I Have a Friend - Jesus

One time I was at a homeschooling conference and went to a vendor group. The guy was selling books that introduced small children to Jesus by taking them through the "steps of salvation." We had his book and I was interested in meeting him and seeing how he used it. At the meeting was a young father who had a little girl who wasn't reading yet. He said, " I try to read your book to my little girl, but she is not interested. She only wants to hear the story of the good Samaritan over and over." The teacher explained that it was good to read the story, but how important it was that the little girl get saved by going through the steps in his book.

I was taken back a number of years when I had questions about how to raise and train my children in the Lord. I remember trying to read a chapter of Romans to kids who were 6, 4, and 2. The most troublesome was my son, the 4-year old. He said what the girls were thinking, "I'm bored. Are we done yet?" I went to God with my problem. I knew I was not there to entertain my children, but the glassy eyes and the fidgeting hands and the plain admission of boredom worried me. "Do I really want them to learn that the Bible is boring?"

God was good to me. He used the form of scripture to teach me an important lesson about teaching my children. A number of years before, I visited with a missionary couple who were home on furlough. Jim and Beverly explained that they were following the Bible format for explaining and teaching God to a people group who had not had any Bible to read. They began with Genesis and the Creator God and moved to the covenant God and the God of Israel. They honored the flow of history in teaching about Jesus more than a particular theology. They did not despise theology, but they found it hard to start with it. I remembered that conversation and tried to be a missionary to my family.

I discovered that both testaments of the Bible begin with a lot of stories. Then there was wisdom and law. Then there was prophecy. It was a really rough understanding, but it got me started right: stories. I found that what my children needed first was to come to know Jesus and all his friends. The Bible characters and their stories were the foundation of our family's Bible education. Suddenly, there were questions instead of boredom. At times they would remind me of our times together when I forgot. They were asking to read the familiar books with pictures and words they could understand.

I once read an article about educational television. They were doing some tests with children and their TV program, monitoring when the kids got up and when they would remain and watch. The main thing that got children bored as they watched was not a lack of special effects or color or excited voices, but simply understanding. When children stopped understanding the show, they got bored. It made me realize that my kid's boredom was not so much about excitement, but about sharing God in an understandable way.

So, stories and appropriate leveled language helped. My interest in learning helped them to learn as well. Theology came naturally through questions. We became students of Jesus and of God by wondering about them and their ways. I realized that the stories kept speaking to me as I learned how to see it as freshly as my children did. The stories laid out the framework where law, wisdom, prophecy, and salvation made sense. Most importantly, Jesus was their Friend before he became their Savior.

This is not strange. Watchman Nee expressed this as the gospel truth. Jesus is a friend to sinners before he is their savior. I have found this truth so helpful and have been able to expand on it as I have been involved with the spiritual formation of my family. We do not come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord apart from knowing him as Teacher and Friend.

I could not resist going and talking to the father of that little girl after that meeting. I told him a little of my story with my children and said, "Keep reading that story over and over and over to your daughter. She will become friends with the people in it and learn to know the story-teller through it. There will be time to see her saved from the corruption in this world, but first she needs to have a friend - Jesus."