Hidden Words

This post is a little late, but I still want to post it for my own records.  As a refresher for our goals and purposes see our previous post of Hidden Words.

The second Scriptural Conviction we want to teach our children is "My purpose in life is to seek God with my whole heart and to build my goals around His priorities.  For the month of November we focused on this principle with the use of Matt. 6:33.  Ephraim memorized "Give God first place in my life."  Again I made a pictogram page where each word received a picture.  I also made up some hand motions.  He is now able to "read" the page and sometimes tell it to us without looking at the page.  We used this verse many times throughout the month as we taught him about making hard choices to obey God instead of doing what we want to do.

We emphasized this truth in the following ways:
1.  We praised E for doing something like obeying Momma, helping Momma, and helping Momma or helping his baby sister. We would say "Way to God E, that was putting God first by _______."

2. We also reinforced this lesson during times of discipline by asking him if he made a decision for God or for himself.  Then we would ask him how he could have given God first place in his life. 

3.  We were busy in December making cookies and food for other people.  We talked about how we were using our time to help other people and that helping other people is a way that we can "Give God first place in our life." 

4.  When going to Bible Study or Church we talked about how making the time to go study the Bible is a way that we can "Give God first place in our life."

Again, we will continue to reinforce this principle with E on a daily basis as we daily review his memory verse.  We pray that E will grow to be a man to truly puts God first in every aspect of his life. 

I know these lessons seem a little abstract for a 2.5 year old but it truly is amazing how much he is soaking up.  He will often reference these verses on his own when we are talking about other things.