Exhort: to incite by argument or advice : urge strongly : to give warnings or advice : make urgent appeals.

If you were to start a new series on your blog that you would hope to use to encourage yourself and others, I would exhort you to start with a simple word or idea – I do not recommend starting with teaching a 4 year old and a 2 year old about exhortation.

… let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24). As parents, we are continually exhorting our children – encouraging, urging forward, teaching our little ones how to love and do good deeds.  Even if we don’t think we are exhorting, we are – I think it’s a natural part of teaching those we love.  We love them, and we want them to love and to do well and to do good things, so we exhort!

Teaching our little ones to be exhorters themselves can be difficult.  I think Elias has a gift of encouragement – he is always telling people how well they are doing and exclaiming over their abilities/attempts/activities.  But I think the natural self, even if gifted with encouragement, has a hard time exhorting.  I mentioned last time how Elias encourages Donovan towards trouble instead of away… wanting to do “fun” things that are not allowed (jumping on beds, throwing balls in the house, etc.), so he delights in Donovan’s lack of self control as he does those things Elias knows he shouldn’t.  Tattling is also a part of this…  when a child comes to “tattle” on another, he is missing his chance to exhort the other to do good.

We have punished Elias for egging his little brother on and for tattling, but we have not exhorted him to exhort Donovan on to good deeds.  That has been our first step.  I think I will also be making a chart (see Amanda’s posts here and here) to help him see when he has the chance to exhort to good deeds or disobedience.

And after starting off with a quiet bang, we quickly fizzled out on exhortation crafts.  That’s OK, though.  Mulling over it for a while and continuing to talk to the boys about it has helped me to come up with something that I think is really fun, and we’ll add to it with each character trait we study…

Introducing “God Wants Me To Be… a book about Christian character traits,” by Elias and Donovan!

I cut out a LOT of pictures of people from magazines, and with each trait we work on, we will copy the trait, definition, and Bible verse into our book, and the boys will select what picture(s) they think illustrate the character trait.

Here is a picture of a little girl telling her friend how to love and do good deeds!

At the end of The List we will have a book of 51 verses that tell us how God wants us to be.  These are similar to the other verse “posters” we’ve made in the past, and I’ve wanted to bind them all up into a “book,” too – perhaps we’ll have a couple of volumes of verses that the boys will be able to look back upon for years to come.

What do you think about your role as exhorter?  How do you help your children encourage others?

Amanda really spoke to me with her post about making time to craft and play with your kids….  Unfortunately, it has taken me almost a month since her post to make the time!  Sickness, birthdays, more snow, and everyday living took over here for a while.  I wasn’t picking times or topics – I did pick some brains, though, and I sure did pick up!  Spring cleaning got started with the putting away of Christmas decorations and hasn’t stopped.

Look at what I found while picking up!  My fridge – hey, it’s white!  Buried under the family pictures, children’s drawings, delivery menus, and football schedules were some wonderful resources that I forgot I had (Wise Words for Moms found here).

How could I have forgotten this sheet of paper?  It was just given to us during our parenting class last fall….

I remember thinking that it would be awesome if my sons had all of these “Christian Character Traits,” but wow, that seems like a lot of work!

Ehem.  Remembering again why I am here with my sons, the paper was moved to the front of a clean(er) fridge, and has been staring at me for a couple of weeks until a light bulb went off in my head.  Here is my topic!  Granted, it’s huge… and intimidating, but so is parenting, if you really think about it {{shudder}}.

The List is 51 character traits with simple definitions and Bible references to help… It’s in alphabetical order, but I’m going to jump around a bit.  I hope to get really creative (hey – that’s one of the traits!), and sometimes I might do two traits together (“neat” and “orderly” seem like they go hand in hand to me!).

We start with “Exhorter – Definition: Urge others towards love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10:24 (NIrV) says, “Let us consider how we can stir up one another to love. Let us help one another to do good works.”

In our house right now, we have a lot of exhorting going on… to jump on beds, throw toys in the house, disobey in whatever way a 4 year old big brother wants his 2 year old little brother to get in trouble…

So I drew a simple picture for each of the boys – one boy running to do “something” while the other speaks LOVE to him.

While we colored, we did a bit of role playing (Elias and I did… Donovan colored away while I prayed that this is soaking into his heart, too)… “What is your brother going to do?” “Run away!”  “What are you telling him in this picture?” “Go away, Donovan!”  “Well, look at the ‘words’ coming out of your mouth? Are you saying nice things or mean things to him?” “…nice things.”  “Great! What kind of nice things are you saying?” “I love you, Donovan!”  “Wow, that is nice!  Now, Donovan is pulling all of Mommy’s books off of the bookcase… now what nice things can you say to him to help him do good things?” “Donovan, don’t do that – you’ll get in trouble!”

We colored and talked some more… we hadn’t done any role playing yet with Elias, but I think it did work really well.  I also substituted some words in and out to help explain what “exhort” means.  The Bible versions I used (NASB and NIrV) use the words “stimulate,” “stir,” and “help” – I also used “urge,” “encourage,” “tell…” all interchangeably.

So this is a start.  Not the most creative start, but sometimes we just need a start of some kind…

Continuing on our theme of respect, we are learning to respect God’s word!  I have a couple verses we will be sharing about God’s word, and we started with a new memory verse… Do not merely listen to the word.  Do what it says.  James 1:22

I really want to impress on Elias that God’s word is truth, and we need to not only listen to the word (stories, rules, promises, etc), we need to actually do what it says.  I want this to help lay the foundation for respect and obedience to God.

So in the spirit of doing, we did a memory verse activity game – something to get Elias moving and doing…

To prepare, write and cut out 2 sets of the individual words in the Bible verse… we’re doing another matching game, so the different colors for the words help a lot.

Then we placed one set of words at the far end of our living room, and I sat at the other end and handed Elias the words of the Bible verse in order, having him run to the other end of the room to match up the words and bring them back.  I have a video to illustrate (and some words to say about the video: see note at bottom of post):

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Elias had a lot of fun doing this – and despite Donovan’s fussing in the background, he had fun, too – once I made sure he had 2 pieces of paper in his hands, just like Elias.  If you have a chance, double check yourself with the words – I was missing a couple words on the coffee table, so the nice little edit you see in the middle of the video was actually me running to the other end of the room to figure out what I did wrong, tripping over both boys in the process, and generally creating mayhem.  Ehem…

After the activity, we strung the words together to hang our verse up – this is so easy!  I’ll be making banners like this for everything in the future!

All I did was punch a hole in each top corner of the word and string them on some yarn – WAY too easy!  Not as pretty as some of the bunting that is out there right now, but a quick and fun alternative!

I really like that this is out in the main rooms of our house for everyone to see – I already have it memorized, and it is a constant reminder for me to set a good example for the boys, and really work on obeying God’s word in all I do.

**Note on video – a quick apology for the state of my living room – you get a far away view of my sewing corner… and the coffee table is pushed over to the side like that to prevent the boys from playing with my sewing stuff.  It’s just how our home functions on a daily basis, and it’s not the showcase I’d like it to be… and now I know why Josh thinks I talk too loud.  Man – I am loud!  OK – enough apologizing about the video – I’m just nervous because it’s my first time to post one… and now I’m over it!

He is more awesome than all who surround Him.  Psalm 89:7

I’ve discovered something that applies to me when memorizing Bible verses – “out of sight, out of mind.” It applies to so many things in my life, but when I’m trying to memorize a verse, if it’s not in front of me, I’m not thinking about it.  And I’m finding the same is true for Elias.  When he sees the verse, he can repeat it, but if I ask him about the verse when it’s not in front of him, he cannot.  So until he can, I’m putting it all over the place!

It’s already in our den, so I wrote it on our little chalkboard sign in the living room, right above where the boys park their ride-on cars for the night.

I also wrote it on a notecard and put it on my bathroom mirror, and then we started on a poster to put the verse in Elias’s room.

First, I wrote out the verse on some butcher paper and left plenty of room above each word… and I wrote out each word of the verse on different colored construction paper.

Then, as I held up each construction paper word, Elias matched it up with the word on the big poster (this works on pre-reading skills, too!).

Elias practiced “a little dot will do ya!” with his gluing skills – and for a glue-crazy 3 year old, he did rather well!

We hung up his poster in his map room on his new art gallery wires (curtain wires from Ikea that I’ve had for years, but just hung up along one wall to make an art gallery for the kids’ art projects!).

And now we are surrounded by our memory verse!  As I hung the new poster up in Elias’s room, he repeated the verse to me, and said, “Do you know what that means, Momma?  It means that God is awesome! and do you know who is the coolest?  God!”  Praise the Lord that this is sinking in!!!

How do you and your kids work on memory verses? I’m looking for more ideas for verses to come!

God didn’t give us a spirit that makes us weak and fearful. He gave us a spirit that gives us power and love. It helps us control ourselves. 2 Timothy 1:7

Our first verse for the Fruit of the Spirit is 2 Timothy 1:7 from the New International Reader’s Version. I made up some motions for the verse and Lydia memorized it immediately!

In the video you’ll see she misquotes it a little but the thought is still the same. I did a “take 2″ but Asa was crying during the whole thing. Kind ruined the mood, you know?

(You’ll also notice she says the reference before and after. I read somewhere that for really good recall you should memorize it that way. Seemed like a good idea…)

Seriously, if you are not helping your kids memorize scripture, you are missing out on the PRIME time. Kids memorize quickly and it will stay with them forever! The motions helped her stay focused and memorize it, too.

Do you have any other memorization tips?