4 Ways to Share the Gospel with Kids Who Have Special Needs

by jphilo | Jun 19, 2013 | Different Dream, How-Tos, Special Needs Ministry, Special Needs Parenting

4 Ways to Share the Gospel with Kids Who Have Special Needs

The gospel is meant to be shared by parents with their children, even their children with special needs. Today, guest blogger Becky Hallberg—mom of kids with special needs and trained in special education—offers tips about how to share the gospel with kids who have special needs.

Everyone Can Learn

I have felt challenged lately to share the gospel with kids who have special needs. Opportunities have been coming across my path like never before. It’s such a blessing, but at the same time, such a sacred privilege. But even more than the challenge to share Christ’s love with others has been the burden to share that with our kids—not just the three kids belonging to my husband and me, but our kids—your family’s children, my family’s children—our families who deal with special needs.

I am a teacher by profession, and took courses to be certified in Special Education as well as Elementary Education. There are many who would discount a child’s ability to learn based on their special needs. And I will be the first to tell you that, yes, it can be challenging to explain simple concepts to someone who struggles to learn. But that’s just it—it’s challenging, not impossible. I am a firm believer that any child, regardless of special needs that are present, has the ability to have knowledge of Jesus. Why? Because God made us to know and love Him—all of us, regardless of anything that seems to hinder us. With the schooling of our children and all that goes along with that, the therapies, the medical issues, and the many other issues we face with our kids, how can we easily sow God’s Word into their lives? How can we make sure we are intentional about sharing God’s love with our children?

4 Ways to Intentionally Share the Gospel with Kids Who Has Special Needs

Music: So many kids learn well by music. The repetition of the tune and the words helps it to sink in. There are great CDs that teach kids. There are ones that are as simple as Sunday school songs (Jesus Loves Me, The B-I-B-L-E), and other CDs that are contemporary worship that kids love as well. Find what works for your family, but play music for them if they like music!
Bible Verses: Teach your child a Bible verse, and no, I don’t mean something complex. Shorten it, paraphrase it, write it on a note card, make it easy for them to see, and repeat it for them (and with them!) often. {Side note: I know that many families have children who are non-verbal. These suggestions are not meant to discourage you. I’m not suggesting we have our kids memorizing and reciting Scripture if they are not able to do so. What I’m suggesting below are ways that we, as parents and friends, can fill their hearts with Scripture and the knowledge of God’s love!}
Pictures: So many kids learn well if they have an image to go along with what they are learning. Pictures can be worked into many parts of how we teach our children. My kids love the preschool and early elementary Bibles that are full of pictures to go along with each story. Maybe that kind of book would work well in your home. Or maybe you’re good at designing images. Even a simple picture of a heart with the word Jesus on it would help our kids to visually remember that Jesus loves them! This can be as easy and simple as you need it to be, or as intricate and detailed as you would like it to be! I’m not great at art, so I’m always thankful for resources with great pictures, or the opportunity to draw my own simple image.
Time: Spending time with our kids can be the easiest way to plant God’s Word in their hearts. Often, when we’re driving to therapy, I will use that opportunity to play some worship music, or to work on a Bible verse with my son. It’s simply a matter of taking the opportunities that we naturally have, and making the most of them. My husband reads with the kids before bed each night. Some of the stories are more adventure-like, some are more biblical-based. It’s just one of those times when we’re already focused on the kids, and we’re doing just a little more to show the importance of God’s love.

How Are You Being Intentional?

How are you being intentional, and practically sowing God’s Word into your child’s life? The suggestions I’ve made are just a few of the many ways we can do this. And, really, if you’re sharing God’s Word and God’s love with someone, especially your child, there are so many right ways to do that. Let’s make sure we’re being intentional with our children and God’s love!

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How To Respond to a Special Needs Calling

Do you think of parenting your child with special needs a calling from God? Do you ever struggle about how to respond to his call? It’s sometimes a struggle for guest blogger Rebekah Benimoff as this post shows.

How to Respond to a Special Needs Calling

Today I read a word from God via the heart of a mother: “Life is not an emergency. Life is brief and it is fleeting, but is not an emergency… Emergencies are sudden unexpected events—but is anything under the sun unexpected to God?”

Sigh.

My heart resonates with desire to live every moment fully, to ferret out paths of gratitude which buoy up the soul and sustain, even when life is chaotic and unclear.

What if My Life is Speckled with Emergencies?

The question: But what if life—my life—is speckled with emergencies?

The words on the page answer back, “…life is so urgent it necessitates living slow.”

I nod. There is much in my life that I would call urgent. “In Christ, urgent means slow. In Christ the most urgent necessitates a slow and steady reverence.”

I think back across weeks and months, even years, and understanding lights. The paradox in our many emergencies is this: these sudden unexpected events require me to slow down. To watch carefully. To live fully in the moment. Yes, there is the flurry and the fear and the lightning trip to the hospital, the ER, the children’s medical center. But what follows is always time to wait.

Is it my Calling to Keep My Baby Alive?

When I am so still, anxiety billows up, and I have to pray away fear. I take seriously this caregiving, this challenge to do my part in seeking after ways to help a not-big-enough boy to grow. I watch carefully the peaks and valleys of managing blood sugars and digestive issues and aiming towards balance. But sometimes I grasp more responsibility than is mine to shoulder. I think it is my job to keep my son alive. Oh, Father God! How does a mother’s heart become utterly spent? When this mother tries to claim that which is for the hands of God alone.

It is mine to love and soothe and serve and offer care in the ways that my son’s uniquely designed body and soul need. But it is not my job to keep my baby alive.

I weep with the truth of it. Mothering a child with medical needs is hard and helpless all at once. I’ve spoken the strain and struggle. “I spend my life just trying to keep him alive.” I am consumed, depleted. I pour out all I am and still it is not enough. It has been my pursuit but it is not my calling. As if I could breathe life and breath and wholeness into his body with all my striving. But there is a breath that comes only and always from heaven.

My Calling Is to Let Go

My calling is to let go. When devastating unknowns compel me to run into my prayer closet and cry out to God, his sweet whisper urges, let go. Not of the tenderness in a mother’s heart, not of prayer—for it is a most powerful weapon against the enemy. Not even of the natural desire to protect and to resolve medical struggles. Let go—but not of the desire that a precious little one JUST FEEL BETTER and GROW. The Voice seeking to calm and sustain invites,

“Let go of your expectations of yourself.“

And I breathe hard and grasp truth, and pour out words onto a page. But can I live this way? There is risk in release. Yet I know that too often I labor under a load I was never called to carry. The true calling when faced with a season of urgent waiting is this: release the urge to control and linger in the arms of love. He is the gift within the suffering.

My Calling Is to Let God Equip Me

Now is the moment to walk free—to throw off fear and expectation and allow God to equip me for what He’s called me to and let go of the rest. I am certain this will be a process, a journey with many needed reminders. But I am also sure that abundant living is not possible without this letting go. So I seek the altar, the place of release. And the Voice resounds with love I need like breath: God does not expect me to be perfect, He simply asks me to be real and allow the blanket of grace to cover that which I cannot… and was never meant to. We tarry here, in this holy place, and I find rest for my soul.

What Has God Called You to Do?

Do you sense God calling you through Rebekah’s words? What is he calling you to do?

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photo credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net

By

Rebekah Benimoff is the wife of a husband with PTSD and the mother of two young men, both of whom grew up with medical and special needs. She blogs at In the Chaos…. and In the Calm (justmemama.blogspot.com).

Author Jolene Philo

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