Teaching The Beatitudes: Our Children Dependence on God

October 5, 2024

The Beatitudes were mentioned a lot when I was growing up, but I didn’t understand the first one. The Bible version I knew translated Matthew 5:3 as “blessed are the poor in spirit.” As I memorized it for Sunday School, I always wondered what was so great about being poor in spirit because, to me, that meant being sad or thinking poorly about yourself.

It wasn’t until I became a parent and tried to explain the Beatitudes to my children that I encountered a different version of the Bible, which translates to Matthew 5:3 as "God blesses those people who depend only on him.”

This version makes so much more sense to me. We are not blessed because we think we are worthless; we are blessed because we choose to rely on our Savior’s strength and wisdom. Once I learned that, passing this idea on to my kid became easier. Teach your children to live out this beatitude with a few of these practices:

1. Spend time in prayer (Romans 8:26). Take time to pray with your children. As you pray, ask God for help when you need it and thank him when he has helped you. Create a family prayer journal with two columns. In the first column, you and your children write down the date and a prayer request. In the second column, write down the date that this prayer was answered and how it was answered.

2. Remember the past (Deuteronomy 11:18-20). Another helpful strategy is taking time to remember the ways God has helped you in the past. There are many ways to do this, but your children might enjoy creating a blessings scrapbook. Find a big empty book and get your kids to fill it with pictures or photos of what they are thankful for. Then, when your family is struggling with something (or even once a year to keep God’s blessings in your mind), look at the book together to remember all the ways you have been blessed.

3. Read the Bible. Psalm 119:1-16 reminds us that meditating and reading the Bible helps us become closer to God, which teaches us to rely on him more.

4. Ask for forgiveness. This one might seem strange in a list of how to depend on God, but it’s hard to rely on someone when we are embarrassed to come to them because of something we did. So, when you make a mistake, ask God for forgiveness, and try to let your children witness you doing that sometimes. Then, when they make a mistake, encourage them to do the same. As Hebrews 6:18 reminds us, “We have to run to God for safety” because “God is always fair” (Hebrews 6:10).

If you and your family have gotten out of the practice of relying on God for every little thing, know that it can take some time to make it a habit again. But it’s so worth it because, as the first beatitude says, “God blesses those people who depend only on him. They belong to the kingdom of heaven!”

Want to do a deep dive? Check out Family Fire's article Owning Our Helplessness