Instructing a Child’s Heart:

How to build a biblical worldview for your family.

For the next several weeks I will be blogging through Instructing a Child’s Heart  by Tedd and Margy Tripp. This book is foundational in nature. It will provide you with a biblical perspective on how to view your children before God, in the world they inhabit, and how God wants you to instruct them in the paths of the gospel.

About Instructing a Child’s Heart

This book begins with concept that all of life is a classroom. Teaching is always taking place. So the important questions are: who is doing the teaching and what is it that being taught.  Teaching, in some form, never stops. To prepare for this cultural assault of competing world views Christian parents must be proactive. 

This is where the Tripp’s encouragement to use formative instruction  comes into play. They describe formative instruction this way:

“Our every response, whether it is instruction or silence, teaches. Our behavior and our love teach. But in addition to that natural process, God calls us to instruct our children about what to believe, how to think from the Scriptures, and how to live. In this book we will call that deliberate teaching “formative instruction.” Formative instruction “forms” or “shapes” our children. It is not a single event, but a lifetime of interaction that is based on God’s revelation. We are promised that our teaching will bear fruit in our children’s lives (Prov. 22:6).”

Formative instruction is a 24/7 activity. This instruction incorporates discipline, but is more than discipline. Formative instruction provides the basis of how live and bring honor to God in every corner of life. Note this excerpt:

“We must teach our children to love the Scriptures. We must teach the promises along with the warnings. We must teach the perfect sacrifice of Christ for sin along with the description of our sinfulness. We must let our children hear how God’s law is sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. By it we are warned, and by keeping it there is great reward (Ps. 19:10–11). The most effective way to teach our children to love the Scripture is to love it ourselves. They will see us longing to read it, hear it and understand it, and learn that it is valuable.”

Instructing a Child’s Heart is an invaluable resource to help you lead your children to see the wonder and beauty of Jesus Christ.

More about Formative Instruction and in the next post in this series.

You can follow this series by selecting the category Instructing where you will find all of the posts that have been published.

Instructing a Child's Heart
Shepherd Press