5 Ways to Help Kids Stand Firm in the Faith

The Christian walk is full of ups and downs, trials, and temptations. Read these 5 Ways to Help Kids Stand Firm in the Faith today!

You’ve heard the story of the man who built his house on the sand. The rains came down and the floods came up. And the house on the sand went splat!

Brings back fun memories for me as a young child in VBS and Sunday school class. But this song has some pretty strong truth that isn’t so cute.

Life is full of rain, storms, and yes, even floods. Most adults figure that out much sooner than they expected. And they find themselves longing to have listened to the wisdom in that song.

The wise man built his house upon the rock!

Maybe you didn’t build your house that way initially, but you’ve figured out that the right foundation is important. Now it’s time to help your kids build their house. Most parents think the build starts once they leave the nest, graduate from college, and get married.

WRONG! Your kids start building their house the day they are born. Every moment, lesson, truth, and mistake along the way as they grow up is building their house.

If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that we DON’T want our kids to be building on the sand. We want to help them STAND FIRM, build on the Rock, and create strong foundations on Jesus Christ. Let’s look at 5 ways we can teach apologetics for kids to help them build strong foundations.

1. Stand firm by knowing truth

Whenever you build a house, you need the right foundation. What you build on matters. Growing up, I lived in a town where a subdivision was built on a sinkhole. We watched as family after family lost everything when their house crumbled.

If you build on something faulty, the house will crumble. That’s why it’s so important to teach our kids God’s truth. If He is the sure foundation, they need to KNOW Him and His Word.

Truth starts with your worldview. Everyone has one–even if you don’t know it. A worldview is simply how you see things. It’s the lens you look through.

The question isn’t, “Do you have a worldview?” The question is, “Does it align with God’s Word?”

You see, far too often people start with their worldview and try to fit the Bible into their framework. Wrong. That’s an upside-down way of thinking. We have to start with the Bible and form a worldview through the framework given in the Word. That’s how we build a firm foundation.

Your foundation should start with God’s truth, establishing what you believe as a family. The next layer is WHY you believe these things and it’s topped off with HOW it matters in your life.

If you haven’t spent time as a family laying this groundwork, we have a Bible study to help you do just that called Foundations of Faith.

2. Stand firm by discerning lies

Making sure your kids know the truth is the first step, but it’s not enough! If you only teach truth, you run the risk of your child later thinking they landed on something you never knew. Suddenly, that college professor teaches them about evolution or socialism and they think they are “enlightened.”

As parents, we know they weren’t enlightened. We know those ideas existed, but we failed to teach our kids to recognize them as lies. My friends, don’t think the enemy has become slack in infiltrating the church with lies! He’s been doing it from the beginning of time and he won’t stop with our kids.

We must be vigilant to teach the truth, but also show our kids the lies, teaching them how to discern the difference.

Today, false teaching is not just something we might hear from people standing behind pulpits or in classrooms, it’s something that permeates every space of our lives.

Every meme, billboard, and news story has something to say to us and the messages are getting more and more dangerous. PLUS, even Christians are becoming more and more uninterested in the truth!

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 2 Timothy 4:3-4

As parents we need to be prepared to fight the messages of false teaching so our kids have a fighting chance at walking humbly with God. We have to fight the false messages before they become ingrained in our kids and much more difficult to speak into.

For more on this topic, check out these 7 False Teaching Messages and learn how to battle them.

3. Stand firm by learning to think and apply

I teach 6th grade on Wednesday nights at a pretty conservative church. Most of the kids who attend my class have spent the last 11+ years of their life in church three times a week. They have memorized countless verses and participated in probably hundreds of church-life events.

The sad thing is, many of these kids can’t think about Scripture at all. When I ask them a question, they state the facts. I applaud them for doing it well, but then point out a super risky situation.

You see, often when you grow up in church, you start assuming you know a lot of things and you simply STOP thinking. This is the last thing on earth we want for our kids if we have any hope of helping them stand firm in the faith.

Take, for example, Mary. Do you know how she got to Bethlehem? Of course you do! You’ve seen it 1000 times in the church play. She rode a donkey, right?

Wrong. Go read Luke 2 and Matthew 1 again. Look for it. (Go ahead and do do it now, I’ll wait.) You won’t find any mention of the donkey. It’s just not there. Moreover, it’s very unlikely this would have happened. It would have been a disgrace for Mary to do so.

I’ll spare you all of the other false things we assume about the Christmas story because we’ve read it so many times and heard it portrayed in so many ways; I’m not here to ruin Christmas. The point isn’t that at all!

The point is, we need to think about Scripture ourselves. We need to teach our kids not to assume, but to check the details, think through the possibilities, and seek answers.

Check out this post on helping kids THINK about Scripture here.

4. Stand firm by gathering facts

One great way to help your kids really think about Scripture it to teach them to gather the facts. This would include studying the theology of the Bible, but also looking at facts outside of the Bible that prove it to be true.

Knowing the statistics and facts is something no one did when I was growing up. We were told to have blind faith. Believe because it’s true. You don’t need information to back it up. I won’t argue with that. You can believe without information to back it up, but you should know that there is information to back it up!

I’ve gotta tell you, I sure wish I knew that truth when I was a young adult. It would have helped so much when I was struggling with what I believed and why. Here are a few simple things we should gather facts about.

• Teach your kids that science confirms the Bible. Did you know that? We don’t have to be afraid of science if we do the work to understand it. Answers in Genesis provides excellent resources to help you, from their new Answers for Kids packs to their teen and adult packs. You can totally get them on video, too.
• Teach your kids that archeology confirms the Bible. Did you know that archeologists have discovered more copies of the Scripture than any other book? AND that the copies are more consistent over an even shorter period of time than other “classics”? The study of biblical archeology should be a MUST for every Christian kid, but families should have these discussions, too. Check out Unearthing the Bible. We read through one of these periodically during family devotional times.
• Teach your kids statistics that show us God’s wisdom. God has so much to say to us in His Word. He doesn’t even need to prove to us that His way works, but statistics have shown over and over again that biblical wisdom is, well, the best thing. When you see statistics like this, share them with your kids and remind them of how wise God is!

5. Stand firm by refuting with compassion

Perhaps the most compelling reason to learn apologetics and stand firm in our faith is to be able to share our faith with others. We need to be ready to give an answer for why we are different. We need to be ready to give an answer for the hope, joy, and love that people see in our lives (1 Peter 3:15).

We should also be ready to share the FACTS about why we believe and what we believe. EVERYONE is called to witness to others. It’s impossible to do that if you have no idea what you believe yourself.

Jesus commanded us to tell others the good news of the Gospel, but there is definitely a WRONG way to do it.

Sadly, we see the wrong way far too often in our culture. When I was a kid, people stood on the street corners with signs telling others they would go to hell if they didn’t repent. Today, people publicly proclaim their opinions on social media in an effort to set the record straight. Sadly, both are about as effective.

When we spew condemnation on a person or even on a particular sin, we don’t compel anyone to change. Instead, we often push them farther from God. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hate sin. The Bible says we should. But the Bible also tells us to LOVE all people. That includes those who sin.

We need to teach our kids the whole picture. There is a time to stand up and fight. There is also a time to quietly pray. And there is a time to compassionately confront. The only way we will know the right time to say the right things is to be sure we are on our knees before the Perfect Counselor.

Remember the old truth: more is caught than taught. Living your life with compassion, integrity, and steadfastness will be far more convincing than blasting Facebook with your hate of someone and then posting a praise song to back it up.

If we want to be effective for Christ, most of our time should be spent building relationships and loving people–not condemning their behavior. Besides, that’s God’s job anyway. We are only called to share the truth in LOVE! What they do with it is between them and God.

Final thoughts about standing firm in faith

The time is now. Tomorrow is too late to start building the right foundation with your kids. Don’t worry about what you have or haven’t done in the past. Do something today.

In the wake of 2020, I don’t have to tell you that the world is becoming more and more hostile to the truth of Christ. Our kids will need to be prepared for the fight, but the good news is God has given us all we need in His Word!

If you need help laying the foundation and talking through the tough things with your kids, check out our Bible study, Foundations of Faith. We’d love to walk alongside you on this journey!

MORE POSTS ABOUT BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS:

Do Your Kids Really Know What They Believe
3 Questions to Help Your Kids THINK about Scripture
7 False Teaching Messages and How to Battle Them
7 Things Parents Should Never Assume About Their Kids Faith
7 Things Christian Families Should Talk Openly About