, and what happened, or how we got scared that time we got lost in a store, or how we used to be terrified of spiders, how we felt when we got sick with chicken pox etc.  Why? Because it humanizes us, it makes us more relatable to them, and therefore we are more trustworthy in their eyes.  Share your current struggles with them, and share how you are human by sharing stories of your childhood.  If they feel that you truly can relate to them where they are in life, and are not looking down on them, you build your credibility in their eyes.

One thing I want to point out is that I try not to spiritualize everything.  It is tempting as parents to draw parallels to spiritual truths wherever we see them and think we are doing a good job teaching them stuff they should know.  I would argue, however, that we can sow those seeds without drawing the conclusions for them.  Here is an example:  While outside pulling weeds with the kids, you pull out a tiny weed with a loooong root.  Kind of like how sins can look small, but often have deep, deep roots and are hard and even painful to pull up. So good right?  Instead of making a spiritual lesson, and trying to reap a harvest of profundity, sow a seed in faith.  Point out in amazement how this teeny tiny weed has such a long root; and then stop!  Let that sit, let their minds dwell on it, or not dwell on it.  There will come a time when you will be able to draw from that illustration that will have context, and when that happens it suddenly has meaning, and makes an impression.  That is seed sowing!  We plant it, we let it sit, the harvest will come if we are faithful to tend it along the way.  We sow it in faith because we have to trust that it is the Holy Spirit who gives the harvest, we can not make it grow, we can plant, we can water, God gives the increase.

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.  The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.  For we are God’s fellow workers: you are God’s field, God’s building.” I Corinthians 3:6-9