The Grace Station

Today was the first day of school for our crew – which made it a perfect re-starting point for our Family Bible Time.  We have 3 kids – ages 6 to 14 – so I have created some simple, easy-to-adapt, Bible lessons for our family.  I thought I’d share them here, in hopes that they might be beneficial to others. Before we began, I made sure each child had paper, a pencil, and a Bible.  In addition, we had the computer on hand to look up words – and a couple of Bible commentaries for the older two.  Our kids like to jot down a few notes – and the littlest one likes to draw while we talk. We started our time together by asking our youngest daughter to read Ephesians 2:8. For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift. – Ephesians 2:8 HCSB All three kids used the same version of the Bible, and the older 2 helped the youngest with the longer words. We then circled the main words in the first part of the verse.  Our pace is deliberate, because we are both studying and learning how to study each text. They selected and circled: grace – saved – and faith Awesome! So, were were off.  We used the computer and Blue Letter Bible look up the meaning of the word grace. This was a great chance to teach the older two about how to use a concordance.  By the way, grace is Strong’s G5485 – charis. Side Note: I was able to discuss (briefly) the fact that the Bible was written in another language and has been translated into our modern languages.  Often, during Family Bible Time, I’ll jot down notes, to remind myself to talk to the kids about a particular topic, on another day.  That happened tonight two or three times. Back to the study – Our oldest daughter looked up Ephesians 2:8 in one of the commentaries and our son looked up grace in the Bible dictionary. Our oldest read the commentary – slowly – and we discussed grace – and what it means.  Likewise, my son read the definition from the dictionary.  (During this time, our youngest, who is 6, was drawing a picture of Jesus and writing down the words grace, saved, and faith.  More on that, in a bit.) Eventually, we decided to write out a definition for grace, using the information we had gathered.  Here’s what the kids came up with – Grace – God’s beautiful love for us, that we do not have to earn, and cannot lose. Pretty cool, I think.  They really liked that one of the definitions for the word used the words beautiful and lovely, so they wanted a bit of that flavor in our definition. Now, here’s the kicker.  Our youngest, who had been listening, drawing, reading ahead, and acting a little disinterested, came up with this gem, just as we were finishing our discussion. Me:  So, what do you think it means when it reads “by grace you are saved…” Her:  It means, He saves us, simply because He loves us! (followed by a fist pump) Man, I love me some Family Bible Time.  Blessings. -Jason Final notes:  Tonight’s Family Bible Time lasted, oh, 20 minutes or so.  The kids enjoyed it – and asked great questions.  I like focusing on one or two words (or ideas) at a time.  There’s no need to overwhelm – we have all of eternity to figure this stuff out!  🙂