Teaching Children the Character of God

Are we teaching our kids who God is both at church and at home? 🤔  
If not, we need to start! 

In this episode, Amber shows how understanding God's character is essential for our children. They need to know that He is loving, kind, holy, and just. These attributes shape their trust and faith in Him. 

Resources in this episode:

Blog Article

RenewaNation Review Magazine

Who is God Curriculum

Praise Him: A 30 Day Family Devotional

Transcript

Amber Pike (00:01.204)
Welcome back to the Kidman Huddle. If you're watching this in video, you see my husband made me a Kidman Huddle podcast mug. I'm so excited about it. He's the best. Okay. So welcome back. If you're new here, welcome, welcome. Today we are talking about teaching children the character of God. Is this something that we do in our children's ministries? Well, we should be.

They need to know who God is. This is the God that made them, the God that created the world, the God that sent his son to die for them. They need to know who God is so they can learn how to trust him, how to follow him, and why they need to. I am such a big fan of teaching the attributes of God. God is loving, he is kind, he is omnipotent, he is holy, he is just, he is wise, he is eternal.

He's caring, he is the savior. We need to teach this to our kids. Now, Psalm 145.3, his greatness is unsearchable. We are not ever going to completely comprehend; he's incomprehensible. We're not ever going to understand completely about God. Our kids will never be able to completely comprehend, understand who God is, his character. But we need to be teaching about God. It was kind of funny.

When Josh and I were deciding our scope and sequence for the first year of our Renewination Curriculum, he's like, okay, where do want to start? Because he's like awesome and he lets me figure things out and then he tells me if I'm wrong. It's great. But I was thinking, okay, well, what do I want kids to know? Well, I need them to understand about the Bible. You know that, but before we can understand our need for the Savior, our sin and our need for the Savior, before we can, you know,

grow as a Christian, have to become a Christian, which means we have to understand sin and our sin and our need for the Savior. But before we can do that, we need to understand why do we trust the Bible? But before we can do that, we need to understand who that is. Because if we are not understanding God, beginning to, I'm not saying perfection, but if we are not at the starting place of understanding who God is, the rest of it doesn't make sense. And so Josh and I, when we were doing our

Amber Pike (02:26.158)
curriculum sequence, that's where we both wanted to start, is understanding who God is. So that's our first curriculum series. If you haven't checked it out, please go check out the Renew Nation curriculum. I'll drop a link in the show notes or go to familyministry.org. But our first series is Who is God? And while I could and plan on writing an entire Devo book on attributes of God, like I had to narrow it down to four. So, okay.

I'm teaching kids and I have four lessons to give them an overview of God. Which four attributes am I focusing on? And I landed on, is God holy? We did a question and answer. So is God holy? Is he loving? Is he merciful? And is he omnipotent? Those I think are four key, key, key attributes of God. We need to teach this to our kids. That's just a brief overview of why, but like.

Guys, our kids need to understand God. Because if they don't understand God, they don't understand why he wrote the Bible or that the Bible is all true, so then they just pick and choose what they want, chuck it out, not believe, right? We have to start with understanding God. Especially if we are going from a systematic approach to theology, to faith, all of that, they need to understand God. So we are starting with who is God?

how do we do this in our classroom? So we're focusing on the classrooms first. Obviously, we are starting with the Bible, right? If we want to understand God, if we are teaching our kids to understand God, we are starting with scripture because God wrote the Bible and he reveals himself to us through the Bible. So we want to make sure that we are Bible-centric in everything that we do. But with that,

how we teach our lessons is really important when it comes to are we pointing to God or not. I said this in a breakout in the Children's Ministry Expo at Oklahoma last week and someone's like, hang on, explain this to me. So if you're listening, hi friend, there's still gonna be another podcast about this, but here's just like a quick little, little bit. Okay, we want to avoid moralistic lessons.

Amber Pike (04:47.158)
So let's say we are teaching about Noah and the ark. Love Noah. He's on my list of people I hope to meet in heaven, right? So we're starting with Noah. And sometimes, as you have likely seen in children's curriculum and family devotions, that we will teach the boys and girls, man, look at Noah. Noah was awesome. We should be obedient like Noah. Noah built the ark when God told him to, and Noah's obedience, man, we need to model that.

This is moralistic theology. We are teaching the boys and girls apart from a relationship of God that they should be good and obedient. Or if we look at Daniel, man, Daniel, he was so brave. He was in those lines then and he was brave and we should be brave like Daniel. Or honor your mother and father. Well, we need to be obedient to mom and dad. We need to make sure that we are listening to mom and dad.

If we are teaching these good morals to be good little boys and girls with Christian actions, we are missing the point. We want to raise boys and girls to be lifelong disciples of Christ who are acting like Christ because of the relationship with him. We need to be pointing to God in our lessons. So there's the, everything is pointing.

to or from Jesus, yes, but we also should be asking when we are teaching our lesson, what is this teaching about God? So Noah's Ark, we don't want to be obedient like Noah. I mean, yes, we want to obey God because of our love for him, because we understand who he is and his character, his sovereignty, all of that. But what are we hearing about God? What are we learning about God in the account of Noah? I mean, you could go like a million different directions. We know that God is just.

and he will punish sin. We know that God is holy, he does not sin, and because he is holy, he must punish sin. We know that God is omnipotent. Man, the fountains of the deep burst forth, it rained, covered the whole earth. We know that God is loving because he loves and cares for us. He made a way for people to be saved, and this points to Jesus because he is sovereign. He is in control of all, and this is a picture of what is going to come with Jesus because he's already made that promise.

Amber Pike (07:10.814)
So many things that we are pointing to, what does this teach us about God? The point of when we teach Noah's Ark is not to be obedient like Noah. It is not that Noah was a good righteous man who obeyed and followed God and we should do that as well. We want to point children to God. What are we learning about God? So evaluate your curriculum, the lessons that you're teaching. Is it teaching children about who God is? You need to be. Now.

Your lesson might have a different purpose, right? Maybe we're teaching about good prayer. So I taught about Jesus praying two weeks ago, I think. But still, add in, what is this teaching us about God? Well, why would we pray to God? Well, because God hears our prayers, because God loves us. He is omniscient. He is everywhere. Or sorry, He knows everything. He is omnipresent. He is everywhere at once. These are pieces that we can and should be

just tacking on our lessons if they're not in there. Asking the question, letting kids even, like pose this question to your kids. What does this passage of scripture teach us about God? This needs to be a regular piece of your lesson time. If we want children to understand God's character, we need to be showing that to them through the word.

A super helpful piece on this is I think you need a good poster with some attributes of God. You could do this a slide that you pop on. So maybe you make a really cool slide. Today's attribute, the attribute of the week is, you know, whatever, awesome. I have a poster in my classroom. If you guys have listened to me, you know I love my posters, my pointer fingers, and I will go and I will point on the attribute on my classroom wall that this is God. So the ones that I focus on the most, God is

My three omnis, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, God is holy. I do just a good bit merciful. Those are probably, and sovereign, which fun fact, the word I often misspell. I always leave out the extra I. There you go. Those are probably the ones that I refer to most frequently. There are tons and tons that we can be pointing to.

Amber Pike (09:37.88)
But we want children to understand this is God's story. This is the one story of his redemptive love for his creation. We need to be pointing to God in our lessons. So do an evaluation of your lessons. Is it doing this? If not, how can you add this piece in? Maybe second question with that is what do you need to do to where you or the other leaders classroom teaching understand what this is pointing to when it comes to God?

Another way that we are teaching children who God is in the classroom setting is having praise and prayer time. Praise is our response to who God is. It is part of our worship. And when we praise, we are praising God for who he is and what he has done. So if we're praising him for who he is, this is his character. Are we helping children to do this as well as giving them time?

to do this. God is pretty amazing. We need to create space in our ministries where children are able to praise him. Praise is a requirement for believers. It is something that we are supposed to do. It's a command, but it is also something we should want to do. When we begin to understand just how amazing God is, praise is our natural response and we should just praise him. So we should have these times incorporated into our ministries. There is not an age requirement on praise.

So my little two year old niece who is verbally not always clear because she's two and was a little slower talking, she can have time to praise God. It is not a adults in worship only thing. Kids are capable of praising God and should be praising God. So let's create some space to do that in a kid friendly way. Right? So easy peasy is worship Tom.

Worship time. So are we singing songs of praise? Now there is a difference in kids worship and kids doing music emotions. I know that's a whole nother podcast. Maybe you need to talk to some of our super cool worship friends in the Kidman world about this, but just know that it is different. I do not do worship time in children's church. We worship as part of our church body. So I am the old school children's ministry mentality.

Amber Pike (12:07.874)
where we are in the sanctuary with our families or our special grownups. know, sometimes my daughter's sitting with friends. My nieces are sometimes sitting with their favorite people in church. Sometimes it's with parents. Sometimes it's with Aunt Amber or the kids with Miss Amber. But we're worshiping with our church family. And that is our worship time, our corporate worship where we are singing songs of grace. Maybe you have it in your ministry and your children's church where you have like that full hour, hour and a half.

They come in, they worship. Is it worship or is it doing some songs with motions? That's all I'm gonna say on that. But there are other ways that we can think about prayer and response time as well. So I like to do beach ball praise. It's pretty self-explanatory. You likely do. I don't actually use a beach ball. I use like a squishy, it's like an inflatable Koosh ball. If I'm aging myself enough and you know what a Koosh ball is. By the way, I did a social media reel.

I don't know when you're listening to this, but today, if the day that I record and if you're watching it on this date, about a really fun squishy spiky ball that Hobby Lobby has, this is like the one that I have. It's just tactile-y soothing. So we toss this around in a circle and we say something that we want to praise God for. We can do our thank you prayers like this as well. are thanking God. Thanks, giving thanks is an act of our praise. So maybe when we want to say some thank you prayers, we're tossing around a beach ball.

full body engagement, but they're still able to think and praise God. I love doing prayers. I have this on my website. It's on familyministry.org and you give kids a fun-sized pack of &Ms. You could do Skittles too, but I just prefer chocolate. You separate them by color and then you have a slide up on screen and then you're telling them what they're praising or thanking for with the certain color. So if you have four browns, those are four people you want to thank God for putting in your life. If you have two blues,

You're going to praise God for two awesome things that happened last week. Super fun, super easy. I've also done a spinner wheel of praise. It's wiped off now, but here's my handy dandy spinner wheel and I will put different things of praise on here. I did this when I had a whole praise lesson. I would do to sing a worship song of praise. I would have thank you prayers. I would have some postures of prayer.

Amber Pike (14:33.592)
when we were studying praise and each thing would be a different way to praise. And we would spin it and do a couple of rounds spinning and spin in a different way of praise. This is also a great extra time filler, but I say filler with intentionality, right? It's one of those sermons where the pastor goes super long and you've got like, you've ran through your review questions and added an extra review game and you practice your memory verse again.

Okay, I still got time and they're not done and what do we do? Well free time? No, so let's spin it with some praise. So if you have your spin a reel of praise in your classroom, you can pull it out from time to time. That's way it's not a weekly thing that they get bored of, but a really good use of time because me and my boys and girls are praising God. That's always a great use of time. So think about incorporating some praise time into response, into prayer.

And we are focusing on we praise God for who he is and what he has done. So let's say your lesson, you were discovering that God is omnipotent. He is all powerful. Well, how can we praise God because he is omnipotent? Praise is our response to who he is. We're teaching him who he is, who God is, his character. Let's respond. These are things that your curriculum might have in there.

or you need to add in, this is why we never ever, ever, just look at our curriculum when we walk into church on Sunday, 20 minutes before. You need to be prepping, you need to be training your team on prepping because sometimes they miss the mark when they're writing curriculum or your particular kids might need a particular thing and God's laying it on your heart. Always, always, always be prepping for your lessons in advance.

allowing God to lead you as you are leading these kids. All right, what else can we do to teach children the character of God? Well, sometimes we are teaching with big words in complicated theology and we need to help them understand, help them figure out what this means. So I told you I've got my poster. I also really love object lessons and magic tricks.

Amber Pike (16:50.03)
I think they're awesome. I'm going to give you, if you were at the Bible Creative Conference this year in 2026 online, I told you about it. I didn't show you because on video it's a little hard and I don't want to like spill water on my camera. My Easter lesson that I'm writing, my Easter series is on Jesus and his power over different things. And when I was thinking of Jesus has power over the laws of nature. Okay, what could I do?

Like how could I make this really fun? I've done Oobleck in the past where the kids walk on Oobleck, like Jesus walked on water. Super fun, super messy when you have children walking on corn starch and water. Love it, but didn't want to do it for church on Sunday. So what could I do? Okay, if Jesus could walk on water, what could I do that would be really, really cool? And I came up with a magic trick on, I can make a cup float. So if you're watching this, you will see my trick. So I have a cup.

a solo cup and inside I have hot glued a thing of fishing line where it kind of loops over and makes an X. I glued it in my four corners. We're always testing things because I went through many variations to make this work. Then I have a can that has fishing line and I attached it to a paper clip to where it's going to hold it in there. I got some hot glue on there and I'm using a can. My can is a Waterloo Blackberry Lemonade. Love these things.

won't be using this when I do it live because this is a clear liquid and you need something with color. So I will probably get a Coke can or something to where it's a dark liquid and it won't be full because I'm not gonna make a mess. So you put your...

paperclip in there and I'm gonna walk in holding it where the kids won't be able to see my fishing line. So if you're seeing the camera, like I'm holding my can and my cup in my hand and you can't tell that I have it in my hands. And I'm gonna be talking, you Jesus, he could walk on water. He had power over the laws of nature. Like I can't walk on water, but you know what I can do? I can actually make this cup float. Do you think I can make the cup float? So I'm gonna pour my soda into my cup.

Amber Pike (19:01.198)
and watch my cup's gonna float because I'm just that powerful. And so then you hold it and then you start pouring and when you're pouring the liquid goes down the string. It just, goes there so it's hiding the string and then it'll be like, oh, they're gonna be like, what? And it'll be like, this is just a trick. But Jesus could do that. He walked on water. It wasn't a trick. There wasn't special stepping stones. He was walking in the middle of the sea. How could he do this?

Well, because he is omnipotent. He is all powerful. nature, the laws of nature, the laws of gravity, physics, don't matter to him. He can do anything because he is all powerful. Guys, I have so many different magic tricks and object lessons, illustrations, those things kids need. They are logic thinkers. They are figuring out how to put things together. They sometimes need a good visual or a good trick, something to help them concretely think about it.

Add those in. If you're not following me on social media, make sure you're following me on social media and on YouTube because anytime I come up with a cool one of these, I'm posting it. I'm telling you exactly how to do it. I am not a real magician. I'm not keeping these things to myself. I want you guys to be able to use them. They are truly, truly helpful when we are teaching kids big concepts. So my Omni words that I teach all the time, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, those are hard words.

The word sovereign, it's hard to spell, it's sometimes hard to say. I have kids repeat these words to me. We go over them time and time again because repetition is key for kids. When we are teaching the character of God, teaching kids to understand who God is, you better believe I am telling them over and over again that God is loving, that he is kind, that he is all powerful, that he is just, that he is holy. One lesson in their childhood that God is holy is not gonna cut it.

We need to constantly be reinforcing these two kids so they can begin to get a good understanding of who he is so that they can in turn choose to follow him and choose to be sanctified to become more like Jesus. That is our goal. So that's the classroom side, just kind of some quick tips on it. But we also want to make sure that we are equipping mom and dad to do this at home. We have a limited amount of time with our kids.

Amber Pike (21:23.572)
So how are we equipping mom and dad to teach them the character of God at home? Well, honestly, let's follow the same pattern. What are we sending home? Are we sending home things that are going to point to Jesus, to point to God and his character? What is this teaching us about God? Maybe this is your take-home paper. Our curriculum at Renewa Nation has a take-home paper and sometimes it's teaching the character of God, maybe sometimes it's more of the lesson.

Maybe you are putting a slide on your social media. Hey, mom and dad, talk with your kids. What did this week's Bible passage teach them about God? Boom. Make sure that we are sending home some really quality resources. Maybe you want to do a unit on the attributes of God, on God's character, and you're sending home some really cool stuff. Well, I have some suggestions for you.

Praise him, a 30 day family devotional. Because I love teaching the characters of God, it just kind of keeps coming out in a lot of stuff that I do. Section two of this book, so the first six days are like, what is praise? Why are we to praise? Why does God deserve praise? Et cetera. Then we move into, what are we praising about God? God is creator, he is sovereign, the Lord reigns. God is incomprehensible, God is wise.

Jesus is God, God is powerful, God is our refuge, God is mighty, God is good, God is love, God is eternal, God hears us, God is just, God is merciful, God is caring, God is holy. So a bulk of this devotion is on character of God. Another one that I love and didn't write is God, you are, 20 promises from the Psalms for kids. That's a really fun one too, that we are understanding who God is and what we need to know about him.

look for some quality resources that you can put in the hands, but we want to make sure that they are pointing starting with scripture, not just a verse tacked in. We want the scripture to be key because what is the number one way that God reveals himself to us through his word? So we always want to be pointing moms and dads to be leading their families straight from the Bible.

Amber Pike (23:42.082)
If this is maybe kind of a new concept to your parents, I highly recommend that they go check out the Renew Nation Review Magazine or our blog in our Spring 2026 issue. I have an article teaching children to have a correct view of who God is. It is also a blog article on our website, so I'm dropping in the show notes both of those.

Our magazine is free. It is a free resource that you just pay the cost of shipping to get. It is also digital. So you could just digitally, hey, here's a great magazine for you guys. Or I'm going to put in the show notes this blog article. How are we teaching children to have a correct view who God is? So different things, a lot of what I've said here. We are starting with scripture. We are teaching God's word is truth. We are praying. We are studying the attributes of God, teaching them how to respond to who God is. All of that stuff.

This is important. We need to teach children to begin to understand who God is. They will never fully do it. We can't. God is God. But as they are beginning in their walk, continuing in their walk, growing in their faith, they need to be pointed to who God is, to be able to stop, to pause, to recognize, to grow in their understanding of Him and then have time to respond.

to who he is and we need to be making sure that we are intentionally doing this and creating space for this as well as helping moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas to do the same. So just to kind of reiterate a couple of the things that I mentioned, all of it's gonna be in the show notes. Check out the Renewination Curriculum Line, our Who is God series, especially four lessons, super deep, super meaty, comes with a great take home that you email or you print out and hand to them. Praise Him, a 30-day devotional for families. You can get it.

bulk pricing on our website. can order just, you know, however many copies you need on our website or Amazon, but Renewination.org does have bulk pricing. And then The God You Are, 20 Promises from Psalms for Kids, really fun book. And then The Teaching Children to Have a Correct View of Who God Is blog from the Renewination Spring 2026 issue. All of that in the show notes. Couple of things just to help you. My YouTube channel has other magic tricks, object lessons to

Amber Pike (26:00.312)
help make these truths kind of come alive and be a little easier to understand for guys and gals. And then just, I just want to encourage you, ask that question. What does this passage teach us about God? Make sure you are constantly pointing to God, who he is and reinforcing this to your kids. We want to see boys and girls walking as lifelong disciples of Christ. We don't want good little boys and girls who make Christ-like choices.

We want to see boys and girls following Christ as Christians living for Him and becoming more like Him. That's our goal and we need to be teaching kids who God is so that they can walk that walk. Hey Kidman Leaders, remember what you do matters.