Drawing them Into the Word + a GIVEAWAY!

Xander: "Mommy, can I stay up late tonight?"

Before I can respond with a negative, he quickly adds, "I'd like to study the Bible with you."

Rich and I can delay our War Horse movie night.  How could I say no to such a request???

As you can imagine, we had a wonderful time digging into the Word.

As we snuggled together on the lazy boy that night, I offered two options: reading a passage of his choice from the Bible or pull out and explore our new Child Training Bible. He excitedly told me that he wanted to read from our new tabbed Child Training Bible.

So I had him read through the list of topics and choose one. As he poured over his choices, he told me that he wanted to see what the Bible had to say about discouragement because he had been struggling with that lately.

So we curled up together and found encouragement in Scripture:

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."  

{Psalm 121:1-2}

"He helps me, doesn’t He Mom?"

"That's right, son. See that mountain out our back window?"

"Yes"

"When you feel discouraged, you can just look to the mountains around us and remember that the all-powerful, all knowing Creator is there -ready to help, ready to comfort."

"Heather," that still small voice tugs at my heart, "Have you been looking to the hills? Take heed what you read and remember."  (His lessons become a lesson for me, yet again.)

We continue to flip through all of the green tabs, finding encouragement for our souls, gratitude welling up within our hearts.

I asked him if he wanted to pick from another category. He looked up at me with serious eyes and told me that he had been disobedient and wanted to see what the Bible had to say about that.

When I first saw the Child Training Bible, I was intrigued.  There has been much curiosity about this new teaching/training tool as it has taken shape over here.

What exactly is The Child Training Bible?

It is a helpful tool that you put together to aid in drawing your family into Scripture as you walk through daily life. Oh to have scripture at my fingertips to address so many of the struggles we have in life and to give my children a clear idea of what God has to say about how He wants us to live as ambassadors for Him in this world.

For $9, Child Training Bible sends you:

·         A tabbed card to place on the inside cover of a Bible listing categories that the Bible addresses such as anger, defiance, obedience, loneliness, discouragement, lying, etc…

·         Another set of cards lists scripture references for each category as well as thought provoking questions pertaining to that area, application ideas and a sample prayer to help you as you seek to pray with your child over these various issues.  

·         Directions for putting your Training Bible together and ideas on how to implement it.

To get started I needed to gather the following items:

·         Bible (We chose a {sturdy} hardback ESV Bible, but you can select whatever translation you use most frequently in your home.)

·         Colored tabs

·         Colored pencils or highlighters.  We chose colored pencils because I simply love using them, we had them on hand and didn’t want problems with bleed-through of the pages. Have I mentioned how much I love our Lyra colored pencils???  Worth every penny we pay for them.

Once it is set up, it is so simple to just grab the Bible and have at your fingertips 5-10 verses on a given topic.  No need to go find a concordance or use another resource.  You can draw your children (or yourself) directly into the living Word of God!

As I set to the task of highlighting the various scripture passages I realized how much work it was going to take to finish it.  Inside I sort of wished I could have bought one already compiled.  But I found as I looked up verse after verse pertaining to these categories that my heart was convicted and encouraged at the same time.  Time spent in the WORD is always a beautiful thing!  Recently, I had been struggling with anger.  As I read verse after verse about anger, I found my heart softening as God brought his gentle but firm conviction to my heart about recent responses to my family.  I put aside my excuses of sleep deprivation and the craziness of raising little ones and found myself crying out in repentance while drawing hope in God’s promised help in this area.  As was evidenced from that night of exploring scripture with my son, it is encouraging to see it have the same effect on him.

My boys were intrigued as I worked and came alongside asking to help.  Xander enjoyed looking up verses and Keegan, my artist, enjoyed carefully coloring in the specified passages for a while.

As I finished, I sat there praying and seeking God on how He wants me to use this wonderful tool.  As always, He is faithful to speak to me.

·      Training: We plan to utilize our Child Training Bible for family and one-on-one devotion time.  The child training process isn’t simply about disciplining for bad behavior, but also training our children in the way they should go.  I love how the Word of God bears fruit in our lives and excited to have another resource at our fingertips for drawing our hearts back to Him and pursuing His will for our lives.

·      Post-Discipline: The primary design for this is to be used as a means of drawing our children to what God has to say about areas of sin that we are addressing in their lives.  I love how the handout that came with this takes care in cautioning to use this only with a calm child.  I’ve found that taking them straight to scripture before they’ve had a chance to calm down is counter-productive.  When exercised with care, I love the idea of gently calling them back to Scripture during these times as we pursue Bible Moments together.

·      Personal Reading: Xander has been excited to explore this on his own.  With direction on how to care for it properly (i.e. not pulling out tabs, etc), we are leaving it in an easy to access place in our home and allowing the readers in the family to peruse as desired.

Now my experiences with it so far haven’t been as dramatic as that initial experience with Xander, but I know our delving into Scripture will not return void.  I am excited to see that as we think deeply about His Word that we will become like a tree planted by streams of water that yields fruit in due season. (Psalm 1:3)  Oh what a glorious promise.  He is in the process of changing us, refining us and equipping us to represent Him to the world around us.     

Child Training Bible's website and on facebook

Thanks, Child Training Bible for giving us the opportunity to review this!

I'm so excited to let you know that Mindy from Child Training Bible is offering a Child Training Bible set to one of my readers! Leave a comment here and then follow the directions below for your chance to win!
a Rafflecopter giveaway