Who taught you the Scriptures? Chances are your parents and/or Sunday school teachers were your first Bible teachers. Beginning with the time the Ten Commandments were given to the Israelites, God charged us to teach his commandments to our children . (Read Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Not only does God charge us with this responsibility, he gives specific directions on when and how to do it – which in our time translates loosely to all day long and wherever you go.

How intentional are you at teaching your children (grandchildren, neighborhood children, children anywhere…) the Bible? How well do you know it yourself?

With all the unrest that is going on in our country (USA) and elsewhere in the world, the need to share God’s Word with our children has never been greater. We must never take for granted our present access to the Scriptures. If you have ever read Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, you know how precious the passages were that Corrie and her sister had memorized once they were imprisoned in the Nazi prison camps. They also smuggled pages of Bibles into their crowded quarters when they could. Those words were hope and a lifeline to them in their bizarre circumstances.

Children need to hear Bible stories that will give them courage in the face of testing and temptations. There are several web sites that share Bible teaching ideas to use with children listed in the sidebar of my blog at www.honeycombadventures.com. Be encouraged to know that children can memorize Bible verses more easily than adults. Don’t be surprised if they beat you at this game if you too are just beginning to memorize them – they probably will.

Hundreds of Scriptures have been set to music. The combination of words and music makes them much easier to remember. Often my mind and/or mouth bursts forth with music as a verse relevant to my current situation comes to lift my spirits. A Google search for children’s Scripture songs will get you started.

Set the example. Let children see you reading the Bible in your own private time with God. Use Scriptures to explain why you make certain decisions in your life, and help your children to apply them to their own life situations.

Each generation gets one chance to pass the torch to the next – two if you count grandchildren. Don’t let your opportunities pass you by.

Photo credit: © Creativestock | Stock Free Images &Dreamstime Stock Photos

Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.