Rainy Days to the Glory of God #3

Playing together is so fun! But rainy, yucky days that go on day after day are hard. I'm praying we will begin to see that they are also opportunities to share Christ in our time at home with our young kids. So I pray our hearts will stay on Him, our kids will burn some energy in fun activities, and we'll engage their hearts in our time spent with them. I shared lots of ideas how in my last 2 posts (read them here and here), but here are a few more:

1) Read your kids favorite Bible stories and then help them make a picture book to tell the stories to others!

2) Listen to audio books that engage and pour Christ in through allegory! We love The Chronicles of Narnia, The Mighty Acts of God (narrated bible stories with family discussion questions/application) and when a bit older, Adventures In Odyssey. 

3) Clean the house together. It is so good to instill hard work and serving others into our children. Find the fun things (like racing each other while sorting clothes or mopping floors) in the hard work. Sing together as you work. Let different areas of the house remind you of fun memories of your children that you can share with them (kids love to hear stories about themselves). It's a neat time as you pour into them to remind them that you love them so much, that you are thankful for God's good gift of them to you, and that God loves them the most.

4) Use a “treasure hunt” (hide certain toys or objects all around the house to find) as a fun time together and an opportunity to teach what God teaches about storing up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6), and share the parables about treasure (treasure and pearl-Matthew 13) that share who the true treasure is: Jesus.

5) Sing and dance! I bring out my guitar or we crank up worship songs (we love Sovereign Grace) and Sunday school songs. We dance and sing to God’s glory and our fun!

6) Play in the sink in the bathroom. I love this because of the mirror there. It’s SO much fun to play in water. Water is so pivitol in Scripture, so you can share any Bible story that fits- like creation, Noah's ark, crossing the red Sea, crossing the Jordan, baptism, etc...  With kids a little older, the mirror there gives the opportunity to talk about God’s law and the gospel by sharing in Romans that the law reveals shows our sin, but only Jesus takes them away. Then sharing the analogy that we can look in the mirror and see something on our face, but the mirror can’t clean it, can it? So we go to the water and wash it away. The law is like the mirror and Jesus is the water that washes the sin away. The mirror shows us that we need to go to Jesus.

7) Use blocks/ mega block/legos/plastic cups etc. to make a monument of God's faithfulness. Read Joshua 3 and 4 and point out how the people made a monument to remember God's faithfulness. Take a block and share something to praise God for (like one block/lego to say we love how strong He is, or another to thank Him that we have a house, etc.) Then stack each one. as long as we can think of things to thank Him for, we keep building! And you can do it over and over again!

8) Read engaging books that teach timeless truths of Christ. A good place to start is with RC Sproul. He  has long, but fantastic kids books. I may need to do a whole post on some of my favorites...

I can think of other ideas, but I think you get the point. As we read these lists and think about ideas to entertain our kids, let's remember to engage their hearts. I want to be intentional to pour Christ into my boys in everyday life to help prepare them to have open eyes and hearts to see Him at work throughout their days and stay their hearts on Him as long as they live.

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