Deuteronomy 6:4-9 reads, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. Tie them (His commandments) as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.“

Holidays are some of the easiest ways to share your faith with your family. Check these out:

1. Spiritual Birthdays – pray that your kids will accept Jesus as their LORD and Savior at a young age. Make it your mission to be the one that is blessed to lead them to the LORD. Then have a date to celebrate – donut holes, balloons, lunch box, gifts, CDS, crown of thorns, ring, 1st diamond, something that is round because God’s love has no beginning and no end, He is love. Now to receive the Spiritual Birthday gift, they have to share what God has showed them this last year, what has she learned about God this year, and set new spiritual goals for the next year. Each one also verbally recalls the events of their salvation moment and their current testimony.
2. Christmas is the easy holiday to give Him honor and glory, but let me just add that you might not put the Baby Jesus out until Christmas Eve , but be sure you put out a nativity the kids can handle. Another dear friend shares that each family member receives 3 gifts each as 3 gifts were what Jesus received from the wise men. “ If 3 gifts were good enough for the Savior of the world, it’s good enough for us.”
3. Participate in Lent as a family or even individually. They will follow your example. Ever thought of fasting from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve from anything sweet . . . remembering that advent is the season prior to His coming, if He came back during that season, would He find me overindulging or remembering the reason He came in the first place?
4. Set New Year’s Resolutions in 3 areas: recreational, physical, and spiritual and have the kids write it in the covers of their bibles with the dates. When #1 Son and Baby Girl were in high school, we became claiming personal scripture for ourselves for the whole year. Mine was Luke 1:37 “For nothing is impossible with God. “ When we came up with this idea, Baby Girl said she didn’t know what to pick. #1 Son immediately piped up and said, “Honor thy father and mother.” Needless to say, Christine accused him of sucking up and left the table. But to her credit and just to let you know, she’s always wanted to read the bible all the way through and made a resolution for 5 years before actually fulfilling it.
5. We had a jar of chores to do around the house, and when the children were tweeners, they were required to pull a chore when they mouthed off or disobeyed. That way, I didn’t get angry and a chore was done that I didn’t have to do. In that jar were items like “write a letter to your Grandparents”, “sweep the porch”, “wipe down the window sills”, “clean out the refrigerator”, “collect the hangers in all the closets,” etc. I recall a time when Baby Girl really pushed my buttons to the point I was fit to be tied, and I told her to pull from the jar. The next thing I knew, she was jumping up and down, hooting and hollering…come to find out, she pulled the one slip of paper among the 50 that read, “Grace. You are forgiven.” She learned forgiveness and I learned to keep my sense of humor.