You Can Teach Your Family to Praise the Lord – REALLY!

When and How to Start Teaching Family Praise

There are many ways and many opinions about how to teach your family, adults and children together, to praise the Lord. Here is a novel one that your kids will love.

In this post I want to focus (pun intended) on one approach that I discovered while surfing the Focus on the Family website, Parenting Section. With the help of Jean Thomason, author, speaker, worship leader, and more, let’s get started.

Jean Thomason Website

Spiritual Formation

“As a parent, practicing praise has helped me in the great work of spiritual formation, which is the joy of laying a biblical foundation on which salvation and a life of faith can be built. It can do the same for you.” – Jean Thomason

Spiritual formation is the process of laying the foundational biblical truths that

• There is a God
• God made me
• God loves me

If a child is exposed to these foundational truths early in life in ways that are understandable and “kid-friendly”, the child is likely to develop a worldview that measures his/her new experiences against them.

For example, if God made me, then he made all other people, too, regardless of their color, or other characteristics. if He loves me, then he loves all other people, too, regardless of whether they are not yet born or very old or anywhere in between. If God sent his Son, Jesus, to die for my sins, then Jesus died for every person’s sins.

It is clear from scripture that it is the privilege and duty of Christian parents to provide this spiritual formation.

Proverbs 22:6 New International Version (NIV)

     ⁶ Start children off on the way they should go,        and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

Some Personal Intergenerational Praising and Learning About God Experiences

My wife, Lynn, and a close friend sang simple spiritual songs like Jesus Loves Me and others, and taught simple lessons to young Sunday School children in our church in the 1970s. They also asked the students if they would like to ask Jesus into their hearts and two said yes. Decades later, each of them separately recalled that experience as their first and lasting exposure to the Christian faith.

Very recently, Lynn and I were chatting with one of our daughters and her children. The 10-year-old daughter had just returned from a week of Christian camping and was singing and doing hand and body motions to praise songs learned during the week. Her 14-year-old brother was able to recall and sing these songs and motions from his own earlier years at the same camp. And, best of all, their mother was able to recall and sing the same songs from her childhood times at the same Christian camp decades earlier.

Many of our own grandchildren and other children that we know in their age brackets can recite songs and quote Bible verses they learned at vacation Bible School weeks during their childhood summers.

Many of our grandchildren can recall and carefully relate Veggie Tales video stories and songs portraying Bible stories with talking vegetable characters.

All of these early childhood activities, Sunday School, VBS, Christian camping, Veggie Tales, and other video-based Bible stories are valuable. The primary place is still at home with parents and siblings for exposure to the foundational Biblical truths that build lifelong, Christian values and beliefs.  This is the framework that will inform their adult decisions, reactions, and interactions in the secular world.

Miss PattyCake Helps Children Form a Christian Foundation

Jean Thomason invented the character of Miss PattyCake to appeal to very young preschool and lower grades ages. Miss PattyCake displays the ideas that she has time-tested to plant the Biblical foundational truths indelibly into their minds. She also has materials to assist parents to succeed in making praise and worship times fun as well as spiritually rich. Take a look.

You can also see a 50 minute, more comprehensive teaching by Jean Thomason on YouTube at:

Early Childhood Training with Jean Thomason

Jean has also written several books and created more helpful resources that you can view on her MissPattyCake .com website.

Etc.

Please use the Share Buttons and/or email the post link below directly to your friends – ESPECIALLY TO MOMS WITH YOUNG CHILDREN.. They will benefit and you’ll be glad you did.

You Can Teach Your Family to Praise the Lord – REALLY!

Thanks. I appreciate it. – Dick S