Where in the World Do I Even Start? Discipling Our Children

At our men's meeting, we talked about discipling our children. The topic is vast, of course, and a single message can't cover everything. Yet, two things stood out as things that would have been good to cover. The first is, I should have provided an answer to this question, "Where in the world do I even start?" If spiritual discipleship is a new element to add to your parenting, it can be daunting to know where to begin. One thing that can be especially paralyzing is the idea that you can mess it up and ruin your children. That's not how parenting works. God has created this parent-child relationship as a "one day at a time" kind of endeavor. It's not a "one and done" endeavor. The parent-child relationship for most of us will involve years of relating, but we experience all those years one day at a time. So, you just need to do something today that will help your child. 

Your parenting in this case is more like your nutritional health. Can you mess up your nutritional health in a single day? No. You can eat really badly and feel gross for a day or two, but no one's health was ruined with a day of bad eating. Good nutritional health is built one day at a time over years. Parenting is like that. 

When it comes to spiritual discipleship, two basic ingredients will be the Bible and prayer. For the Bible piece, a good place to start is to read a chapter or part of a chapter from the gospels. Read it and ask, "What do we learn about Jesus here?" By the way, you never get too old or too mature for this not to be a helpful way to read our Bibles! If time is short, just do the reading.

Then, pray. You can be the one who prays and simply pray about the day ahead of you (or behind you). Or, you can do prayer requests from your children and have them pray. With reading the Bible and prayer, there's basically no wrong way to do it.

There aren't really any wrong ways to do our reading—but there are helpful and unhelpful things you can do. It's helpful to read passages that will be easier to engage with. That's why I mentioned reading the gospels. Reading six chapters of Leviticus isn't wrong, but it'll likely stretch your children (and your spouse and any other adult that's present for your reading!). Genesis and Exodus work well. 1–2 Samuel also. You can always feel free to read the "greatest hits" portions of a book when you're reading as a family. You might not read all of Isaiah, but you could read Isaiah 6, 9, 37–39, 40, and 52:13–53:12, something like that. Read about David and Goliath, but maybe you don't need to read all the chapters about David on the run from Saul. Not all the Psalms work equally well for family readings, but Psalm 1, 2, 23, 100, 120, 145, and 150 can be strong ones. The difficulty with Psalms is the variety of themes that come at you in a single Psalm. Proverbs has that same challenge. Sometimes it's more helpful to read and discuss a single verse in Proverbs than a whole chapter. 

The second thing that would have been good to add to the teaching is a couple resource lists. I'll add two below. The first is "Resources for Your Child." These are books for them to read on their own or with you, whichever makes more sense. Book recommendations for our children can be difficult, since both their natural development (reading ability, intellectual maturity) and spiritual development (their conversion, what spiritual topics they've thought about, have questions about) play a part in what resource will be effective. Authors that are gifted in writing solid truth in simple ways like Jerry Bridges can be good places to start, but expect there will be trial-and-error.Crossway continues to provide useful titles along these lines, and 10ofThose seems to be as well. 

The second list is "Resources for You." These are books on parenting to help you and a couple that you can go through with your child. 

Resources for Your Child

For your child to read (or you to read to them)—several of these you’ll need to adapt as needed. E.g., the Presbyterian resources teach a different view of baptism than we have. You can easily use the bulk of them, however, and leave out those portions.

1. Trinity Catechism available on our website.
2. Thoughts for Young Men by J.C. Ryle
3. Habits of Grace by David Matthis
4. Seeking Him Daily by Daniel Baker
5. Believe and Be Baptized by Daniel Baker
6. The Lord’s Prayer by Kevin DeYoung; also his Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology (for an older teen)
7. Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ by John Piper
8. The Children’s Catechism (https://reformed.org/historic-confessions/the-childrens-catechism/)
9. Topical Memory System by Navigators (good life verses to memorize)
10. Big Truths for Little Kids: Teaching Your Children to Live for God, Susan and Richie Hunt
11. Disciplines of a Godly Young Man, Kent Hughes & Cary Hughes
12. Growing in Godliness: A Teen Girl's Guide to Maturing in Christ, Lindsey Carlson
13. Biographies: The Hiding Place (Corrie ten Boom), A Chance to Die (Amy Carmichael), For the Glory (Eric Liddell)
14. The Fruitful Life (Fruit of the Spirit) by Jerry Bridges. Bridges in general an excellent author for teens. See also his Discipline of Grace.
15. Essential Truths of the Christian Faith by R.C. Sproul
16. Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem. See also his Bible Doctrine and longer Systematic Theology.
17. Truth Matters: Confident Faith in a Confusing World (for an older teen) by Andreas Köstenberger, Darrell Bock, Josh Chatraw.
18. Why Should I Believe Christianity? by James Anderson
19. The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
20. The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis)
21. Morning and Evening, Charles Spurgeon

Resources for You

1. Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp
2. Equipping for Life: A Guide for New, Aspiring & Struggling Parents by Andreas and Margaret Köstenberger
3. Parenting Essentials: Equipping Your Children for Life by Andreas and Margaret Köstenberger
4. Parenting by Paul Tripp
5. Between Us Guys: Life-Changing Conversations for Dads and Sons by Joel Fitzpatrick
6. Between Us Girls: Walks and Talks for Moms and Daughters by Trish Donahue
7. The Manhood Journey by Kent Evans
8. Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age by Samuel James (2023)
9. Age of Opportunity by Paul Tripp
10. What is a Family? By Edith Schaeffer
11. The Shaping of a Christian Family by Elisabeth Elliott
12. The Masculine Mandate by Rick Phillips
13. The Trinity Hymnal (classic hymns, creeds, confessions)
14. The Disciple-Making Parent: A Comprehensive Guidebook for Raising Your Children to Love and Follow Jesus Christ by Chap Bettis
15. Theology texts as a resource to study various topics: Systematic Theology of Wayne Grudem, Louis Berkhof. Berkhof’s is available for free online. Kevin Deyoung’s new Daily Doctrine is a useful resource as well. Berkhof and Deyoung are Presbyterians, so their teaching on the Holy Spirit and baptism will differ from us. Grudem’s teaching on church government and eschatology differs from us (he’s congregational and classical premillennial).
16. Seeking Him Daily by Daniel Baker
17. Believe and Be Baptized by Daniel Baker

Daniel