These 9 sacred pathways will make your child’s faith explode (in a good way)
Ready to find out how to guide your child into relationship with Jesus?
It’s never been more important for our kids to develop a deep, honest relationship with God. With more and more people leaving the faith, it’s important that our kids don’t just believe in Jesus, they KNOW and FOLLOW Jesus. The problem is, you want to empower your kids to connect deeper with God but they just don’t seem interested in what you’re offering.
Have you ever felt like your kids don’t really get why you talk about God? They don’t have a real connection with God so it makes it hard for them to care, because your faith seems so abstract to them.
Is is possible to help kids truly connect with God?
In a word, yes!
If you crave a deeper understanding of your child’s faith and simple tools to help your kids go deeper with God, you’re in the right place!
I know firsthand how hard it can be to plug some kids into the life of faith. They seem hesitant, resistant, disengaged, or just plain bored. It’s frustrating, right? Kinda makes you want to quit.
But the concept of Sacred Pathways that I originally learned from Gary Thomas’ book Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul’s Path To God, has changed all that. Learning to adapt the Sacred Pathways for kids has helped me see their faith in a different light, which brings freedom and confidence to the way I share faith with them.
And the best part? They grow in faith too!
“
In my heart, I’ve had a growing longing to help my kids engage with God from the way they are uniquely wired, but every time I’d think about it, I’d feel a tad overwhelmed. When would I possibly have time to really think this through and find a way to engage them better? And then I heard about Sacred Pathways for Kids from Christie. This book gave me the perspective and language I needed to realize how simple it could really be to reach their hearts in a fresh way.
READY TO LEARN THE 9 WAYS TO GUIDE YOUR CHILD TO JESUS?
Buy the e-book and get started now!
With its thoughtful articles on different ways kids can connect with God, Sacred Pathways For Kids will empower parents and ministry leaders to see your children the way God sees them, allowing you to focus your faith-building efforts on things that will actually connect with your kids.
From inspiring you to think deeper about your child’s faith to equipping you with practical activities to do with your kids, Sacred Pathways for Kids is the breath of fresh air you’ve been waiting for.
Sacred Pathways For Kids will help you:
- Think beyond the typical advice we tell both adults and kids to “read your Bible and pray more”.
- Recognize thedifferences between your children and how they naturally interact with God.
- Become equipped with practicaltools to help your kids connect with God in a dynamic, authentic, unique way based on how God actually created them.
“
My kids are a lot like me…but also a lot NOT like me. It can be hard to help them develop their unique tendencies when you’re not aware of them…and so I started to set out to see how I could help them know God better, using their gifts, talents, tendencies, and preferences. Sacred Pathways For Kids has been an awesome resource that is helping me do just that.
Sacred Pathways for Kids empowers parents and leaders to see that your kids have a unique relationship with God that doesn’t necessarily fit into a nice neat faith box. The book shows how kids can connect with God in various ways, and gives parents freedom and confidence to help your kids approach God in a mindful way. It gives parents and leaders a greater sense of the fullness of God and how he works among the children of the world.
Kids are not machines to be put together in the same way each time. A child’s faith needs to be nurtured, not assembled.
Proverbs 22:6 (NIV) says this:
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
We take this to mean that if we teach them to read the Bible and pray, we will plop them on a faith path that guides them through life.
However, we know this isn’t true. You can turn to almost any older adult in the church and hear a story of a child walking away from faith. This is not because they didn’t try to pass on their faith. But if an adult or a child is created in one way, and we try to force them into the shape WE want, most adults will walk away. They might go out into the world to find that which they could have found in God, if we had only just shown them how.
There’s no assembly line.
There’s no sure way to make your child a Christian.
However, you can start your child off on the way they should go, which might not look exactly like the way you went.
For example, your child might really need to learn apologetics in order to survive in a hostile culture. Or learning apologetics might have a negligible effect on your child’s faith! Maybe instead of apologetics your child needs beauty and music to deepen their faith. Or maybe your tradition centres on exuberant acts of worship, but your child is a contemplative person who connects with God better while sitting and staring at a candle or an activist who feels the presence of God most strongly while standing up against the school bully.
“
As a homeschool mom, I would be the first one to tell you that my children all learn and think differently. When I read Sacred Pathways for Kids, I realized that I often expect them to be the same in the way we worship and how I connect with them about God. This book will help me with my kids as well as when teaching kids in church.
Deb Dohmen Schroeder, mom of 3 and youth leader
Sacred Pathways For Kids will help you identify what those various areas of connection with God are, notice the way your child is uniquely wired, and learn how to nurture their unique connection with God in a way that builds their faith.
Nothing is more important in life than connecting our children to the Source of all life: Jesus Christ. But I know how frustrating it can be when your kids don’t care enough to pay attention to your lessons, zone out during Bible study, or refuse to participate in the fun activities you’ve planned!
Through personal stories and Biblical principles, this book inspires and empowers you to help your kids connect on a heart level with Jesus. Sacred Pathways for Kids is inspiring yet practical, and speaks to the heart of the matter – how can you connect your child’s heart to Jesus?
READY TO LEARN THE 9 WAYS TO GUIDE YOUR CHILD TO JESUS?
Buy the e-book and get started now!
Take a peek inside…
Meet the author and editor
Author: Christie Thomas was a Children’s Ministry Director for over a decade, and now runs the HopeGrown Faith membership community in the midst of being a mom and wife. Her three boys keep her hopping and inspire her writing at littleshootsdeeproots.com. Christie is the author of 3 physical books: Wise for Salvation, Quinn’s Promise Rock, and Quinn Says Goodbye.
Editor and Contributing Writer: Tara Cole is a wife and mother to three active boys. Her passion is helping moms and their kids deepen their relationships with God. Her upcoming book Abide: 40 Ways to Deepen your Relationship with God is coming out in Sept. 2019. You can find more of her writing on taralcole.com.
Questions you may have:
1) What about Jesus? This sounds like it might be teaching my kids that they can connect with God without needing Jesus.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and he is the most incredible example of connecting with God through each Sacred Pathway! In fact, throughout the Gospels we see Jesus portray each of the nine sacred pathways. He embraces mystery and ritual, he teaches using illustrations from nature and mealtime, he spends time in fasting and prayer, he serves others and stands up for the vulnerable and teaches deep spiritual truths. Jesus is our example in following God, but because we aren’t perfect as he is perfect, we will find it harder to find balance amongst the various pathways. Sacred Pathways gives us freedom and confidence to help our kids connect with God in ways that come naturally to our kids, but also highlights ways they can grow.
2) Isn’t reading the Bible and praying enough?
Prescribing a generic personal quiet time actually can leave a lot of the other pathways untouched, which is why so many people have abandoned personal devotions. They simply felt like they couldn’t connect with God through “personal devotions”. And indeed, they might be missing something crucial. Of course, we should teach our kids to read their Bibles and pray. But that’s like packing a toolbox with only a hammer. There are many more tools in our faith toolbox. Like a toolbox with a hammer and screwdriver and drill and saw, Sacred Pathways can remind us that there are many tools at our disposal.
3) How can I do it all?
You can’t, and you shouldn’t. I believe that helping our children connect with God in their unique sacred pathway is a mostly a matter of paying attention to our kids, which you’re probably already doing. Sacred Pathways will help you name ideas and values that you wouldn’t have noticed before, and will help you focus your spiritual training efforts for your kids.
READY TO LEARN THE 9 WAYS TO GUIDE YOUR CHILD TO JESUS?
Buy the e-book and get started now!
