When do you begin reading the Bible to your children? We don’t need to wait until they are able to understand the Scriptures. God’s Word is “alive and active.” It goes beyond the mind. Hebrews 4:12 (NET) says that His word goes beyond the intellect and pierces “even to the point of the dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow.” It ministers to the soul, the spirit, and the body.
This means we start at the beginning of life, even in the womb. Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15 and says: “From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
I love the Message which says: “You took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother’s milk!” Don’t you love that? You can read the Word aloud to your baby as you nurse him or her at the breast. As your husband reads God’s Word to your family at our daily devotions, your baby imbibes the Scriptures even as he nurses from the breast.
The word for “child” in 2 Timothy 3:15 is revealing. It’s the Greek word “brephos” and from other Scriptures we see that it means:
a) a child in the womb (Luke 1:41, 44),
b) a newborn babe (Luke 2:12, 16), and
c) a little child as in 2 Timothy 3:15.
God’s word leads us to salvation. A child growing up in a godly home where the Word is read daily will come to salvation at an early age. Some are ready for salvation at three or four years of age. And the sooner your children receive God’s salvation the better it is. Satan wants the souls of your children. He subtly woos them from an early age.
Is your baby hearing the Word? Are your little toddlers being filled with God’s Word? And of course, are your older children being daily and richly filled with God’s Word? If you are not filling them with God’s Word, they will be filled with the influences and spirit of this world.
How can it be that little six-year-olds from Christian homes can know the words to worldly songs and yet not know the Scriptures? Let’s fill them with the powerful, living, and eternal Word of God from their earliest moments.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell