How to Build a Home That Remembers God: 4 Practices Every Christian Mom Can Start Today

Episode 24 — The Power of Remembering: Teaching Your Family to Remember God’s Faithfulness

In this episode of Real Moms, Real Faith, Jenna explores one of the most beautiful themes woven throughout Scripture: God’s call to remember. From stacked stones by the Jordan River to tassels on garments and feasts around the table, the Bible shows us that remembering isn’t just a nostalgic practice — it’s a spiritual discipline that anchors our families in God’s faithfulness.

Jenna shares personal stories about the simple objects her family has held onto through the years — rocks from vacations, handwritten letters, even a baby onesie from a season of wrestling with God — and how each one has become a “stacked stone,” a tangible reminder of God’s goodness through every season.

You’ll also hear practical, grace-filled ways to build rhythms of remembrance in your own home, including:

✨ Rituals and rhythms like daily prayers, Sabbath practices, communion at home, and simple songs that shape your children’s hearts
✨ Physical reminders that help your family see God’s faithfulness in everyday places
✨ Meals that mark moments, celebrating God’s work through food, traditions, and family stories
✨ Storytelling as discipleship, sharing the moments, miracles, and memories that shaped your faith

This episode will help you slow down, look back, and recognize the God who has carried you, shaped you, and shown up for you — again and again.

If you want encouragement to build a Christ-centered legacy in your home, this conversation will pour fresh hope into your heart.

Share this episode with a mom who needs a reminder that God’s faithfulness is worth remembering. And if this blessed you, rating and reviewing the show helps other moms find these moments of encouragement too.

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Big Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:08

This is Jenna Marie Masters with the Real Mom's Real Faith Podcast. I am so glad you're here so you can be encouraged to trust God with all the things one day at a time. Welcome back to Real Mom's Real Faith. This is episode 24.

Why Our Hearts Crave Remembrance

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The power of remembering, teaching your family to remember God's faithfulness. Today we're going to be talking about something that I think God really built into the core of who we are. It's our desire to remember things. I have a friend who gets a new pair of earrings every time she travels somewhere because she wants to remember that place and she does it with something special like that. And it's really beautiful because she wants to pass down these earrings to her future daughter-in-law. Because every pair of earrings has a story. And maybe some of you have experienced something like you come back from a family vacation that had a beach or rocks around, and you get your kid's suitcase home and it's really heavy, and you're like, what is going on in here? And you unzip it and outpours a pile of sand or a big bunch of rocks. I recently just cleaned out my son's room who moved away to college, and he literally had boxes and boxes of rocks that he had kept from different places we had traveled. Because again, God has designed us with a heart and with a soul that is longing to remember things that are special to us. But here's the question: Are we teaching our kids to remember not only special things and special places? But what about spiritual things and spiritual places? Places where God has met us, or miracles He has done in our faith walk, people in our spiritual walks, the people that have led us closer to Christ, the people that inspire us, the people that came before us in our family or in friendships that have actually laid the foundation for our faith.

Scripture’s Call To Remember

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The word remember appears 169 times in scripture. Clearly, number one, God knows how quickly we forget that He has to remind us to remember. Find in the Bible that the Israelites, God's chosen people, they forget that God was good all the time. They spent 400 years in slavery, and then God gets them out of this slavery in his faithful love. And not far after that, they forget the slavery that they were in and start to wish actually that they would go back, claiming that being in the wilderness was worse. But after 40 years in the desert, God is a miracle there. He actually holds back the waters to cross the Jordan River, much like he parted the seas from Moses to lead his people out of slavery. God does it again so that they can enter the promised land. After they make it to the other side, this is what the Lord says. It's in Joshua 4, 5 through 6. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask what do these stones mean, tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. I find this so beautiful because right after a miracle happens, God stops them and wants them to put physical, tangible thing in their hand to remind them of what he has just done. And then he says, I want this to remind you also what to tell your children in the future. So when your children say, What do these stones mean, you tell them about me. I would love to incorporate this more into my family. I believe the Lord wants us to remember because he knows that when we remember the goodness he has done for us, we find joy. He gives us strength and courage and direction because we know we're part of something bigger than ourselves and we get a sense of belonging, a peace that God has been with us all along, and He'll show up for us now and in the

Joy And Strength In Remembering

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future because we can look back and see the track record to prove it.

Rituals And Rhythms At Home

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The first one is rituals and rhythms. The Jewish people recited a Shima daily, which was a beautiful prayer. They also practiced Sabbath each week. It's an awesome ritual that I think we probably should learn to do a better job of. I am very guilty of not practicing Sabbath, I think, the way that God wants me to do. One ritual that we have had in our family that I love to do is communion. I was brought up in a church where you did communion at church. We never did it at home. And not that that's a wrong thing, but it really opened my eyes years ago when my kids were little, thinking, why am I not doing communion in my home? This is where my disciples really are. This is where God has placed me to be a missionary mom, right? And I want my kids to know and remember what Jesus did for them on the cross because it can get lost. It can get lost in the school pickups and in the playdates. And even though we may read the Bible stories to our kids before nighttime, there is something really holy about picking up a piece of bread with your kids and ripping it and saying, Remember what Jesus did for you. And drinking a little bit of apple juice and saying to them, remember what it cost Jesus to love you. Teaching them to remember the wonder of the cross at an early age is a gift you can give your kids that no one can take away from them. And I just want to encourage you, this does not have to be fancy. Some people think of communion with this beautiful home-baked sourdough loaf of bread. Let me tell you that some days I did try to make it real fancy. I would bake fresh bread, I would have the sparkly martinelles ready, I brought out the pretty glasses, even for my little five and six-year-olds. But you know what? The next week, what it might look like is a pollo loco ripping up the tortilla as our bread and drinking juice boxes. It doesn't matter. It's the heart of it. I highly doubt that when Jesus was breaking bread with the people he loved before he was crucified on the cross, that he cared about the cups or he cared about the quality of the wine or the warmth of the bread. They were having a regular meal around a regular table. The most important thing was he was with the people he loved and he was asking them to remember this moment and remember what he was about to do because it would set the tone for the rest of their lives. So I just want to encourage you to really think about what are some rituals that you could put into place with your family to remember the things that mean the most to you about what God has done for you. And I love the idea of the rhythms going back to that. Is there a prayer? Is there a song? Is there something like that that you could sing with your kids on a daily basis or even just a weekly basis or a monthly basis? Do what works for you. The idea is just to start getting your wheels turning and thinking about this. One rhythm that we have in our family that I didn't realize was a rhythm until I started doing this podcast, is every morning on the way to school, we sing, This is the day that the Lord has made. And we say, Who wants to pray just to make it today? If you know, you know it's Brucey Hammer reference. Couldn't resist. My kids know we can't listen to any other music or talk about anything else once we get in the car in the morning until after we have sung, This is the day that the Lord has made and we've prayed. I've also heard of people sharing God stories once a month with their family, where they just sit around the table at dinner and they go around and they say, What are your biggest God stories this month? It's easy, it's beautiful, and it's meaningful.

Physical Reminders That Speak

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The second thing that we find in the Bible are physical reminders. Just like I read you the Bible verse about the Israelites stacking stones. The Jewish people at this time also wore tassels on their clothes to remind them of God's word. They would post verses on their door frames and they would build memorial stones like I just talked about. Physical reminders to me are the easiest ways to remember. I have a huge sign at the end of my hallway that says, I have seen the goodness of God. And I look at it every day and it reminds me, even if you're not feeling it, you have seen it and you know that it's true. And for me, that's super helpful. In both of our bathrooms, I have Bible verses that are up on the mirrors. Every day, something they can look up that's tangible to remind them of God's word and God's faithfulness. I feel like the sky is the limit with this one. You could even put a cork board up somewhere in your house with a little stack of note cards for your kids to write down answered prayers that happen throughout the week, and they could just pin them up on the board for everyone to see in the family. I feel like our spirits naturally respond to the physical reminders. I mean, think about how popular the bracelets, what would Jesus do the people are wearing? Because it helps to remind them. Think about the things that you've held on to in your life too. Because it's not just about what God has done in your life, but a lot of times it's what God has used other people to do in your life. I think that that is worth celebrating too. My friend Kathy passed away a couple years ago from breast cancer. Her favorite tree was a magnolia tree. So after she passed away, I planted a magnolia tree in my front yard. And it reminds me of Kathy, but it also reminds me of her faith and how she inspired me. Because even though she was sick and even though she was struggling, her faith in God never wavered. And she declared his love and his goodness till her last breath on this earth. Just like the Israelites were told to remember their forefathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, other people that love Jesus can give us strength when we remember them. I also keep things that remind me of times I have wrestled with God. That might sound a little strange, but for me, it reminds me that he allows me to wrestle with him and that he has never left me, even when I question him. I have a baby onesie that I kept from one of our failed adoptions, and it's rolled up in my soft drawer. And it was the baby onesie that the baby was wearing when I first met him, and I took him home. When I had to return him back to a social worker, I kept that little onesie. And every time I look at it, I remember, gosh, that was a really hard time in my faith walk. But God proved faithful. God never left me, and God let me come to him with all of my questions. So to me, it's like I'm stacking a stone remembering of God's goodness in a really hard time in my life. I also kept all of the letters that my kids wrote to the child that we thought we were going to adopt from Ghana. I have them in a box because I love to look at those letters and I can see, even though that adoption also didn't happen, I can see the work that happened in the hearts of my children and the way that God softened their hearts and just opened their eyes to a whole nother world of being Christ-like and following in Jesus' footsteps. I'm sure as I'm speaking, some of you were thinking of things you've held on to. And maybe you've held on to them because you're hurt by them. Maybe they make you sad, but maybe you could shift your perspective to, you know what? I didn't keep this because I'm sad. I kept this because I can see how God was faithful through it. To me, I view a lot of the things that I keep like that as my stacking stones on the path on the way to the promise that God has given me. Because I can look now how we became foster parents, and I can see each of those stones, they really did make a pathway for me to be the mom I'm supposed to be right now. I celebrate that. A third way that we can remember that God is good in our family, one

Meals That Mark God’s Faithfulness

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of my favorites, because it's food. Meals that mark his faithfulness. The Israelites, every feast that they had was a story told through food, like Passover. They were remembering how God rescued them. But we can use our tables too. Each year we celebrate when my daughter was adopted. We call it family day, and we have a meal and we have my parents over and we celebrate that. We remember what God did. Think about something special that happened in your family and consider having a special meal every year to celebrate it or to remember it. And maybe it was a person, a grandparent that passed away, and you love the way they modeled their faith in front of your children. You can make their favorite meal and sit your family down and talk about all of the beautiful things about that person. Remembering takes us back to our roots. I really feel like establishing that in our children's lives is just something you can't take away from them. The fourth and final way is through storytelling.

Storytelling That Plants Faith

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I love at the top of this podcast, I shared the verse with you, and it says, when your children ask you what this is about, you tell them. When your children look at your stacking stones, when they look at the signs on your wall, when they look at the Bible verses you've posted up on the mirror, when your children ask you why you're having this certain meal or why is that tree growing in the front yard? Why do you wear that bracelet? Why do you have that onesie? You can tell your kids stories of God's faithfulness by taking them places. You could take them to the church where you're baptized. You can take them to the park where you prayed through a really hard season. Tell your stories to your kids about God's faithfulness. And I think of my own childhood, and I think back of the stories my parents would tell. My mom got baptized in a river, my dad got baptized by the Holy Spirit. These stories that they tell me, I haven't forgotten them. They sit with me. Their stories are like a soil where the seeds of my faith were planted growing up. I believe that can be true for our children as well. Jesus was a huge storyteller. It is such a beautiful way that we understand the realities, the beauties, the hardships of life. These rhythms of remembering, they don't have to be big, they just need to be intentional. So just to recap, think about rituals or rhythms you could do with your kids. The second thing, what are some physical reminders you could bring into your home? And the third thing, what are some meals that you could start planning to do with your family? And the fourth one, are what kind of stories

Recap And Ways To Share

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do you want to start sharing with your kids about your own faith journey? And ask them to share their stories too. Dr. Seuss once said, sometimes you'll never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. If this encouraged you today, I would love for you to share this with another mom. Be that friend who encourages and equips. And I'm gonna be putting a post up on Instagram. I would love to hear how your family remembers what God has done because I bet this is such a rich subject and there's so many great ideas out there. And I would love to hear them so we can encourage one another. I'd also like to ask, um, as a friend, if you have a moment to go on to Apple Podcasts and rate and review, it would be so helpful because it helps other moms find the podcast faster. And there's just like a gazillion podcasts out there. So I would love this podcast to fall on the ears of anyone who God would love to have hear it. Don't forget to follow, save and share, and subscribe. You're awesome. Give it up for our mommy! Ya will be faster. Love it.