Five Things To Teach Your Kids This Easter

There is a little funny that's not so funny, one that we pastors often say before holidays like Christmas and Easter. Here it is: Holidays are hard to write sermons for because the story is always the same. In other words, most of our regular attenders have heard the narrative for decades. And most visitors have at least some sense of what the celebration is about even if they don't have all the details quite right.

So our job is to try to keep presenting the holiday message in ways that continue to keep people's attention, make it practical to life and not bore then in the process. It's not always easy.

That's why I want to also challenge you parents to be a part of helping make this Easter, now just days away, come alive and not just be another special day. I'm not saying you can't enjoy dressing up a little, having some candy around or getting together with family. But God actually tells us as parents that we're to be the chief purveyors of biblical truth, example and understanding. Seems like that needs to include the preeminent day of our Christian calendar.

So let's think for a few minutes about what might be several of the most important things you could reinforce about Easter in your children, young or old, this year.

1. Teach them that Jesus is also the reason for this season.  Yes, we usually use this phrase at Christmas, but Easter is the rest of the story. Jesus came at Christmas to ultimately face Good Friday and Easter thirty-three years later. So don't let the candy and usual other festivities cause the rest of the Jesus story to take a back seat to the exciting and vital conclusion.

2. Teach them why Jesus had to die for us. This can be a hard concept but doesn't have to be. You might talk about how even in our community and national governments there are laws and when laws are broken there is punishment. Someone else can take the punishment but the laws don't change and the charges aren't dropped. Jesus died so that we could enter God's presence clean and holy, something we could never do ourselves.

3. Teach them that Jesus had to rise from the dead or He could never die in our place. He would have been just one of us then, someone who died but didn't come back to life on earth. His rising was proof that He was everything that He said He was, including being God, a perfect, unblemished Lamb, like those needed in the Old Testament.

4. Teach them how Easter has changed your life. It's just another nice holiday especially to children  if the day seems to have little significance to the ones who teach them about it. You don't have to get all theological or super spiritual either. Just show them how Christ's forgiveness, power and purpose have caused you to look at life and the people in the world through Jesus' eyes, not your own. What difference has it made in your career, how you run your home and what's important to your family? Tell them stories. They'll listen.

5. Teach them how to tell their Easter story to others - all year long. No, we don't need to be great evangelists or go door to door (which tends to be dangerous these days). Teach them to live life in a way that others ask them about why they make those choices, help them to learn to tell their salvation story in a simple form and how to lead someone else to Christ.

Of course, all five of these things are age-dependent and you'll need to introduce and adjust the details accordingly. But this Easter, let it be a weekend when Christ comes truly alive again in your home, your purposes and your talk. It could change your home forever.