How to Encourage Children through Stories - Including Your Own

Who encouraged you when you were a little girl?  I bet you carry that person in your heart forever, her words coursing through your thoughts from time to time, his influence in your life immeasurable.  I have always been a lover of stories—stories where good triumphs over evil, where the broken are redeemed and restored, where the forgotten are remembered, where the strongest is the humblest and bravest.  I can remember sitting in my grandmother’s lap {for years} listening to great children’s books, the Bible, poetry, snippets of literature she had memorized, and stories from her own life all of which were gradually informing my view of God, myself, and the world.  We all want to be that person for another little girl(s) or boy(s), so here are a few ideas of how my grandmother’s stories encouraged me offered as a reminder of your own influence through story  . . .

1. I grew up thinking that God could use an ordinary person like me in his plan for redeeming the world if He could use people like Ruth and Rahab, Paul and young Timothy. My grandmother tried to give me that balance of knowing that I was special, the only me who would ever be, while also teaching me that I was just like everyone else and that God’s calling on our lives is not flashy but lowly—Jesus took “ the very nature of a servant” (Phil. 2:7).  Honestly, apart from her influence I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t have been able to turn my back on “using” my master’s degree in order to be at home with my children (and she was gone to heaven when I did make that decision—her stories and influence stretching beyond her lifetime into my adulthood).
2. I learned from her life and her stories that God allows us to go through hard (sometimes tragic) things, but He is always good, and He gives us the grace we need right when we need it. Every good story has a conflict, a struggle, and you can’t appreciate the resolution without first going through the struggle.  I knew God would always supply the grace and strength for me to do hard things.
3. I also knew that despite all the heartache in the world, God’s love never fails, and His beauty is all around us.  She encouraged me to appreciate that which God calls true, noble, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy (See Phil. 4:8).

In short, her encouragement pointed my young mind and heart to the goodness of God.  Isn’t that what encouragement does?  It’s not enough just to encourage a child to believe in themselves.  No, God created our children to believe in Him.  A child who believes that God is good {no matter the circumstances} is prepared to face hard things, is blessed with the lens through which to see Him and His creation as good and thus enjoy the goodness of God, and has the confidence to live out the calling that God has placed on their lives.

I leave you with three practical ways to encourage children through stories:

1. Look for ways to point your children to the Gospel. There’s nothing more encouraging than knowing that the God of the universe loves them and saves them right where they are.  They don’t have to and can’t earn their salvation or His love by being “better.”   When our children mess up and are in need of forgiveness, let’s encourage them with the truth of the gospel.  Tell them stories of when you messed up, and point to God’s goodness then in your life.  My children LOVE hearing these from my childhood!
2. Affirm their identity in Christ. When you see them striving and feeling frustrated, talk about how God saved you from thinking you had to prove yourself and how he or she is an amazing person because God uniquely made them.  His fingerprints are all over their lives.   Their names are engraved on the palm of His hand (see Isaiah 49:16). You are proud of them just for being who God made them to be.
3. Use stories, music, the beauty in the creation we take for granted to point them to the goodness of God. You can use stories and children’s poetry every day to cultivate in them a love for that which is lovely to God and instruct them in godly character (versus ungodly character), beauty, hope, eternity (versus that which is not eternal), and most of all love.  (In homeschooling I talk about loving God with all our minds.  The more we learn, the more we grow in our love for God and others and in our ability to serve Him and appreciate how awesome He is).

One of the many reasons we chose homeschooling for our family is because we want to be a couple of the loudest encouragers in our children’s thoughts as they grow into the unique women and man God created them to be.  Of course, it goes without saying, you don’t have to be homeschooling to have this encouraging relationship with your children.

Mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, teacher, friend, you are a woman of great influence, so use good stories and your own story to encourage!