Christian Parenting- Holidays

CHRISTIANITYCOVE.COM

Table of Contents

• New Year’s: 7 Mini-Challenges to Bring Your Kids Closer to God in the New .................................................................................................................Year 3

• Valentine’s: 7 Mini-Challenges to Get Your Kids to Make Jesus Their Valentine 8

• .....Easter: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Appreciate Easter Week 13

• Mother’s Day: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Appreciate Mom on Mother’s ................................................................................................................Day 24

• Father’s Day: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Create a Great yet Easy Gift on ..................................................................................................Father’s Day 28

• Summer: 7 Free Mini-Vacations to Help Your Kids Know God Better Over Summer ............................................................................................................Break 33

• School: 7 Free Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Take God into School with ............................................................................................................Them 38

• Halloween: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Act Like Christians on .....................................................................................................Halloween 42

• Thanksgiving: 7 Mini Challenges To Make Your Kids Thankful At ................................................................................................Thanksgiving 46

• Christmas: 7 Mini-Challenges to Increase Kids’ Faith & Gratitude At Christmas ..............................................................(plus 3 pre-challenges for parents) 49

HOLIDAY CHEAT SHEETS CHRISTIANITYCOVE.COM

STRENGTHEN YOUR CHILD’S RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, 1 MINI CHALLENGE AT A TIME 2

New Year’s: 7 Mini-Challenges to Bring Your Kids Closer to God in the New Year

The New Year will arrive in less than a week, and Christians around the world will be praying with hopes for a more prosperous, less worrisome 2013. Prayers for our nation will be at the top of the list, but parents will no doubt be praying for their hopes and dreams concerning their children. They want their kids to get good grades, be well behaved, develop their talents, and have lots of stellar friends. Christian parents have that very important item at the top of their wish list: They want their kids to be closer to God in 2013.

Christian parents also realize they are up against a lot. Most Americans acknowledge that while this is still the home of many Christians, sadly, we would not exactly call America a “Christian nation.” Mentions of Jesus in public schools are almost taboo, and school prayer is off the grid. Manger scenes at Christmas have been forced out of town squares in lieu of innocuous wintertime symbols such as snowmen and Santa. The separation of church and state has come to mean that our congressmen do not mention “God’s will” when promoting legislation.

As one mother said, “I feel like I have to grill my kids on the way home from school every day. My job has become to either augment or completely undo what they have learned—and most of what they remember best takes place on the playground and not in the classroom!”

Parents are aware they cannot tackle the job of raising Christian kids all by themselves. This is actually a good place to be! Apostle Paul notes

God’s words to him when he was overwhelmed with the ministry, found in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10: “’My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me … for when I am weak, then I am strong..”

If we ask God to take the helm of bringing our kids to saving knowledge of him, we can watch our kids grow as close to him as kids have done in any other era.

Let’s commit ourselves to God’s strength in the New Year and place Him front and center in tackling some mini-challenges. These seven challenges, concerning parents as much as kids, will help your kids become closer to Christ this coming year.

Mini-Challenge #1: Confess to God how much you need and want Him to get your kids’ attention early on this year. Confess it often. Parents are used to being in charge of their households. They are used to their kids seeing them as in charge. Therefore it may be a bit counterintuitive for them to confess that they are not big enough to tackle certain jobs. But let’s look at Ephesians 2:8-9 in the context of parenting: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Most of us acknowledge the truth in this when it comes to ourselves, but it also holds true for our kids. Reading the Bible to



our kids and insisting on Sunday school is important; however, it will not replace the active and mighty hand of God working in kid’s lives. “

Matthew 7:7 says, “Knock and the door will be opened.” Think of us knocking for our kids and Jesus opening. He wants to be close to our children. Our prayers matter more than anything else.

Mini-Challenge #2: Share at least one of your daily thoughts about Jesus with your kids. It’s a fact that most Christian parents think of Jesus at least ten times a day. Some claim to rarely stop thinking about him or to feeling the sensations of “living in him,” regardless of what is going on. Yet, when it comes to our kids, we sometimes go on autopilot, under the assumption that parenting is about driving, cooking, laundry, and doing schoolwork.

While driving to pick your kids up from school, challenge yourself to remember one of the times you thought about Jesus during the day. Share it in the car on the way home from school or aftercare. You don’t have to lecture or make it sound fancy. Just share. If your kids don’t get it or are not interested, at least they will see your interest. Your sharing is seeds planted. Your kids will come to associate responsible adults with including God in their lives. When the kids become adults, they will fondly remember Mom and Dad as always setting God before them as a light unto their paths. Proverbs 22:6 states, “Raise your children in the way they should go, and

when they are grown, they will not depart from it.” God knows you are not a trained theologian or even a trained Sunday school teacher. Just share.

Mini Challenge #3: Ask your kids what you can pray for and pray for it. Praying for your kids is a great witness—not only for them, but for yourself ! Prayers about kids tend to get answered. After all, our Heavenly Father understands our love for them; he created parental love in the image of his love for his only begotten son Jesus. If your kids are struggling with a subject, tell them you will pray for them. If they are struggling with a bully or with a difficult crowd, do the same. Don’t shirk any ways you can help on a practical level, but let them know you are praying as well.

When your children realize your prayers are being answered, the power of prayer will stick with them in concept and will serve as an encouragement for their own relationship with God.

Prayer warriors across the country often say, “when you pray, pray specifically.” It will help give you vision and power. When you pray, mention the name of the bully, the place altercations take place, and the times, for example. Tell God what you would like to see happen. Really listen for his answers. God wants to comfort and support you, and he wants your children to see that he is real, affectionate, intelligent, and interested in their lives. Prayers




answered for parents create believers out of their children.

Mini Challenge #4: Commit the whole family to Sunday mornings and, if possible, one night a week. With life being so busy and so many business staying open on Sunday, it is often very tempting to pass off Sunday school or church. Whatever rules you establish for yourself for church, your children will watch and emulate. One mother made the exception of not going to church on summer Sundays, when they had lots of company at their shore house. Before long, her kids were asking to get out of Sunday school for social reasons as well.

Committing Sunday morning or Sunday night to church is not asking too much for the committed parent. Adding in Wednesday night recharge is not “something extra” for you to do; it’s actually taking a burden from you by having professionals explain spiritual issues to your kids where your own words might seem lacking.

Most everyone can find a way to make services and, even if we have worked all night, we can find the situation rejuvenating. Families that end up with faithless children are often the ones where the kids watched their parents wiggle out thinking they were gaining free time. Actually, those parents were losing free assistance. Your kids may have no idea what you do in Bible study or adult church services. But knowing you are

there will become a part of their definition of responsible living.

Mini Challenge #5: Fix Saturday night rules to fit Sunday mornings. Especially as children enter the sleep-over stage, church can become challenging. Many of their friends may have lapsed or lax parents. Many times, the kids will stay up well into the night without the parents realizing. When it comes time for church, it can be like dragging dead weight out of the bed, and the kids do not find Sunday school enjoyable. They’re exhausted, haven’t had a decent breakfast, or aren’t in the mindset to listen to the teacher.

Establish rules with your kids early on. If they sleep at a friend’s house on Saturday night, make it clear to your kids that they will be picked up before Sunday school and not after. Make this clear as well to the hosting parent. (You may plant a seed that reignites their faith!)

Tell your kids they may bring the hosting child to Sunday school, but they do not get out of Sunday school via a sleepover. Stick to your rule. If they are invited to a sleepover party, where traditionally kids stay up all night, plan to pick them up at ten-thirty or eleven and not let them sleep over. Whatever rules you establish with your kids when they are younger will be easier to maintain when they are teenagers, so get on it as soon as possible.




Mini Challenge #6: Seek out not only friends at church, but friends for your kids at church. Kids who are regular attenders at church may have just as many personality problems as kids who don’t. It often takes years of exposure before real faith begins to conquer adverse personality traits; going to services does not magically wipe out ADHD, tantrums, meanness, bossiness, or whatever else kids do. It does mean, however, that you are surrounding yourself with parents who have similar goals to your own. They want their kids in houses where the gospel is alive and active. They want their kids to develop a relationship with God that will be lifelong.

Having Christian friends will give kids exposure to families with similar goals to yours and parents who are looking to avoid and/or embrace the same things as you. Christian parents have different temperaments, backgrounds, education levels, and intelligence levels. Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Your kids are better off in a small cabin with parents who love God than playing at the home of a wealthy professionals who care nothing for God. They are better off in the ramshackle dwelling of committed Christian parents than in the neatest, most highly sanitized homes of non-believers. Seek out Christian friends for your kids, and knit yourselves to their parents! You are

brothers and sisters, and will be spending a long time together in eternity.

Mini Challenge #7: Don’t neglect your own daily walk. You can find that you’re too busy to talk to God, or too ashamed of something you’ve done, or too angry at God for something that happened to you. You can begin to avoid him. Rest assured your children will quickly start doing the same. A wise mother once said, “You can’t lie to your kids. You can avoid subjects, but somehow, they always wind up knowing.” If you ignore your own spiritual walk, your kids will ignore theirs.

Talk to God daily. If you find that hard, tell him why it’s hard. Listen for his answers. If you’ve done something wrong, apologize. Simply tell him you were a big idiot again and ask for his help. And at the same time, don’t buy into false guilt, which tells you you’ll never be good enough for him. Nobody is good enough; as Romans 3:23 states, “All have sinned; all fall short of the glory of God.”

The point of being a Christian is that we have a relationship with the most loving being in the universe, who happens to be available 24/7. It doesn’t get any better than that.

It appears, thankfully, that the endless dooms day talk of 2012 was for naught. We are pressing on. We need God in our lives and in our kids’ lives for as long as the world lasts, and we’re feeling it right now. Bring in the New Year willing to abide




by these mini-challenges and, with God’s help, you will plant a bushel of seeds that will begin to sprout in your children. Your prayers and attentiveness will continue to make them the strong adults that our world needs.




Valentine’s: 7 Mini-Challenges to Get Your Kids to Make Jesus Their Valentine

We’ve been hearing that God loves us since we first learned John 3:16. What does it mean to love God back? More importantly, how do we explain to our children that we really can love the Ultimate Being whom we can’t hear, see, touch or hug? Some Christians will immediately say that loving God means obeying God. But love is more than that. We don’t want our kids to miss out on the fact that God adores them, created them to enjoy Him, and looks forward to spending time with each of them. We want our kids to understand that God’s love is the only power strong enough to seal our happiness on planet earth.

Valentines Day is a perfect time to talk to kids about our love for God. If you’d like your children to think of God as their ultimate valentine—that is a great goal! But that’s not to say such will be easy. Some of the most mature Christians understand the challenges of accepting God’s love—and these have even less to do with God’s silence and invisibility than with established traditions.

“When I was a little girl, I heard ‘God is love’ in my church,” says one Sunday school teacher of 45 years. “At the same time, I heard that if you played cards on Sunday, you could go to Hell. There were altar calls for various wayward people, and sometimes as a teenager, I got ‘nudged in the back’ by well intending parishioners in the pew behind me, who were positive I had done something over the weekend for which I was ‘guilty’ and ‘needed to repent.’

What happened was that my idea of ‘love’ got skewed. I thought a loving God was a grossed-out God, who thought we were all too diseased to get close to. To this day, I find it hard to think that God has any warm and fuzzy feelings toward us.”

We’ve all heard variations of this story. We make jokes about Catholic guilt, scary Protestant archconservatives, and things that happened in the church up the road a generation or two back that can still give us chills. Most of us want to present our kids with a less scary version of God than found in recent generations, yet we also look to provide balance. We want to present God as both loving and lovable, yet we don’t want our kids to believe they can do anything they want and there is no price tag on bad behavior.

The big question is, “How can we get our kids to love and trust God?” Valentine’s Day is about love…it’s about commitment as well as warm and fuzzy feelings toward each other. If kids are going to understand God’s love, they need to understand that he feels for them the same feelings we feel for each other—only tons bigger. Love is fun. Love feels good. Any celebration of love should have God at the top of the list.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, working with the 7-mini challenges below will help you show your kids how to see God as loving, approachable, trustworthy, and kind. The mini-challenges are not difficult and often just include helping your children understand a certain concept concerning God and our love relationship with him. If you



follow these, your kids will be much closer to the love relationship that you want between them and their creator:

Mini-Challenge #1: Compare God’s love to parents’ love for your kids. We call God “our heavenly father,” but we tend to put the emphasis on heavenly, such that the father part is eclipsed. Some of us feel funny comparing the creator of the universe to a real-life, everyday parent. But kids often come to understand the spiritual realm by comparing things in it to things they understand on earth.

Most kids are aware that their parents would throw themselves in front of a train if it meant they could save their child from being hit. Most understand that their parents love them unconditionally, and nothing they do can destroy that love.

Assure your kids that parents’ love is a reflection of God’s love, who has been like that since the beginning. God enjoyed giving men and women hearts that resembled his—and he enjoys the notion that parental love shows kids something about himself. Kids should understand that God doesn’t make mistakes as parents do, and he loves more than parents can.

Mini-Challenge #2: Encourage your kids to trust God with something. In human relationships, trust is a bonding part of love. It’s impossible to love somebody you don’t trust, and great relationships are built on trust. No less is

true with God; if you can’t trust him, it’s pretty hard to love him. When your kids come to you with a problem they can’t solve, simply say to them, “I’ll help you all I can, but let’s bring God into this. I really want you to see how he will work in your life—it’s important to me.” Keep praying for God to help your child and keep reminding your child that you are praying.

Some may say, “What if God doesn’t do anything? What if everything remains the same or even gets worse?” What that shows is that you yourself are having trouble trusting God. The best way to gain trust is to watch him work, so stick with it. Speak to God often about this problem and tell Him that you want your child to see his power and devotion. Really listen for what God might say to you.

To think that God would answer this prayer “no, I’m not helping,” is to assume that he doesn’t care whether your child knows him. While God thinks higher than we think, and while we’re often surprised by God’s moves, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. He deeply wants your kids to experience his blessings.

Mini-Challenge #3: Don’t feel compelled to bring up the crucifixion when talking about God’s love. When talking about God’s love to kids, resist the temptation to talk about “what he did for sinners,” etc. Bring up Christ’s death on Easter or in a different discussion. Hearing about violence, bloodshed, death and sin in the same conversation with how God is




friendly and trustworthy—this can be a stretch for most any kid. When Jesus let the little children come unto him in Matthew 19, he did not say, “Listen: I’ll be shedding my blood on Calvary’s tree in a while and I’m doing this wonderful thing because you are so awful.”

He enjoyed them. He asked his Father to bless them. He told people to behave like them and believe like them if they wanted to get closer to him.

Salvation messages are quite important, one reason being that the Christian faith is full of ironic twists and surprises. The idea that a violent death and resurrection completed “love” is something our kids should get used to at an early age. However, there is a time and a place.

Mini-Challenge #4: Don’t speak about God in clichés. While we love scripture and some traditions that keep our churches grounded, we should make a concerted effort to switch up our language every so often. Christianity is not about certain words; it is about certain concepts. The words we associate with the concepts over the years can become “cliché,” which in any English class means “used so much that they have ceased to leave an image or impression in people’s minds.” What is true about terms like “cold as ice” and “so mad I could scream” is also true about terms like “sin” and even “prayer.”

In a room of ten people, the word “sin” can leave ten different impressions. One person will say, “It

reminds me of my Catholic upbringing, things we did wrong, and having to go to confession to get rid of it all.” Another person will say, “I just remember my childhood pastor swingin’ that ‘s-sound’ out like a hissing snake every five minutes: Sssssssssin!”

The word “prayer” for most children will bring up the image of bowed heads and laced fingers and waiting around to feel something stirring while saying things to a silent being. The word “amen” will indicate the ending of a prayer, but not give kids any hint that it was said emphatically by early Christians, meaning “I totally mean this, Lord!”

Switching up your language is not taking something away from our traditions. It is helping kids past the normal reaction to words they’ve heard too often: You are giving new life to important concepts. Instead of sin, say “wrong thoughts and wrong doings.” Instead of prayer, say “talking with God.” Instead of “Amen,” say, “We love you, father—thanks for being with us!”

Mini-Challenge #5: Write out a Valentine to God and leave it at the meadow’s edge. This is the one practical challenge, presented because it’s fun for kids to give things to God. God knows children have no money and possessions, and he considers cards from kids as a type of sacrifice. Have them write a poem or letter on a valentine for him. They should state anything they want—something they are grateful for, or something they think is very cool that God




created, etc. The idea is that they are talking to him and chronicling that talk.

You may find the messages are so priceless that they’re hard to part with. But because kids enjoy “sending things off to God,” this can create a precious memory for them. Take the valentine and attach it to a helium balloon and let it go. Or put it in a bottle with a cork and send it into the sea. Or put it at the edge of a windy meadow. Kids know that God will come and get it after they turn away. Some may insist that they hope they see him! If they are disappointed in not seeing him, it’s a great time to introduce the concept of the Hebrews in the desert: They had an opportunity to see God, but he was so bright and so loving and so big and strong that they were actually scared! Most any little human would scramble if they saw God’s love coming. It’s too huge for us.

Mini-Challenge #6: Alleviate kid’s fears about talking to God. One thing kids will hear that may confuse them is that they should “fear God.” Fear has a very negative connotation, and if “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” kids may think that wisdom is something they’re not terribly interested in.

You can clear up any confusion by comparing a fear of God to a fear of a parent whom they are fond of. Many of us had very happy childhoods with good parents. We also remember Dad rising from his chair and clomping down the hall

toward us when we were roughhousing or arguing or using bad words.

“Uh-oh! Here comes Dad!” were big words in many houses. And yet, the next day the same father would be playing checkers with someone or having a game of catch. Often Dad listened to problems and gave good advice. He paid bills and never let us starve.

If you had good parents, you can make your kids understand that “fearing Dad” is part of loving Dad, and kids who don’t have a parent to fear a bit often turn out spoiled and entitled. The same holds true with God and us.

Mini-Challenge #7: Don’t ignore your own love relationship with God. If you want your kids to love God, you need to show them how. You are the best example. There are always ways to up the ante of your love if you have been a Christian for years. Tell your kids, “I had this terrible problem today, and I couldn’t wait to get home and talk to the Lord about it.” Tell them what you believe God said back to you. Tell your kids, “I just like to sit in my garden (den, office, bathtub, kitchen) and talk to God. He is the kindest, most merciful and most loving being in my life. I am so glad he’s my friend.”




When your kids hear magic words like that, they will apply it to their own lives.

Start now working on these seven mini-challenges. Figure out when might be the best time to talk to your kids about how God feels about them and what he wants them to feel. If you plan ahead, you won’t approach when they’re exhausted after two hours of homework or when they’re usually chatting with friends. To give them loving feelings toward God the Father is the greatest gift you can ever give your kids. So it’s great that we have Valentine’s Day, which gives us just the right opportunity!




Easter: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Appreciate Easter Week

Easter is the most important holiday of the Christian calendar, and the week leading up to it is full of the historic adventures of Jesus. But isn’t Christmas of equal or greater importance, some well-intending people might ask? Isn’t a birth just as important as a death?

Why Jesus’ Death is so important

Not in the case of Christ. Since the great prophets of all religions have a birthdate and committed good deeds, Jesus’ birth and his teachings would only earn him the status of a great prophet.

However, he is much more than that. He is God’s only Son, the Messiah, Lord of Lords. Their followers of Mohammed and Buddha attest that their great leaders died and did not come back. Jesus came back. He ascended into heaven and plans to return to earth someday. The Ascension has witnesses; Christ’s resurrection has more than 500 witnesses. The differences between Jesus and the other great prophets concern his death and resurrection. No other prophet ever claimed to be a sacrifice for the wrong-doings of mankind. No other religion claims that their prophet arose from the dead as a sign that we, too, shall rise.

Challenges with teaching kids about Easter

For these reasons, it is important to teach kids about Christ’s death and resurrection at an early age. But there are challenges. First off, Christ’s

death was quite violent. How much do we tell children? Second, we’re competing with the Easter Bunny. Will a story about a death be eclipsed by a bunny bearing candy? Finally, Jesus died, arose and ascended over 2,000 years ago. How to we teach that Easter is just as relevant today as it was for the first generation of Christians?

Why short readings during Easter Week is a great idea

They become visible if we make Easter Week a time when we have something to mention to our children every day. A ten-minute lesson daily is often how the most committed Christians relay important material to their children. If you commit to this for Easter Week, you may find you want to continue it as part of your daily lives.

Famous missionary Corrie Ten Boom listened to her father read one chapter of the gospel every morning of her life until his arrest for harboring Jews in Holland during World War II. The Dugger Family, featured in TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, manage to get all 19 of their young ones together for Bible time every night. Surely if they were inconvenienced by it or were gaining nothing, the parents would decide they had enough on their plates and stop.



The Mini-Challenges: a 10-Minute reading per day during Easter Week

Beginning Monday, the day after Palm Sunday, find a time each day until Easter when your family is relaxed and close to being all together. For some it is breakfast. For others it is after dinner, when the food is settling or when kids are enjoying dessert. For even more, it is the bedtime hour, when homework is finished and bodies are starting to wind down.

At that point, complete that day’s mini-challenge, which includes reading a scripture, reading a short application relating it to today’s world, and finally, having children answer a couple questions about how that part of Easter Week applies particularly to them. Read lively—as if this scripture is the most important story in the universe. Because it is! Close in a short prayer.

You will find that, not only has your family created a cherished memory of regular time spent together, but that Easter is a little more clear and a little more real in your children’s hearts!

Mini Challenge #1 (Monday): The Triumphal Entry

Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

5 “Say to Daughter Zion,‘See, your king comes to you,gentle and riding on a donkey,

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted.

Application

Palm Sunday is also known as Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. People were spreading their cloaks and palm branches on the ground to




welcome Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah and future King.

Indeed, he would be their king, but like many things that happen on earth, people didn’t “get” what God was actually up to. They thought Jesus would ascend the throne and rule Israel! They didn’t get it that he would be brutally murdered, rise again, and establish the Kingdom of Heaven. The disciples thought they would be considered the King’s Court and get to help rule others. They didn’t get it that they would sit on 12 thrones and judge Israel for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Oftentimes, we can be devastated when something we really want doesn’t work out, especially if it’s something we’ve been working toward most of our lives. Palm Sunday is a reminder that God’s ways are infinitely better. If we trust and rely on him, we will come into our rewards, which are greater than our own dreams could ever produce.

Discussion: Have you ever been horribly disappointed when you wanted something and it didn’t work out? What might God have in mind for you that is actually beyond your dreams?

Mini-Challenge #2 (Tuesday): The Last Supper

Reading Luke 22:14-20

14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

Application

The concept of eating a symbol of Christ’s flesh and drinking a symbol of his blood is often perplexing to new Christians—and even some mature ones! Why do we need God to come down in the flesh and pay a price for all our wrong doings and wrong thinking? Why do we need spilled blood and a destroyed body? It sounds kind of gross and disgusting, doesn’t it?




Here’s what’s actually gross: The way human beings treat each other. Since the fall of mankind, men have considered themselves to be more important than their neighbors. They think that what they want is more valuable than what God wants. They have gone far from God in their hearts and don’t really care. We’re all guilty of this to some degree; it’s just hard to see because we’re in the middle of it, and because our “self love” blinds us to the gross and disgusting things we do and think.

Put it this way: When we approach a hog farm, we would hold our noses and go “pee-yew! That stinks!” But can the hogs smell it? No. They’re used to it. We’re used to our world, so we don’t think it’s quite so foul. Guess what? It’s pee-yew-y compared to how it started.

The world was not designed to be a hog farm. God designed it as a garden. God designed man to walk in the gardens with him and have a love relationship, where he could bless man and give him love, peace, friendship, and joy. It’s amazing that the creator of the far-reaching universe would want such relationships, but that was the point of creating man.

What God has put up with throughout civilization, we could not put up with. He is kind and good, and people are so unlike him, it’s like a good man having a wife who speaks ill of him, cheats, raids his wallet, is ungrateful, complains constantly, and only speaks to him when she needs something. The wages for this behavior if it

were done to us?? DIVORCE! ETERNAL SEPARATION, and good riddance to that nasty woman! However, the good husband is so loving that he still wants to keep making things right.

During his hours on the cross Jesus became the DIVORCE. Something magical happened with Jesus’ death and resurrection that we don’t quite understand. But it means we are not divorced from God. We are still his! Our taking communion is a reminder of his devotion to the relationship between us and him, and it’s our way of saying we’re sorry for acting like hogs, and even though we’re still prone to it, we want to be returned to our natural state when we die. We want to return to God and be a good mate again.

Discussion

Once we are Christians, God always is at work to make us return to our natural state of goodness, and to be more like him. What ways do you see that God has made you a better person since last Easter?

Mini-Challenge #3 (Wednesday): Jesus’ Arrest

Reading: Matthew 26:36-56

36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with




him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

47 While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48 Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The

one I kiss is the man; arrest him.” 49 Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

50 Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. 51 With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53 Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

55 In that hour Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. 56 But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.

Application

Jesus’ disciples were totally acting up the night he was arrested. One of them had agreed to turn him over to the bad guys for 30 pieces of silver. James, John and Peter, often considered Jesus’ favorites, were being slackers. Jesus had seen clearly the amount of torture men would throw




on him the next day, and it was bothering him so badly that he felt like he could die just from the thought. His best friends had gobbled up the Passover meal and couldn’t even stay awake to keep him company!

Peter resorted to violence when the officers showed up to arrest him, and then all of them freaked out and ran away.

At the same time, none of them were trying to act up (except Judas, the guy who betrayed Jesus. No one really gets what he was thinking.) The disciples were just like us normal people in so many ways. We’re often getting something wrong.

Jesus said to his three friends: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” This is the problem for Christians. We want to do everything right and be close to God and be good and not bratty toward friends and relatives. But our flesh is weak—our hearts and our bodies don’t always work the way they should.

Jesus understands this. So long as we keep working on ourselves and let the Holy Spirit guide us, someday our flesh will be gone. In heaven we’ll have new bodies and new hearts that work the right way.

Discussion

Have you ever slacked on Jesus? Tell of a time when he might have wanted you to do one thing, and you did a different thing. What were some of the results?

Mini-Challenge #4 (Thursday): The Crucifixion


27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. 28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29 and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. 30 They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. 31 After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

The Crucifixion of Jesus

32 As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. 33 They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). 34 There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. 35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 36 And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. 37 Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS

IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

38 Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 Those who passed by




hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself ! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself ! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 44 In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

The Death of Jesus

45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”

48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”

50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook,

the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”

Application

The death of Jesus is hard to read about. It’s even made some kids cry. It’s violent and seems so unjust, as Jesus did nothing wrong. In fact, he spent his three-year ministry healing the sick, releasing people possessed by terrible demons, blessing children, and making people in poverty and with low self-esteem feel that God always loves them. Why did men react violently?

It all gets down to power and popularity. If Jesus were to ascend the throne of Israel, it meant all the important religious leaders among the Jews would probably be reduced to being “mere men,” and they enjoyed lots of privileges and high status among the people. They didn’t want to give up their fame and glory. So, they plotted his murder instead.

When you’re in school and are looking all around at popular people, try to figure out why they are popular. Is it because of how they dress or because they have fun things like pools and tree houses? Or is it because they are genuinely nice,



Easter: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Appreciate

trustworthy and unselfish? Don’t necessarily side up to popular people just because. They may be like the religious leaders of Israel—all show and no heart. As well, don’t try to be most popular. Try to be the nicest, most trustworthy and least selfish. Jesus says people who accomplish this will be more popular for all eternity in the kingdom of heaven.

Discussion

Think of some things you can do in school that are nice, trustworthy and unselfish. What would they be and for whom? Don’t look for rewards right away from kids. Kids might not see it. Where should you look for your rewards to come from? What might they be?

M i n i - C h a l l e n ge # 5 ( Fr i d ay ) : Th e Resurrection


After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Application

The great news about Easter Week is that no matter what men did to Jesus, he was still Jesus. He never stops being Jesus. They killed him, but he just sprang back up again.

Jesus is all powerful and all knowing. He does not promise us a perfect life on earth. In fact he said in John 14, “In this world, you will have tribulation.” The world just is not the most chipper of places in comparison to heaven. There’s violence and natural disasters, and depressions down here, …and none of this would be quite so awful, except for the worst thing in the world: There’s always death.




But Jesus went on to say, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” Jesus’ resurrection means that we also will resurrect. We will be in heaven with him if we make him our friend.

Friendship means following him. Following his voice. Following his ways. Allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us through the darkness of this world, then take us to the Light.

Are you ready to be a friend of Jesus’? Talk to him. Tell him so. Say something like this:

Lord Jesus, I really want you to be my friend. I want you to come into my life and never, ever leave. I am ready to follow you. I trust you. I am taking your hand now… and I thank you for loving me, even though I’m not always the best, even though you are always the best. Be with me now and forever, ….Amen.

Discussion

If you never asked Jesus to be your eternal friend before, how do you feel different now? Can you feel him close to you? What are some things you can do to show you are a friend of Jesus’ until Easter comes around again next year?

Mini-Challenge #6 (Saturday): The Ascension

Reading: Acts 1:1-10

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.”

6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.




http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+1&version=NIV#fen-NIV-26929a

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+1&version=NIV#fen-NIV-26929a

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+1&version=NIV

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+1&version=NIV

10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Application

Again, the disciples were not quite “getting” it. They were still asking Jesus, “Are you going to ascend the throne at this time?” It was still kind of “all about them.” They wanted to know how soon they would get to be his special attendees.

God made their hearts so much bigger, though, as they went out to be those special witnesses. They realized it wasn’t about them; it was about an entire planet. It was about making others special by making them Christ’s special friends, too.

With all that said, they still didn’t quite “get it.” They thought Jesus would be back in a few years or within their lifetimes. But again, God’s plans are so much better than we can ever imagine. God wanted heaven to be filled with so many people that they would be like the sands of the beach. He didn’t want to share his glory with just twelve guys or with just one generation. He wanted to share it with millions, including you, 2,000 years later.

Since the Ascension, mankind has not ceased to ask when Jesus will return. Nobody knows when,

only the Father. But he wants us all to remember that it could be any day, and we should live every day like we might get to see him in an hour. That’s a big part of what living your life for Christ means.

Discussion

When you see Jesus, what are some of the things you’d like to ask him? What would you like to have done with your life so that you can make him proud of you?

Mini-Challenge #7 (Easter Sunday): Today, Tomorrow, and Forever


16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17

When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”




Reading: Hebrews 12:1-3

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Application

Jesus is always with us. Because he sent the Holy Spirit as a counselor, comforter and friend, he is able to hear, through the Spirit, every prayer and every sound on planet earth. Whether you are in school, home, your neighborhood—even if you were lost in a foreign country—all you have to do is call on Jesus in your heart, and he will be with you and hear whatever you say.

We also get to be like one of his disciples, always watching, waiting and working. We try to bring into Christ’s love to anyone who is suffering, lonely, poor, needy, sick, or hurt. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done.

God will show you who those people are if you ask him. Then you can ask them to church or to your house where your mom or dad can tell great stories about who Jesus is. You can also show God’s love by loaning your strong and youthful

body to the elderly or the crippled, who can’t do the things you can. You can help by giving things to the poor.

You too can be a disciple of Jesus while you’re waiting for your chance to finally see him! All the disciples in heaven and Old Testament heroes are called in Hebrews your “great cloud of witnesses.” They are cheering for you every day, as you listen for Jesus’ voice to tell you what he wants you to do!

Discussion

Jesus is more concerned that you follow him than that you make sacrifices for him. What are some things you can do so that you can hear and understand him?




Mother’s Day: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Appreciate Mom on Mother’s Day

We’ve all had the thought: “My kids don’t appreciate all the things I do. They expect their lives to run smoothly, but when things go well, they think it happens by osmosis.”

This is true to a large degree. It has been said by experts that kids take what they had as children and that’s how they define “normal” throughout their lives. That’s not great news for future adults who have drug addicts or abusers or just plain lazy parents. But what about kids whose parents provide well, work hard, and live good, clean Christian lives? They also perceive this as “normal.”

Why Kids are Often Not Naturally Thankful The good news in that is they may push extra hard to provide this “normalcy” for the next generation. The bad news is they may feel that hard-working, responsible parents are like warm breezes on a sunny day or a pretty snowfall on a winter’s night. They just happen.

When Mother’s Day comes around, asking kids to be thankful for Mom can be like asking them to be thankful for breathing, sneezing and walking.

One mom, a devoted Christian since childhood, asked her 18-year-old son, “Tell me one thing about me you are thankful for.” Since his birth she had faithfully done his wash, cleaned his room along with the rest of the house, cooked from scratch four or five nights a week, and driven him to three nights of church or youth

group each week. He looked at her for a moment and said, “Well. You make a good stromboli.”

She wonders with great anxiety. “He’s almost an adult. That’s what he’s going to remember me for?”

The Fifth Commandment says, “Honor thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12). Some great Christian parents have wondered why the Commandment isn’t “honor thy children,” as we seem to spend much of our days doing just that. The reason probably has to do with our nature: It is within a parent to chronically love and think about and help their children; the reciprocate needs to be a Command, or it might not be fulfilled.

These 7 mini-challenges can help Mother’s Day to be different. If you want your kids to think of the details of being a mom--the hard-work, devotion, and constant search for answers to prayer—try these seven small things with your kids leading up to Mother’s Day. They may help your kids appreciate Mom more for years to come:

Mini-Challenge #1: Say “I love you” three times in a week. For some moms, this may be so easy that they don’t even need to heed it. Other moms, especially busy ones, may reflect back and think, “Wow. It’s probably over a month since I’ve said that!”

Often parents make the mistake of thinking that t h e i r



kids know they love them based on all they do. However, keep in mind that kids are busy defining “normalcy,” and they may think all your energy-defined I-love-you’s are normal. As well, the basis of good communication comes by what is said, not by what is thought. Human beings are not creatures of osmosis. If you haven’t said it, tendency is they will not be sure of it.

Find your own way to say it, but say it. If you’re not the smarmy type, and such feels smarmy, say it anyway, and watch the look on your kids’ faces. If you say it often, find a new way to say it. If you always say it before bed or while driving to school, say it while doing up dishes just because…grab a face that is pinned to the TV and say, “I love you! You know that, right?” The surprise will make it stick in a new way.

Mini-Challenge #2: Take five minutes with each child after school, looking and listening. If you have three kids, that’s fifteen minutes. Don’t simply ask, “How was school?” We all know the answer to that, given their days are so much plug-and chug. Ask something specific, such as “What was the quiz like?” Or “How is Sarah treating you? I haven’t asked since you complained that she’d gotten mean.”

When they answer, don’t just listen, look at them. Try to think of another question, based on their answer that shows you are really listening. If they have papers, look at them, praising grades and asking more questions. Don’t become put off if they don’t want to say a lot. School is stressful,

and when they’re home they may want to forget about it for a while. Ask what they would like to do or why they like a certain TV show. Make it a game to get something more than, “Yes,” “No,” or “I don’t know.” Smile and look interested while they speak.

Mini-Challenge #3: Try to have a private special time with each child the week before Mother’s Day. This doesn’t have to be anything expensive. Agree to sit with one child and watch his favorite TV show. Pick a bouquet of wild flowers for your daughter. Take pictures of your other daughter for your facebook page.

You may spend time alone with each child every day, and this will be no big deal. But many parents are startled when they try to remember the last time they spend one-one-one time with a child. Generally it’s a big cattle call of “everyone get in the car,” or “everyone come to the table,” or it concerns a school-related project that is mostly work and no fun!

One-on-one time is generally when parents can come to like their children individually. Most kids are loved. It’s kids who are liked who develop good self-esteem!

Say, what’s up with these mini-challenges, so far, you may ask? They’re about me doing for my kids! Mother’s Day is about my kids doing for me! That is a stellar question. The answer is that we reap what we sow, and especially with kids, who are narcissistic,




the groundwork is laid in what we reap. A few parents will say they do those first three mini-challenges regularly. More will say they do one regularly. The rest will say that they do the three sporadically at best, even though they sound like good ideas. Spend the week before Mother’s Day sowing, and you will most probably do better at reaping. You will reap even more by following the next three mini-challenges, which are all about you!!

Mini-Challenge #4: Ask your kids for a “memory jar” for Mother’s Day. Families with the finances could give something else too, but a memory jar is something cheap that you can cherish forever…or at least until next year when you will want another one. Provide a Mason Jar or a clean apple sauce jar or any sort of jar to your kids that has a lid. Give them things to decorate and paper and different colored markers—one color for each child.

Have each child use his or her colored marker and write on little slips of paper things they (1) remember fondly doing with mom, or (2) like that mom does. They should fold up each piece of paper and put it in the jar so that on Mother’s Day, you can open each slip, and throughout the year you can just reach in and grab a memory when you need a boost.

Since you’re not asking for chores, expensive meals or allowance-derived presents, they should throw their back into this more than something else!

Mini-Challenge #5: If finances are available, tell your husband something else you would like for Mother’s Day, and tell him to include the kids in the process, planning and event. Nicely insist on it. This may seem odd and almost like it goes against Christian values of serving others (not yourself). However, this gets back to a bit of reaping what you sow. If you treat yourself with respect and honor, your kids will follow suit.

Some moms are uncomfortable asking for something for themselves. If you are one of these, don’t forget you are the queen of your household. If you want to raise princes and princesses, act like one. This doesn’t mean that you ask for things that are extravagant or out of the family’s budget. It does mean that, knowing the family’s budget, you are perfectly entitled to select an honor and expect that it will be carried out. “Queens” follow the words of Christ in Matthew 20:16, “the first will be last, and the last, first.” Moms work hard and devote themselves to the service of those around them. A good queen does no less for her kingdom. However she doesn’t forget she is a queen, deserving of honor and respect.

That’s you! Think of something that would make you happy that is within the family budget. When Mother’s Day comes around, ask for it.

Mini-Challenge #6: Ask for a Day of Rest on Mother’s Day. Demand one--in a Queenly Way. Figure out what you’d like to do on Mother’s Day that includes some downtime




for you. Plan ahead for it. You may spend part of that day honoring your own mother or your husband’s mother. However, if you’d like to take in a movie with the family in front of the TV or read a book and be left alone, you should ask for it in advance.

Demanding that time does not mean pounding your fist or raising your voice. Queens don’t do such things! It may mean planning ahead with your spouse, having him agree to protect you from normal daily headaches. It will also mean talking to your kids in advance and letting them know what you expect.

Having some downtime means the family knows ahead of time that you get to play couch commando for a movie or two (instead of Dad) or that others will be cooking your dinner. It does not mean that you get in your kids’ faces if they don’t remember and ask you to referee an argument or clean up a mess.

Most kids know where the line is, and they don’t cross it. If kids know this is your afternoon and you will tolerate nothing less than their full cooperation, tendency is that you can correct most intrusions with a look of horror, the simple expression of hurt feelings, or a call for Dad to come intervene.

Mini-Challenge #7: Do Something for Another Mother. Maybe there’s a mother in your neighborhood whose son is deployed to Afghanistan or who lost an only child or whose

children are far away. Make her a bouquet of garden flowers or a dish of brownies the day before with a card signed by your family. This is more of reaping what you sow and your kids being able to see you in “queenly form.” Remember: Great queens serve. And that’s why they are served.

What’s with the Extremes? These mini-challenges may sound like they reach for a bit of extremes: First, they have you serving more than usual, and then, they are asking you to be served more than you are accustomed to. They are like Christianity. We live by an extreme faith, where the first will be last and the last, first. We are called to have our Ultimate Relationship be with a Being we can’t hear, see, or touch. We are asked to have faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). These are all extremes.

As parents, we need to be extremely giving—and we need to have extreme expectations. Combining these for Mother’s Day can teach your kids lessons in both love and respect that they may not have known. What they attribute to Mom, they can attribute to Christ as well. All of these ask us to be a little like Christ. In doing so, we can hopefully use Mother’s Day as one of many springboards—to raise kids that will honor us in our old age as well as receive due honor from their children.




Father’s Day: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Create a Great yet Easy Gift on Father’s Day

Fathers are notoriously difficult to shop for, which makes Father’s Day a bit more challenging than Mother’s Day. If you want your kids to have a great Father’s Day present, maybe it should be one of those things that money can’t buy. We have presented just that below, and the news gets even better. If you break this easy Father’s Day project up over seven days, it will only require 10 minutes a day to create. It will help father love grow a little more each day.

Dads are more diverse today than ever before. There is no “mold” like the Father Knows Best icons of the 1950s. Today many dads bake bread, fold wash, and sit on the floor for hours molding Play Dough with their kids. Others hold more to performing traditional tasks but more dads than ever before hold positions on the local P.T.A. and coach kids’ sports.

No one come up with a lot of common speak about today’s dads except for a truth we hold to be self-evident: Six things every dad wants from their kids include love, admiration, respect, gratitude, good behavior, togetherness and great memories.

A homespun gift from the kids would be more appreciated than ever before, especially if it focuses on these six things that are important to every dad.

Our Mini-Challenges are 10-Minute Art Projects for One Week

During the week before Father’s Day, ask your kids to take 10 minutes after school or before bed each day to create a page or two for Dad’s Father’s Day Book. Its contents can be as simple as pages drawn with colorful marker pens and crayons. If you are a crafty family, it can be as ornate as a scrapbook. Stay within the family budget and, most importantly, have fun for 10 minutes a day!

What each mini-project entails

With each of these seven 10-minute art projects, your job will be to provide the question, and then, help kids think in details. It’s one thing to say you love Daddy. It’s another to say you love Daddy because he mashes the potatoes without lumps or because his bathroom smells good like cologne after he leaves for work. It’s the details that will keep dad smiling.

The pricelessness of this easy and inexpensive project will be in these details. We will help you think of them each day, as you simply ask your kids to draw and write the answer to that day’s question.

Start the Sunday before Father’s Day, which is Sunday, June 9th. By Saturday, the day before Father’s Day, your gift will be complete!



Mini-Challenge #1: Ask kids what they love about Daddy. Do not settle for “because he’s the best dad ever.” The key is the details. Ask, “What do you love that Daddy does best? It can be anything from rough housing on the bed to singing in the car. Think of some things before hand to help prompt if needed.

As with all these challenges, your kids can draw one picture or several, if there are several things they love about Daddy. For only children, you can fatten your book up by asking your child to draw two or three. If they like creating cartoons or graphic novel characters, let them have at it in their own way.

Have them write put at the top of the page: “One Thing I LOVE About Daddy,” and at the bottom, write out that answer. The drawing should be in the middle.

Mini-Challenge #2: Ask your children what they admire about Daddy. Admiration differs from love in that it involves something daddy does that kids would like to do themselves someday. It’s something Dad does that makes kids think, “Wish I could do that,” or “Someday, I’m doing that!”

One funeral director’s daughter drew a picture of a dead body in a pretty casket and wrote, “I admire Daddy for being able to stand beside a dead body for hours and not scream.” Another little girl wrote, “I admire Daddy for how he twirls the basketball without dropping it while

talking on his cell to his boss.” A little boy wrote, “I admire Daddy for having shoe laces in his sneakers and pulling them really hard before tying them.”

If you think beforehand, you can help kids out with these details. What has dad helped them with? When have you seen your child watching Daddy with admiration? If you don’t get answers that are detailed, prompt them with clues as to those things, and see how the words come out of their mouths.

Then let them draw away and be sure to include headings and footers: I ADMIRE Daddy for… [answer at bottom].

Mini-Challenge #3: Ask your children how they can show respect for Dad. Respect and admiration are sometimes synonymous, but not in this case. Here, respect means understanding some of the things Daddy wants and likes and seeing how kids might facilitate that.

Some examples of things dad likes may include the following:

• Taking a power nap at the same time every day (respect would be not waking him up)

• Watching his favorite TV show or sport uninterrupted (respect would be not interrupting to referee an argument and tiptoeing around the room when the show airs).




• Keeping his things in a certain place in a certain way. (Dads are notorious for keeping their wallet, keys, coins and business cards in a special drawer or spot on the dresser. Respect would be not going in that place without asking or putting something there if they see it out of place.)

• Having a favorite meal (respect would be not complaining if it isn’t a favorite of the kids, understanding that Dad has a right to his favorite foods, too).

Many men are quite habitual. Think of your husband’s habits and how your kids can show respect for those things. If you’re not getting any great details, prompt them with clues as to those items.

Let them draw away, and don’t forget about headings and footers.

Mini-Challenge #4: Ask kids why they are thankful for Daddy. Thankfulness differs from love and admiration in that it specifically points to something that Daddy does that makes their lives easier. Is Daddy easy to talk to? Can he make kids laugh in times of frustration or sorrow? Does he pay all the bills?

Sometimes gratitude is easier for kids to think of because in many cases, Daddy brings home a lot of the bread or pays many bills. If Daddy pays for private school that is huge. One little girl thought of, “I am thankful for Daddy because he

sends me to the dentist twice a year even tho I hate it.” She had hated it until she heard that two friends down the street almost never went to the dentist because funds were too tight.

What does your husband do that makes life easier on everyone in the family? Think in those terms and then look for the details.

Mini-Challenge #5: Ask kids what their favorite memory of Dad is. This is the “togetherness” element of something that made them laugh. Often it has to do with a family vacation. Don’t allow your kids to simply say, “When we went to Disney.” Get them to think of the details: “When I pushed Daddy in the pool on the Disney cruise.” “When Daddy screamed so loud on the roller coaster.”

It doesn’t have to be anything monumental. In fact, if it’s not it’s probably better. Of all the things that happened on their family cruise, one little girl remembered, “when my dad woke me up one morning laughing his side of because the head dancer’s name in the brochure was Steven Buget. (pronounced Boogie).”

Another little girl said her favorite memory with Daddy was watching Saturday morning cartoons. Her mom got her to think of the exact names of the favorite cartoons. A little boy said he enjoyed their weekly trips to McDonalds. After some prodding, the mother discovered the son most enjoyed Dad sharing his French fries with me after mine are all gone.




Kids can draw in just a few minutes. Take time before hand to go over the details and get them zeroed in.

Mini-Challenge #6: Ask your kids what good behavior they would like to work on to make Daddy happier. Of course the previous question on respect draws good behavior as well, but this is different. This is something that would not just make Dad content, but would make Dad proud. It can be improving a grade or learning a piece on a musical instrument by a certain date. If you are Christian, it can be to follow a certain command of Christ better this year. It can be anything that would make dad’s eyes shine with pride if kids set out to do it.

In this case, don’t allow your kids to over promise and therefore end up with something on paper that is over their heads. Kids should not say, “Honor Daddy every day, like the Bible says,” which is not only improbable but vague. A better one might be, “Listening to Dad when he is giving advice, like Proverbs 1:8 says.” Strong writers might include the scripture, or Mom can print it:

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction

and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.

They are a garland to grace your head

and a chain to adorn your neck.

If it is non-scriptural, don’t just let your kids write “get along better with Meagan.” Get it down to “not yell at Meagan when she borrows my stuff, especially when CSI Miami is on.”

What is Dad fixated on concerning the kids? Is it g rade s ? T he i r sp i r i t ua l wa l k ? Spor t s performances? Musical instrument exercises? Getting along well with other kids? Have your kids pick one thing they think Dad is interested in and make a promise to attempt improvement in that area—something they can handle and that would make Dad’s eyes sparkle!

Mini-Challenge #7: Put your book together, decorate it and wrap it. There are many ways to create your book, the simplest being using a three-hole punch and putting in a kids’ report jacket. That should take about ten minutes; however you can go all out for this last part and take a whole day!

If you are crafty, you can mount the pages in a scrap book and add downloaded objects to the drawings with scissors and stick glue. Print some of the photos on your hard drive and use them either on the drawings or on separate pages. Add funny “saying bubbles,” and don’t forget to include a few words and a photo from the family pet!




Finally, on Father’s Day Itself…

Make plans with your kids to create a great memory with Dad—a special place where you can give him his book. If Dad has a favorite restaurant, plan on taking him there if it won’t train wreck the family budget. There are plenty of inexpensive places to take Dad. Father’s Day can be perfect for a picnic in the park. A well-set table with the fine china and silver instead of the usual dishes works wonders for a special stay-at-home meal. The first “outdoor dinner of the summer” can be Father’s Day if you can clean off the picnic table. An arrangement of garden flowers or a helium balloon are nice added touches to a table that won’t break the bank.

Plan on giving him his Father’s Day Book for Dad at that meal. Take pictures that you can add later.

The primary goal of your gift is to make dad feel loved and appreciated—and create a great memory with him. You and your kids will have special memories all week making your Father’s Day book, and dad will have a gift he will find himself looking at often—perhaps more often than he will admit!




Summer: 7 Free Mini-Vacations to Help Your Kids Know God Better Over Summer Break

Summer vacations are not what they used to be for kids. Kids used to roam woods, islands and neighborhoods freely in the summer. Now, they are tacked down to day camps and summer school programs. On days when the entire family is home, many parents want to create activities that are fun, free, teach a little about our wonderful God, and create lifelong memories.

Part of creating memorable summer day trips with our kids is understanding what kids are missing these days.

A Child of Yesteryear Speaks

“My cousins lived next door when I was a boy,” one dad in his forties remembers, “and my single mom worked as a waitress. She would jokingly lay three bathing suits on the bed the last day of school and say, ‘See you in September.’ It meant that she wouldn’t know where I was all day, but she knew I’d be with one of my cousins or the other, roaming the island on our bikes. My aunt would make sure I got fed. Mom would get off work, and I’d often be asleep in my bed, which was only a stone’s throw from my aunt’s bedroom next door. Everyone trusted the situation. Nobody gave it much more than a shrug.”

This man, seemingly neglected and given what we would consider dangerous freedoms by today’s standards, grew up to be a Christian and an oceanographic researcher. We might think he somehow got zapped with a good fortune stick, both academically and spiritually! We would not

expect our kids to live through five o’clock of a summer’s day without being constantly scheduled, led, and guarded.

The challenge with so much daycare and scheduling is as the oceanographer would attest: “Many of the seeds of Christianity are planted when kids’ minds are relaxed, when they are free to explore God’s good earth, when the warm winds whisper and the only other sound is water lapping against a dock.”

What kids are missing today is a silence of electronics and/or crowds of peers, with exposure to the sounds that only God created. They are missing opportunities to give attention to the beauty of his creation. It’s in these circumstances that kids have the freedom and the natural impulse to wonder what is in nature and beyond nature that we don’t quite understand. These circumstances cultivate reflection on our Maker.

What Summer Days Used to Teach about God

It’s not that kids learn doctrine at these times; it’s that whatever they learned in Sunday school has a chance to take root--if their minds aren’t occupied with projects, schedules and electronics. If they are staring at God’s creation as opposed to screens or craft supplies, a layer of assimilation is removed, and kids are pushed up to reality: God is a marvelous creator, the designer of art,



the author of science, the giver of life, which is so plenteous in nature in the summertime.

Day Trips Can Still Bring Kids Close to God

If you want your kids to feel closer to God this summer, it’s important that they are given time to appreciate real life. Walks in nature, swims in lakes and seas, and games in woods or on beaches will provide great opportunities for them. They may not be studying God. But they are touching his artwork and absorbing his creation through their tanning skin.

Each of the mini-challenges below involves one natural setting where you can take your kids on a summer’s afternoon or evening, plus one thing you can tell them about God when you’re there. These aren’t exotic places…most towns have them, or they can be found within a few miles, and they don’t usually require any admission fees! Let your children play/swim/explore there for an afternoon on one of your days off and share a little about what that place reveals about God.

You can use the seven daytrips in many ways. If you find one where your kids have really had fun, you can repeat it over and over again. Because what you will share about how God reveals himself in this bit of nature is only a couple of lines, kids won’t mind you repeating it each time. As well, there are seven weekends in most summer vacations, if you don’t count Fourth of July, when just about everyone has plans. That means you

could use the seven mini-vacations to take your kids to a different setting each time the weather is nice and you have your weekly day off !

Just try to visit as many of the spots as you can by the end of the summer. The seven things you teach your kids about God’s nature while in nature ought to stick with them for many years.

Mini-Challenge #1: Visit a pretty flower garden. It can be a friend’s garden, or a public garden, or a greenhouse where people buy flowers (however, on that last one avoid places like Home Depot or Lowes, as they have concrete floors, and you want to get your kids as close to nature as possible). There are so many ways that flowers can teach us about God’s goodness. Here are three things you can share with kids that relate to gardens:

“Look at all the different colors and shapes and heights of the plants. They’re like people. God makes us all different because if we were all alike life would be very dull. Just like God makes many types of flowers to make bouquets colorful and beautiful, he makes many personality types among us to make our lives more beautiful.”

“Flowers draw bees, and bees sting, so we have to be careful. But bees carry the pollen from one flower to the next, so that gardens grow bigger and stronger. Bees are a lot like God’s prophets. God’s prophet’s had to carry God’s word. Sometimes God’s word was harsh, and people felt like they were being stung! However, that’s why




they are so many Christians today. Lots of God’s people were busy bees, spreading the gospel.”

“Some flowers smell so fragrant. They’re a lot like God. You have to get up close to him to truly know and love him. Just like to stick your nose up to a flower, stick your spirit up to God. Let him fill it with sweet thoughts!”

Let your kids stay for a while and look at everything… They can play discreetly if they are in a greenhouse, or play on the lawns surrounding a garden. Let them play whatever they want, but remind them of what flowers teach us about God!

Mini-Challenge #2: Visit a lake where folks are allowed to swim. Lakes, rivers and swimming holes are different than pools. Pools are sterile and manmade. They can be very pretty, but every once in a while kids need to feel God’s salty mud under their feet or get a noseful of brackish water.

Use the lesson of baptism while in God’s water to teach about his mercy and his desire to be extra close to men. Here are a couple of messages applicable to water:

“The Holy Spirit takes away any bad thought or bad behavior we’ve had if we immerse ourselves in God’s love and want to be clean again. It’s like this water. Immerse yourself and think of something you’d like to fix in your nature or

behavior. Go down and come up! Don’t you feel kind of cleaner??”

“A great missionary once said that God took her sins and threw them to the bottom of the sea and put out a big sign: No Fishing Allowed! Let’s hold our breath and look on the bottom and see if we can find any of those sins!”

Let your kids swim long and hard and splash all they want (they will sleep very well that night—even better than after swimming in a pool!) Just remind them of feeling spiritually clean!

Mini-Challenge #3: Visit a jetty, pier or place where people can fish. You don’t have to fish in order to take your kids to a fishing pier, though you can if you want! Some dads love to fish, and this may be a chance to do something enjoyable with the kids. Whether you fish or simply watch others fish, this is definitely a chance to point out some things about God’s nature as seen in fish:

“The Apostles were fisherman before they were Apostles. They used to catch fish. It was great preparation for preaching about Jesus. When catching fish, you throw out a hook with some delicious bait. A fish bites, and he becomes ours. When we tell others about how much Jesus likes them and wants to be friends with them, that’s our ‘bait.’ We want them to ‘bite God’s hook’ so he can bring them home and make them into eternal creatures.”




“Fish are a sign of abundance. Once, when Jesus wanted to show the Apostles how much he loved them, he told them to go in a fishing boat and draw in the nets. There were so many fish that the nets started to break. Jesus wanted to show them that at his command, the Apostles would always have all they needed, so they should follow him and not worry about what they would eat, drink, or wear. He wants us to know the same thing if we follow him. Let’s watch people catch fish and think of the abundance we have in Jesus.”

Mini-Challenge #4: Visit a forest with paths. Granted, take tick spray. But kids love to run up and down the paths in forests and parks, and their imaginations run wild! Even kids not trained in imagination are inclined to believe in the supra-natural while in the woods.

Tell kids that following paths are like following Jesus:

“There are twists and turns along the road we didn’t count on. We may sometimes feel like we’re lost. We’re not—because he is right beside us. But it helps to think of the end of the trail. This is like reaching heaven. Let’s see if we can get there without getting lost today!”

“Sometimes we might think there are monsters in trees or hiding behind rocks. But Jesus told his disciples on their journey, ‘Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions. And over all the power of the enemy, and

nothing by any means shall hurt you.’ Let’s pretend we’re the Apostles and tread on some giant serpents before leaving here!”

Kids will play hours on trails, making up games, twists, turns, and their own monsters to slay (so long as it isn’t a hundred degrees). Take water, and let them play their games—even if they are not your games. Imagination in God’s creation will lead back to God.

Mini-Challenge #5: Plan ahead to watch a thunder storm through a big picture window. This may take a little planning and some last minute decision making. But if you mark your spot before hand to see a thunder storm out a big picture window, then all you have to do is drive your kids down there when things start looking ominous.

Thunder storms are one of God’s greatest blessings because they remind us of him probably more than any other product of nature we see regularly. The reason is that thunder storms involve noise. Think about it: Nothing else in the sky that is natural makes noise! Stars twinkle, clouds drift, blue skies sparkle. None of them make noise, and God rarely has created a louder noise than thunder. It will surely make most anyone think of God when they hear a good crack.

If you are able to take your kids to a big picture window and have them look out in a thunder storm, you can tell them about Jesus’ return:




“We shouldn’t be afraid of thunder and lightning, so long as we’re not doing anything stupid! Jesus said, “As lightning flashes from east to west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.’ He was talking about his great return. We don’t know when that will happen, but it could be any time! Let’s watch the lightning and see if it flashes form east to west. Maybe we’ll get to see Jesus soon!”

Mini-Challenge #6: Visit a meadow with paths. Meadow paths can inspire the same games in kids as paths in a forest. However, a meadow is also a great place for kids to lie on their backs and look at clouds. Especially if there’s a good wind blowing, a meadow is a good place to see God at work through

1. “cloud shapes, in which God carves out fun messages sometimes! Can you see any angels? Can you see any hearts?? Watch as a strong, good cloud seems to overtake a monster cloud. Watch as a mean cloud reshapes into a pretty one, which is like us, after we know Jesus!

2. “meadow blades blowing in the wind, which is like the Holy Spirit; you never know where it came from or where it is going. We have to trust God a lot, don’t we?”

Mini-Challenge #7: Visit a place with a grassy hill. Kids love rolling down grassy hills, or playing King of the Hill or Steal the Flag on them. In 1 Peter 1:24-25, the great apostle says,

“ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS,

AND ALL ITS GLORY LIKE THE FLOWER OF GRASS.

THE GRASS WITHERS,

AND THE FLOWER FALLS OFF,

B U T T H E WO R D O F T H E L O R D ENDURES FOREVER.”

It’s great to share with kids that next to God’s strength, ours is like a blade of grass. And some of us seem pretty strong! God is ever so much stronger. Recite the verse and then let kids play, play, play. If they want to roll down, just make sure there isn’t debris in their path, or the bottom of the hill doesn’t back up to a road.

The True Summer of Love

It’s unfortunate that the term “Summer of Love” was used for people abusing God’s gift of sexual intimacy. The true Summer of Love is any summer used to get to know God, love God, and better understand his love for us. One of the best w ay s t o d o t h a t i s w i t h t h e s e l i t t l e encouragements and beyond that, letting God’s artistic designs in nature do all the talking for him. The only manmade item that should be invited into your Summer of Love mini vacations is the camera, so you’ll have captured lots of memories of your kids having the ultimate fun on earth.




School: 7 Free Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Take God into School with Them

All Christian parents would like their kids to think about God in school—especially while facing temptations or fears or challenges. However, school and God seem not to go together in some critical ways. Kids find it difficult to think of God while in a crowd of their peers, and this is one of the reasons that school is such a breeding ground for gossip, bullying, and other unspiritual behavior.

Plenty of kids think about God and pray to God, and some kids even remember to thank God for blessings without being prompted. But most of them do so in the privacy of their homes or while walking alone. Because the best thoughts about God stream through in privacy and silence, school becomes a place of temptation and spiritual challenges.

Re a l i ze o u r K i d s A re I n c re d i bl y Challenged

None of this is children’s faults. Even we adults will admit that we don’t think about God nearly as much at the office as we do at home. How much more challenging is it for our kids in school? At least adults who don’t know Christ are not in our faces; they’re not laughing at us for our choices or mocking us to get us to break laws.

As one novelist for young adults put it, “In middle school, kids start through the looking glass. Good becomes bad; bad becomes good. Then black is white; white is black. Kids will ‘five each other over cheating on tests and taunt each other for

getting good grades. They’ll idolize girls madly kissing boys on the bus, and use insult words like ‘goody-two-shoes’ to describe someone who never gets in trouble. Children are sane; adults are sane. Kids in this middle passage-- between nine and 18--are nuts. I’m not sure what can be done about it.”

What Do We Really Know About Their School Days?

Neither are most Christian parents sure! They feel the overwhelming “heat” coming off the school down the road. They drop their kids off, and those who are honest admit they have very little idea what goes on all day inside. The answers of “fine” to “how was school?” are not the least bit helpful. We may even feel that God also is “dropping our kids off,” because the idea of them thinking about him inside those noisy, clamoring corridors seems unlikely.

Below are 7 mini-challenges for you to complete with your kids that will help them make Godly choices while in school and even call upon God for help in school. If you try to follow the things set forth in the challenges, even with younger children, you may find your kids able to come to you comfortably for advice… or better, turn to the Lord, believing they will receive the help they need.

Mini-Challenge #1: Acknowledge to your kids that it is hard to think about God in school. It is hard, logistically speaking. Human



beings are not inclined to think of spiritual matters while in huge crowds with lots of noise. Kids in school are engaged in the kids in the crowds and are focused on their noises. This is only natural.

Telling your kids that their focus in school is only natural may let them off the hook a bit. We should not imply to them that they should be behaving like monks in a convent when school is more like monkeys in the zoo. What we hope is that teachings from home and church and kid’s reflections when alone in the quiet will provide the decision making skills they need at the moments they need them in the crowds.

We also want to prepare our children for Christian adulthood. The adult Jesus always knew what God was doing and what God wanted of him. In John 5:19, he said, “…the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Jesus was often so pressed in by throngs and noise that he could barely move or hear. If we want adult children who can perceive the Father’s will for them, school is a great training ground. They are still required to make Christian decisions in crowds.

Mini-Challenge #2: Explain why it is hard to think about God in school. The reason is that the human brain can only do one thing at once. Multi-tasking is a bit of a myth. Moms can and often do change a diaper while talking to a boss on the phone. But afterwards, they attest to

not being able to remember some of the details of either task.

As applied to Christianity, a kid should not be expected to think of everything his parents told him about being a Christian while six people are talking to him. We have to trust when we teach our kids that the information will stay in their hearts. It may not surface every day or even every week, but it should surface when they need it.

Tell your kids that they should feel free to go about the business of being kids during their noisy days. However, they should have an alarm bell in their hearts. When they are faced with a choice between gossiping or keeping silent, cheating or taking a test the honest way, or accepting or declining an afterschool invitation they know is wrong, that alarm bell should ring loudly.

Mini-Challenge #3: Impress upon kids that Jesus is just as strong inside school as he is outside. Kids can sometimes get the impression that they leave Jesus at the door of the school. Because they are not focused on him, they can subconsciously think that he is not focused on them. Therefore calling upon him seems odd or out of place.

The game with this mini-challenge is getting kids to have a picture in their minds of Jesus inside of school which they find trustworthy. Tell them, “You can call on Jesus in math or science or in the locker room or in the corridors. You can call on him in the library or on the way in the door.”




It’s also the game to get them to realize that just because they can’t sense the presence of the Lord as well in crowds, he can hear them just as well as he can when they’re alone in their bedrooms. Tell them, “He hears all and wants to help you out in school, because it is your most challenging stomping ground due to how much time you spend there. Imagine him standing right beside you all day, because that is essentially true.”

Mini-Challenge #4: Show Kids the “Jesus Beside You” way of resisting temptation. Imagining Jesus beside you all day can be very comforting to some kids but a bit disturbing to others! Kids who love to get away with something are not going to be comforted by that image!

Ask the Holy Spirit to help out with this imagery. He will direct your son’s or daughter’s minds to create that flash picture of Jesus beside kids when they are tempted to make a wrong choice—say something mean, copy homework, cheat on a test. How would a kid feel if he went to check his answers on a test by seeing what his neighbor had put down—and suddenly there’s the image of Jesus sitting in that chair?

Sometimes Jesus needs to be a bit discomforting, just like Mom and Dad do. And this is the type of prayer to which God will respond by becoming your best parenting mate.

Mini-Challenge #5: Show kids the “Jesus Beside You” way of getting help. It is quite comforting to think of Jesus in loud, noisy school

halls and classrooms, for a child who is bullied or has stress or a nervous nature. To them, Jesus isn’t there to catch them at something—he’s there to protect them. It is always great to say to your kids, “Jesus is beside you. Anytime you need help, he is right there to act on your behalf.”

To have this comfort, kids need to understand that it is not God’s job to protect them from all tribulations. What he’s there to do is grow a relationship between him and your child, in which there are more perks than anything on planet earth. He’s there to build character and strength and reliance upon him. Jesus said in John 16:33, “In this world you will have tribulation. Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Jesus wants to mold those who can overcome, not those who can simply avoid.

Mini-Challenge #6: Encourage kids to find a “prayer closet” in school. This may sound like an over-the-top challenge, but it’s really just showing your kids how to get centered and calm in situations that are trying. School is an environment where kids need to hear God’s voice—when they’ve been hurt, disappointed, frustrated, or stressed. Their parents aren’t around, the teachers with 25 kids to watch can’t be expected to see everything.

A prayer closet is simply a place to be alone if kids need it. It can be anywhere from a bathroom stall to an unused room where the lights are dim. Ask you children to think through their heads for a room they generally see as empty or a




bathroom that doesn’t see much foot traffic. Kids will attest that slipping into that place for a couple minutes, just to take some deep breaths and feel God’s presence, will center them again and make them able to manage their stress.

Mini-Challenge #7: Pray for your kids when they’re in school. There are some great prayers that God generally answers “yes,” because they are so much a part of his will. If you pray in these ways regularly, you will find that your kids manage to minimize their challenges.

Pray that your kids will use the “Jesus Beside You” imagery when they are tempted or in need of comfort.

Pray that God will provide a means for them to escape if they are tempted to get into trouble, such as is promised in 1 Corinthians 10:13.

Pray that God will give you discernment. It is hard to tell when our kids are troubled by something when all they say about their school day is “it was fine.” But God can give you the ability to see in a look, a twitch, of minor change in behavior that something is wrong. He will sharpen your gut instincts, and after being in prayer about this, you can rely on your instincts with more confidence!

Do not pray that God will protect your child from all volatile or potentially stressful situations. It is hard as parents to watch our children struggle; however it is in times of struggle that he builds

their character and strengths. Pray for character and strength in your child, and you can rest assured God will answer that with a resounding yes!

Lo, I am with you always…

What we really want is for school to do what it is supposed to—brighten minds, cultivate good relationships, and provide tools needed in adulthood. However we don’t live in a perfect world. It can only help to have your kids understanding that Jesus is in there all day every day, and he looks forward to watching out for our kids in noise as well as silence, in frustration as well as joy, in stress as well as peace. As Jesus promised his disciples in Matthew 28:20, “Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age...”




Halloween: 7 Mini-Challenges to Help Your Kids Act Like Christians on Halloween

While some Christian parents are very accepting and calm about Halloween, others shudder. Christian kids on Halloween can have so much exposure to the occult and death and dying and darkness and decay and demons and devils… What’s good about this? some parents may ask. Others let their children participate with angst and confusion, so that Jesus won’t look like “the guy who dislikes great tasting candy and good times.”

Should we let our kids participate in Halloween?

This question has very personal answers. Parents should not feel pushed by other parents to let their kids participate, nor should they feel that Halloween is a definite “thou shalt not” and pass judgment on parents really struggling about this.

A lot of parents’ decisions about Halloween activities will revolve around their neighborhoods, whether they are in tight with a stellar youth group (which often provides alternatives), and how their own children respond to spookiness. It’s a fact that some kids are not very susceptible to horror; they can be exposed to a terrifying movie, book or well-told tale and simply shrug in bed and night and get a great night’s sleep. Others will lie awake and have sleep challenges for weeks.

The Good News About Halloween

Halloween provides opportunities for our kids to grow in many ways. It opens doors to explaining to kids why God objected so thoroughly to witch craft in the Bible. It gives kids chances to imagine, and not necessarily in terrible ways! It also gives kids a chance to open their hearts and do things for others.

If Your Decision Is To Let Your Kids Go Trick-Or-Treating

Let’s say that you’ve decided to let your kids trick-or-treat in the neighborhood. Here are some mini-challenges to help your kids get the most out of it, turning darkness into light for their spirits, hearts, and imaginations. Some of the challenges may not apply to you, but if you fulfill those that do, you’ll find your kids responding to Halloween in healthy ways while creating some fun memories!

Mini-Challenge #1: Use the opportunity to explain to kids why God objects so strongly to witchcraft and other occult practices. Halloween provides a great opportunity for kids to get to know some things about history and their great loving God.

It is well known that in scripture, God showed his thorough dislike of the occult, which is so heralded in much of Halloween décor and celebrations:



Deuteronomy 18:9-12 finds God saying, “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.”

In Michah 5:2, a provoked God said, “And I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you shall have no more tellers of fortunes.”

There are 30 or so scriptures of this nature in the Old and New Testaments. But why does God hate sorcery so much? Doesn’t he reveal himself often through the miraculous? A good start with your kids is not to deny the power of sorcery and tell them it is all fake. The fact is, God hates it because it is not. There are forces of darkness at work in this world, and they do have supernatural powers. We can call on them, and at times, they do work.

Here is one good explanation: “Let’s say a good and decent boy is in love with a girl. Let’s say the girl cheats on him, and not only that, but she cheats with her boyfriend’s former best friend who has done everything to make the boyfriend’s life miserable for years. How is the good and

decent boyfriend supposed to feel? What should he do about the girl?

“God is like the decent boyfriend. The forces of darkness, sometimes known as Satan and his army, are like the former best friend who makes misery on the boyfriend. He doesn’t charm the girl because he has any love for her at all, but only because he wants to hurt the boyfriend. We are like the girl. When we go to the forces of darkness for answers to our questions or solutions to our problems, it’s like we are cheating on Christ, who gave his life for us, and with a really underhanded and vicious boy. And that’s stupid, because God has the real answers, and the mean forces of darkness are only using us to mess with him.”

Halloween provides great opportunities to tell our children that regardless of how much witchcraft they see lauded around us, it’s not funny, it can be dangerous, and most important of all, it’s a slap in God’s face. Any Christian remotely familiar with the Bible scriptures on the occult would have to concur with this.

Mini-Challenge #2: Encourage dress up costumes—but the right ones. Your kids should not dress up like devils, ghouls, zombies and mummies (as this is glorifying the death that Jesus died to overcome). They should not dress up with the primary purpose of the costume being to scare people (as that is a lust for power and a deprived kind of power). However, they don’t have to dress like Biblical characters to garnish blessings from Halloween.




But on the subject of Biblical character costumes, it is a great idea…it provides opportunities to tell others about Christ. Lazarus with his arms and legs bound and his head wrapped in linen may appear to be a frightening costume. But when kids ask “who are you dressed as?” it provides an op to tell one of the most lauded stories in the Bible.

But the greatest value in letting kids dress up is that a part of them actually becomes the person they are emulating. Great literary characters and historic leaders can provide great chances for kids to learn a little history or literature while creating an outfit.

One home schooling mom wanted her 9-year-old daughter to get some exposure to Shakespeare, and Halloween provided a great opportunity. She and her daughter watched the famous Zeffirelli film from the 1970s to study the costumes. The daughter not only became entranced with Juliet’s costumes, but also the language and the plot!

Ask your kids whom they admire in history and encourage them to dress as that person—and the costume can help take them to the faraway places, times and cultures.

Mini-Challenge #3: Spend your money at the thrift store and not the costume store. Some parents will spend as much as $50 on a child’s costume in a Halloween store that is cheaply made. They are wasting a precious opportunity to spend time with their kids crafting

costumes of their choosing. Go to a thrift store instead, where a former prom dress can be bought for $10-$15.

Don’t worry if costumes don’t look exactly like those in books or movies, and tell your kids to be creative, not rigid. Suggest various pieces to use as belts or bows or shaws. Have a blast and take a couple hours. If you have a decent sized Good Will store near you, you should be able to spend hours just looking through the racks of things.

Have sharp scissors at home, and don’t worry about hemming things. Cut to save time! But make sure that you’re creating a memory of you and your child together, exercising your imaginations and having fun.

Mini-Challenge #4: Encourage giving as well as getting. Kids can trick or treat for UNICEF or any number of local charities. UNICEF provides an official container so that homeowners can see it and be assured that the kids aren’t just playing a joke.

Explain to kids that they can still collect candy while trick or treating for a charity! Some kids are unclear on this and think that if they collect charity coins, they cannot have their bag of candy also.

If you make giving as well as getting a part of trick-or-treat, your kids will remember it fondly into their adult years.




Mini-Challenge #5: As for you and your house, be positive. Be the only house on your street to carve pumpkins that are smiling (not evilly). Be the only house where kids open the door, and the inside looks peaceful, immaculate, and smells of cinnamon apple cider. Be the parent that smiles amidst all those trying to spook everyone. Have seasonal or Christian music playing in the background instead of electric chair noises and howls.

Have the dog dressed up like a cat or the cat wearing a ribbon. Animals dressed up always make kids laugh. Have the house on the block where kids will leave smiling and a little more peaceful on a night when everyone is keyed up and half sick.

Mini-Challenge #6: As for you and your house, be healthy! People often look for alternatives to oh-so-much junk when giving out Halloween candy. Here are some found in a LIFE360 blog:

• String cheese and bagged pretzels

• Hot cocoa mix

• Microwave popcorn

• Trail mix

• Teddy-bear shaped, graham cookies

• Crispy rice treats

• Flavored, sugar-free bubble gum

Another alternative is to give away little toys and knickknacks. Some ideas:

• Silly Bandz

• Crayons

• Sidewalk chalk

• Stickers

• Bubbles

• Glow-in-the-dark bracelets

• Temporary tattoos

• Erasers

Mini-Challenge #7: Have your kids share what’s in their treat bags. If you have a rescue mission near you, there may be kids inside that were not able to trick or treat because they didn’t have a home! Call and ask. As well, there may be a child from your church who was hospitalized or couldn’t go trick or treating due to being sick. Offer to bring some treats down to these children.

Ask your kids not just to give away some of the things they don’t like, but some of the things they like best! If they brought home seven Reeses Cups, it will not hurt them to give away two. This will be a very good lesson in “treating others as you would want to be treated.”

Be lights in the dark

Jesus didn’t ever tell people not to venture into dark places. He said to let our lights shine in darkness. Work with these mini-challenges during Halloween and see if you can’t be a light in your neighborhood and most especially to your own children. They, in turn, will be lights for others.




Thanksgiving: 7 Mini Challenges To Make Your Kids Thankful At Thanksgiving

Adults quickly grasp the idea of counting their blessings, but without the benefit of perspective that comes with many life experiences, kids often take blessings for granted. But we want children to understand blessings and gratitude—especially at Thanksgiving!

As one mother of five put it, “I can get my kids to say thank you for lots of things. I’m not sure they really feel thanks. They can look overjoyed for a present on a birthday or Christmas morning, but it’s directed at the object, not the giver, and truthfully, I don’t see them get many gifts that keep them grateful for more than a couple days. And yet, I believe genuine thankfulness is an important part of spirituality.”

The Bible does say, “In everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (1 Thessalonians 5:18).” We struggle as grownups thanking God sufficiently; how can we get our kids to do it?

You can help our kids begin the journey to developing genuine thanks—and it doesn’t take a lot of lecturing and prodding! You can make Thanksgiving extra special this year, just by starting the right dinner table conversations in the week leading up to the Big Meal. Kids have very diverse schedules between school, sports, lessons, homework, etc. But generally speaking, kids still eat dinner at the same time and with at least one parent.

When dinnertime rolls around, turn off the TV and turn on the fun…first using our seven specific categories in which kids can feel thanks. Developing gratitude is fun if you keep in mind one important fact: the secret lies in the details! Take one category a night and make a game of breaking it down into specifics.

The more specifics you can dream up with them, the more likely it is that your kids will feel gratitude. When Thanksgiving finally arrives, it’s more likely you will have genuinely grateful hearts seated around your table.

Mini Challenge #1: Thanks for family: mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Since these people are the ones that children tend to take most for granted, it is a good stating place. But don’t just say, “Be thankful for Mom!” Start digging for specifics with a question, like: “What are some of the things Mom does for you?

Often kids give general answers, such as “Mom cooks my food.” They can develop bigger attitudes of gratitude by asking, “What does Mom cook that’s your favorite?” When they say, “Mom makes the best macaroni and cheese,” their hearts will light up more.

If kids like the way Mom cleans the house, ask, “What do you like best? Clean sheets? Clean clothes? The vacuum lines in all the carpets after she vacuums?” Mention enough specifics, and kids will catch on and think of some of their own. Praise the really creative ones and the very



specific ones. Do the same with fathers, brothers, sisters and grandparents.

Mini Challenge #2: Thanks for shelter. Children love their homes, and many who have modest homes consider them a palace. By asking what they love most about their homes you can lead them to a variety of fun answers. Warmth is a priority when it’s cold outside. While many homes do not have a fireplace, those who do will probably be thankful for it. Other things include shelter from rain, their bed with warm blankets to sleep under, light from electricity, and in the summer, screens to let the air in and to keep the bugs out. Discuss each room in your house and what kids like most about it. It can be anything from the softness of the toilet roll in the bathroom to the candle on the dining room table. The details will stick, and they may think of the gratitude they discussed whenever they see that object for a while!

Mini Challenge #3: Thanks for Food. Obviously you will hear a lot about pizza, hoagies and McDonalds, but bringing up the details in a normal night’s food can encourage gratitude. Hold up a carrot and say, “Look how shiny it is. How did God get carrots to be so orange! He is a very special artist.” Swirl your fork in mashed potatoes and note how creamy they look. Notice the perfectly straight and orderly rows of seeds in a cucumber. Ask kids what smells best on their plate. Ask them what’s best about their favorite dish and note God’s creative hand in it with

questions like, “How did God get pizza cheese so chewy?”

Mini Challenge #4: Thanks for our country. Most children know the Star Spangled Banner and will know that we are the land of the free and home of the brave. But in many cases the words are meaningless unless they are explained in detail. The older children may be helpful in making the younger ones understand about freedom, because they have had some knowledge of countries where people were not free to worship, seek education, and earn a living as they please. Again, being specific about what freedom does for us will help kids feel thankful. Knowing your children’s’ ambitions, you can say, ‘If you lived in a communist country, you would not be free to choose that career when you grow up. You’d have to do what the government told you to.” And even more importantly, tell them, “Parents who go to church in certain countries can go to jail for that. Their kids can be given away. I’m so glad we’re free to worship our loving God in America!” Freedoms kids might relate to might include writing whatever poems we want, buying whatever we want in the store, saying whatever we believe without fear of breaking a law, freedom to listen to whatever music we like and watch movies that people freely created.

Mini Challenge #5: Thanks for our bodies. Kids are often besieged with negative information about their bodies. In school kids get teased for being too thin, too heavy, too short, or too tall, and if they wear something too old, too




tight or too colorful, it can bring on the comments as well! Developing thanks can put a more positive spin on things when kids look at the details. Have them examine their fingers, then try to eat four bites of dinner with their fingers balled into fists. Ask why God gave them thumbs. Have them shut their eyes and hold their noses and try to guess which food item from your plate you’re holding in front of them. Point out how you can’t taste gravy when you’re holding your nose. Show your awe in how God designed smells and noses and freckles on noses.

Mini Challenge #6: Thanks for nature. God’s artistry and his own love of detail can be seen in nature. Kids almost know instinctively to appreciate the sky, clouds, seashore, fields and mountains. It gets really fun when gratitude is encouraged for more specific things like “how our kitty cat’s tail curls and uncurls when she walks” or “the stripes on a zebra” or “fish lips and how they blow when our goldfish swims along.” Bring in a pine cone or a fall flower from outside and ask kids to notice as many cool details about it as possible. Thank God for each detail.

Mini Challenge #7: Thanks for God and Jesus. We teach kids to thank God and Jesus, but we also need to remind them to be thankful for our Heavenly Father and his Loving Son. We may find that kids are more challenged over feeling grateful for the Creator than for his creation! That’s because they can’t see or hear God. The details of God can make children far more thankful. Mention attributes such that God

never sleeps. Remind them of Luke 12:7 which says “the very hairs on your head are numbered,” and tell them God knows every littlest thing about them. Remind them that Jesus came and arose from the dead so that we can go to heaven with him. Ask them how long they think eternity is or how to understand eternity. Remind them that Jesus promised to come back to earth someday and that we can look forward to watching for Him.

In all of this, you can increase gratitude by reminding kids that their thankfulness isn’t just a general feeling that drifts off into space. It is directed at God, who enjoys when we are grateful. Kids may not think they are capable of making God smile. But he didn’t send his son to die for people capable only of making him frown. God enjoys us. He wants to be a big part of our lives, our hearts, our thinking, and He wants to be noticed. When we thank him, he enjoys it similarly to how we do. Think of how you would feel if your kids thanked you for the way you fold wash, the kindness in your voice, the smell of your hair, your taste in candle scents, the stories your read at bedtime, the way you tie shoes. You would have a new lease on life! Teach your kids to offer up a blast of gratitude for the little things each time they think of one.

Galatians 6:7 says, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Make your kids grateful to God this Thanksgiving by pointing out all the details of his wonderful creation, and it will come back to you in blessings and more things to be thankful for.




Christmas: 7 Mini-Challenges to Increase Kids’ Faith & Gratitude At Christmas (plus 3 pre-challenges for parents)

As Christians most of us have mixed feelings about the Christmas holidays. On the one hand, we love our scented holiday trees, twinkling lights, TV specials, yule logs, candles, carols, cookies, and Christmas dinner roasting in the oven. Obviously, we love to see our kids’ eyes pop when they open their gifts.

Where is Jesus in all this?

On the other hand we may strongly suspect that Christmas has become materialistic to a degree that it cannot be pleasing to God. We hear of parents buying gifts on credit cards with little hope of paying them off quickly, and we may have engaged in similar behavior ourselves. Gifts bought with borrowed funds, or funds that were supposed to pay the electric bill, are a two-edged sword: They are practices in less-than-stellar stewardship and are actually distracting our kids from the real reason for the season.

Little boys used to be okay with a new truck and the contents of a stocking. Today, kids request entire entertainment systems and create lengthy wish lists on Amazon. We’re afraid to discuss Jesus and Santa in the same conversation with our kids. We don’t want our worst suspicions confirmed: An ancient story about a babe in a manger will not hold a candle to the world’s most appealing science fiction character, who has all the toys in creation at the tip of his fingers.

What can we do?

As one Christian mom states, “I thought it would help to make my kids say ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ after opening every gift. They did, but it wasn’t sincere. I’d say they were downright annoyed, always more interested in opening that next gift.” Another mother attested to making kids sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus on Christmas. But she made sure all toys were opened first and kids needed a break in playing with them before starting any talk about God. There just didn’t seem to be a way to make a babe in a manger primary, not with all the glitz and goings-on.

What can we do to make Christmas more about Jesus and less about endless requests for toys? Are there realistic ways to tone down our spending that won’t give our kids seizures? Can we make Jesus most important again while not removing the fun and celebration?

3 Pre-Challenges, 7 Mini-Challenges

These are difficult questions—and yet the most dedicated Christian parents want answers. There are a variety of suggestions available, depending on the type of family and the traditions that are in place already in the household.

Thus we’re focusing on the most common difficulties that Christian parents face at Christmas, and we’re presenting 3 important pre-challenges to help position them to work with their kids. As one builder said, “Until you fix the roof, it’s not worth your time fixing the floor.”

Adjusting



our own behavior as parents will optimize chances our kids will adjust to better Christian thinking at the holidays.

Following these, we’re providing 7 mini-challenges for you and your kids to attempt that will shift the focus to Jesus. They will deepen children’s love for the real reason for the season and will help create extra-fond memories that can last for years!

Some parents are practicing the good behaviors presented in the first 3 pre-challenges already and can vouch for their effectiveness:

Pre-Challenge #1: Don’t buy any Christmas presents that you can’t pay off by New Years Day. Some credit cards are meant for payee convenience, such as American Express, and they don’t allow going into debt. Your debit card is for your good; your credit card is for the credit company’s good, or it credit wouldn’t be a business. Go by the rule, “If we can’t afford it, we shouldn’t have it.”

Some parents may break into a sweat over their kids’ responses to what’s under the tree and what’s not. If you’ve been in the habit of over-indulging kids at Christmas, there’s no better time to address the elephant in the living room: If Jesus didn’t provide the money for a Play Station, then Santa Claus shouldn’t be able to step in and make it happen.

It’s a tough lesson, but maybe not as tough as you think. For one, kids do not understand the value of a dollar. One mom warned her kids after her husband’s business had suffered that Christmas would not be as good. She said it over and over so her kids wouldn’t be disappointed. That was many years ago. Her grown kids still remember the holiday and joke about having no idea why mom went on and on. It seemed as good a Christmas as any.

P r e - C h a l l e n g e # 2 : G o g r e e n o n Christmas. Many people don’t believe in spreading their carbon footprint, and yet they insist on buying everything from the Christmas displays at mall stores as if December is not a month in the year for going green. Certain gifts are presented unwrapped on Christmas morning, either because parents had to put things together or such made a nicer display. If the wrapping is to be discarded anyway, there’s no reason not to seek out toys that are used, so long as they’re clean and in good condition. Before going to malls, which are designed to create “want” and encourage impulse buying, check out Craig’s List and read newspaper classifieds. Resolve to visit two thrift stores on your way to the mall, and you may be amazed at finding gifts for which you would have paid triple if they were new.

Pre-Challenge #3: Talk to the Lord…Just Spill It. The great thing about Jesus is that he understands. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses...” Jesus understands that




you personally are not responsible for the creation of a holiday that has gone over our heads. He loves beauty himself as attested to in mountains, fishies, zebras, sunlight dancing on water… He understands the pull and pizazz of store displays. Whatever is a problem with making him real at Christmas, he wants to hear it. He wants to help you solve it. He won’t just respond with “thou shalt not, not, not.” He can fill your eyes with beautiful visions and your heart with fantastic new ideas. 1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

7 Mini-Challenges

You can work on these things without your children. Then, you can begin to involve them. And here are 7 small challenges you can do with your kids to restore the reason for the season:

Mini-challenge #1: Even if it’s handmade, set up a manger scene as your first Christmas decoration. Do it together. Santa Claus may dominate Christmas morning, but he does not have time on his side. The Christmas season is around 30 days long, beginning for many the weekend after Thanksgiving. One Christian mom remembers about her childhood: “Mom and I set out the manger, which we called a ‘creche,’ the Sunday after each Thanksgiving. For me, it was always the start of festivities, so it was exciting. I can remember handling each of those little pieces, and while the presents and the tree seemed far

off, that babe in the manger was huge to me…because he was first.” Having Jesus start off the holidays will set the tone for the rest of the holidays.

Mini-Challenge #2: Have your kids take part in the church Christmas Pageant. Most churches understand busy schedules and now hold Christmas pageants that require only one or two rehearsals—that often take place during Sunday school. The tone-deaf are always welcome! Pageants have one perk that has to do with why kids adore dress-ups: What kids can dress up as, they can become for a short while. Whether a child is a shepherd or a wise man or an angel or a lowing cattle, he will usually remember being close to the manger and being part of the birth of Christ. He may have precious memories into adulthood, and he won’t recall whether the production was semi-professional or foghorn central.

Mini-Challenge #3: Help your kids participate in some sort of charity during the holidays. Charity is the only way a child develops a heart for giving; it doesn’t come naturally to them. Most churches send kids to carol at nursing homes, or they visit hospitals or shut-ins, or serve food at a shelter. What’s more: Kids need charities that aren’t all about baking and collecting money. Their giving will do much more to their hearts if it involves face-to-face contact with someone they can cause to feel better. That way kids can see actual smiles of gratitude. Resolve to check at church and even




friends’ churches so your kids can look a needy person in the face, help him or her feel joy, then see that radiant smile.

Mini-Challenge #4: Don’t give in to your kids’ desires to go to the mall while you Christmas shop. The appetites for want and covetousness are hard for us adults to handle; how much more our kids? Malls serve only to intensify the want they experience from television. This might mean that your kids don’t get to sit on Santa’s knee this year (it also means you don’t get a migraine while waiting in line). Minimize Santa in pre-Christmas discussions. As Christians, we probably feel that it’s an exercise in futility to talk down Santa. That’s fine; but we don’t have to talk him up.

Drop your kids at a neighbor’s house or at a church charity function or pageant rehearsal to do your shopping. Or tag team it with another mom, offering to watch her kids during her mall trip if she reciprocates.

Challenge #5: Establish the notion early on that “asking” is not “getting.” For many grandparents today, the gift giving expectations of young parents and their younger children have grown appalling. “My daughter sends me links and makes me tell her exactly what I’ve chosen. If I get something she didn’t request, she fumes! There’s no surprises allowed, no choices; the gifts have nothing to do with me picking something and thereby giving a part of myself in my gift. I feel a battered wallet.”

Somewhere along the line, it has become acceptable to think that a parent having to return a duplicate or unwanted gift is more offensive than telling others what to buy for us and pouting if it’s something else. We teach our kids not to slurp soup, burp at the table, leave a toilet unflushed, or use offensive language. And yet somehow the faux pas of dictating what others will buy us or our kids has gotten as big as the Reptile that Ate New York. There was a time when, if you weren’t grateful for a gift you opened, you were sent to your room, or worse, your mother made you walk it next door and give it to your best friend.

The real downside is that if you have a demanding Christmas list, your children will have demanding Christmas lists. When funds are too tight, it’s all too tempting to consider rude and/or irresponsible ways to pay for the contents. Teach kids early that it’s fine to ask for something, but go out of your way not to set any expectations. If your kids are offended by what they didn’t get on Christmas morning, become extremely offended at their offended-ness. Threaten to take things back to the store. The sooner kids learn that not all demands are met, the sooner they will quit thinking of the holiday as a self-aggrandizing, wish-list-fulfilment fest.

Mini-Challenge #6: Play Christian carols in your house and in the car. We’ve been lured into a spider web with the thought that songs like “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” are adorable, and therefore it’s fine to yield to them. They make Jesus yield on his own birthday.




So much beautiful music that has stood the test of time and was created long before Christmas music production became such a huge money maker. The real Christmas songs--Silent Night, Joy to the World, and O Come, All Ye Faithful--are so powerful, they can bring tears to the eyes of believers when sung. The Holy Spirit was present in their creation, and he’ll be present when they are sung, explained, or enjoyed by a family trimming a tree. They will tell your kids the story of Christmas over and over if your own words aren’t sufficing.

If you’ve committed yourself to the 3 pre-challenges for parents and 6 mini-challenges involving your kids, this 7th is one you deserve and can appreciate:

Mini-Challenge #7: Don’t feel any guilt about enjoying Christmas morning. Some Christians report feeling enough guilt on Christmas morning that they’re tempted to look away when kids tear at wrapping paper. They want to feel Jesus beside them, but fat ole Santa seems to be swallowing the whole room.

What Jesus objects to is families going into debt for what distracts from him in the first place. He objects to so much focus on gifts that there’s no focus on grace. If you’ve heeded the challenges so far, you’ve made the entire month about him. You have practiced ways to keep your gift giving economical, environmentally friendly, and as free from covetousness and greed as possible.

It is for you to appreciate, then, that our Heavenly Father is not at all adverse to a party. Jesus’ first miracle was at a party (John 2:1-11). Revelation 19 promises that believers will become the bride of Christ and they’re invited to the bangin’-est party in the history of mankind. Psalms encourage us to dance and sing and play instruments to worship. Nobody can put on a better party than God, and he gave man a love of celebration as part of his primary essence.

Our job is to make the Father, Son and Holy Spirit our guests of honor throughout the holiday season, and if we’ve done so, there’s no problem in enjoying a great celebration on Christmas Day. And you’ll have the best chance of getting the best gift of all for your kids—memories of Jesus being the center of attention throughout a beautiful holiday season.




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Christian Parenting- Holidays

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