G Notes

Last week I started a blog series in hopes of helping parents with the grand, God-given task of discipling their children. It's a wonderful privilege, but also an overwhelming one. I find that many parents are a bit intimidated by the thought of discipling their kids. After all, discipleship is about guiding our children to grow as followers of Jesus. That's a huge responsibility. One of the main challenges is knowing precisely what to teach. I've distilled it down to six topics. These are the irreducible minimums of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. These are the absolute musts of the Christian faith. These are the six topics parents should focus on. There are many ways to teach these six topics to your kids. You can pick a topic each week and concentrate on that one topic the whole week; and rotate through the topics every six weeks. You can teach a different topic each day of the week (focusing on a different one Monday through Saturday). You decide what's...

One of the most important tasks given to us is leading our children to become followers of Jesus. Psalm 78 tells us to teach our children about God and about His glorious deeds so that they may learn to set their hope in Him and learn to faithfully walk in all His ways. This is a great privilege and responsibility that has been bestowed upon us: raising up the next generation of disciples. While this is a wonderful privilege, it is also one the most intimidating challenges we face. As parents we desire for our children to grow into mature followers of Jesus but we struggle with the task. What do I say? What do I teach them? What do they need to learn? How do I go about it? In an attempt to give a little guidance to parents I'm writing a seven part blog series. This will be by no means exhaustive. My goal is simply to provide a big picture for how to approach discipleship. The goal of discipleship is teaching our children to live as Christians. So here's the big question: Wh...

Getting to present God's Word to others is an amazing privilege. I love every opportunity to do so whether it's preaching on Sundays, teaching a small group, or doing one-on-one discipleship. It's a source of great joy for me, but it's also a heavy responsibility. Not only must I be a good steward of God's Word, not only will I one day be held accountable for my preaching/teaching, but on top of that, I always feel the need to improve as a preacher and teacher. Learning to preach and to teach can be overwhelming, and growing in those disciplines can feel a bit daunting. I have a long way to go, but God is teaching me along the way. He is providing me with more and more insight, sharpening me as a communicator of His truth. Below are nine P's (excuse the old school alliteration) of preaching/teaching which God is keeping at the forefront of my preparation. This isn't an exhaustive list, but I hope thinking through these nine P's will help you as you pre...