God-Centered Children: Teaching Our Kids the Biggest Vision

We have a mission statement at Desiring God with several lines in it. The last line goes like this: “. . . grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.” That’s what we exist to be, and that’s what we encourage other ministries to be. So, one of the main reasons I’m here is that I believe Truth78 is one of those ministries — grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.

When the founders of this ministry, David and Sally Michael, were my colleagues in the ministry at Bethlehem Baptist Church (where we served for decades together), this was the glorious impact that they had on me and on the ministry to our children: everything was grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures. They left a legacy not unlike that of John Bunyan.

Spurgeon loved the classic Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. He loved it because it was grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures. He said,

[Bunyan read the Bible] till his very soul was saturated with Scripture; and, though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress — that sweetest of all prose poems — without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man is a living Bible!” Prick him anywhere — his blood is Bibline. The very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the word of God. (Autobiography, 2:159)

God-Centered Discipleship for Children

When David wrote us at Desiring God, asking me to come, he said,

My hope is that John will do what he has always done to validate the significance of faithful, God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, doctrinally grounded, mission-advancing discipleship beginning with the youngest of children.

The key to that long list of hyphenated phrases (that I love) is to realize that the phrase Bible-saturated gives rise to all the others. So, I want to try to pick one of those — namely “God-centered” — and reflect with you about its meaning, its rootedness in the Bible, and how ministry to children sheds light on it. In other words, it’s not only true that being God-centered shapes children’s ministry (which it does), but also that doing ministry to children shapes the way we think about God-centeredness. It goes both ways. Being God-centered shapes the way we do children’s ministry, and doing children’s ministry thoughtfully shapes the way we think about God-centeredness.

Beyond Contextualization

For example, what doing ministry to children clarifies for us is the limits of what’s called contextualization. Contextualization ordinarily means that you bring a truth to a culture or a group and you try to find some idea or practice or language in the group that would help make this truth understandable. Then you put the truth in the terms of something understandable in the target culture, all the while trying not to lose the truth. We all do this, for example, if we go to Germany and we have to use German in order to get our idea across.

But when children are the “target culture,” so to speak, what they make plain is that, to make truth about God understandable, we must do more than connect our ideas with concepts they already have. Because what we discover in their little minds — their glorious, Godlike little minds — is that they don’t yet have sufficient concepts for grasping many biblical realities. So, contextualization proves to be an insufficient method of communication. It’s important but insufficient. What needs to be added is this: concept creation. It’s not the adaptation of biblical reality to already-existing concepts but the actual creation in the mind of new concepts, new structures of thought, new ways of viewing reality.

Children are not unique in this regard. They are just a very special case. The Bible teaches that all human beings, apart from the renewal of the mind that comes through being born again, do not have the categories of mind for seeing reality for what it really is. For example, 1 Corinthians 2:14 says,

The natural person [what we are apart from the transforming effects of the Holy Spirit] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

So, every pastor, every Sunday school teacher, and every parent has to deal not only with levels of mental maturity but with levels of spiritual capacity. There are important biblical realities that simply will not fit into the human mind until new concepts, new structures of thought, new ways of viewing reality are created by the Holy Spirit through parents and Sunday school teachers and pastors. This is what I’m calling concept creation. The ministry to children simply makes this necessity crystal clear.

We must so teach, and so pray, as to create categories of thought that don’t yet exist, so that strange and wonderful biblical realities will make sense.

Strange and Wonderful Truth

Let me mention a few of those biblical realities that don’t fit the natural human mind.

1. God rules the world, including the sins of human beings — like Pilate’s expediency, and Herod’s mockery, and the mob’s “Crucify him,” and the soldiers’ brutality (Acts 4:27–28) — yet in such a way that God does not sin as he governs sin.

2. God governs all the steps of all people, both good and bad, at all times and in all places, yet such that everyone is accountable before him and will bear the just consequences of his wrath if they do not believe in Christ.

3. Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, divine and human, such that he upheld the world by the word of his power while living in his mother’s womb.

4. The death of the one God-man, Jesus Christ, so displayed and glorified the righteousness of God that God is not unrighteous to declare righteous ungodly people who simply believe in Christ.

These kinds of mind-boggling, category-shattering truths demand our best thought and our most creative labors — especially when trying to communicate them to children (or at least to prepare children to someday be able to grasp them).

Biblical Defibrillator

Here is the way all this relates to my focus on God-centeredness. As I have tried to make a case for God-centered everything over the past fifty years, what I have found is that many Christians simply take that concept and fit it comfortably into their already-existing mental framework. They do not see how explosively contrary it is to things they hold dear but are in fact mistaken or out of proportion.

“Being God-centered shapes the way we do children’s ministry.”

I look at what the people do in worship, or preaching, or counseling, or teaching, or curriculum development for children, and I realize they don’t mean what I mean. They don’t mean what I mean by God-centeredness. It’s not having the same outcome. The phrase “God-centered” is fitting into a concept they already have, and it’s not the same as mine. I’m really not communicating.

So, I have felt that something more is needed here if communication is really going to happen. I really do need not just contextualization but concept creation. The reality I see is being adapted to another view of reality and being lost in the process, while the terminology remains the same.

What do you do to build into a person’s mind (adult or child) a reality that isn’t there? One strategy that I have used for many years is to state the reality I’m trying to communicate in such a shocking (and yet true) way that it requires either rejection or the biblical remaking of some part of the mind.

Let’s take our theme, God-centeredness, as an example. To awaken people to what I mean by God-centeredness, I have regularly used the phrase God’s God-centeredness. That phrase has a double effect. First, it’s strange: people have not used it. And second, it’s troubling: they don’t like it. Why is that? Because it implies that God does what he forbids us to do — namely, exalt himself and make himself central. It forces people to ask whether it might be right for God to do this but wrong for us to do it. And why might that be? And that is a very fruitful question. That might take us to glorious discoveries. Even our children will be troubled by the fact that God does things he tells us not to do.

So, what I’m trying to do is to create a concept, a view of reality called God’s God-centeredness, that does not yet exist in people’s minds (or in a child’s mind), so that when it takes root as fully biblical and beautiful, it makes all God-centeredness as radical as it really is.

Tour of Concept Creation

So, come with me, if you will, on a short biblical tour of how I have tried to do this kind of concept creation. This is what we have to do with our teachers in children’s ministry so that there is a trickle-down effect for the children as gifted teachers find age-appropriate ways of creating concepts in their minds.

There are about four stations on this tour.

Station 1: Awakening Through Provocation

I start with a provocative, shake-you-out-of-your-slumbers quiz to force people to face the issue of whether they will say God is God-centered or not. These questions could be adapted for different age groups, even for children.

• Question 1: What is the chief end of God?

• Answer 1: The chief end of God is to glorify God and to enjoy magnifying his glory forever.

• Question 2: Who is the most God-centered person in the universe?

• Answer 2: God.

• Question 3: Who is uppermost in God’s affections?

• Answer 3: God.

• Question 4: Is God an idolater?

• Answer 4: No, he has no other gods before him.

• Question 5: What is God’s chief jealousy?

• Answer 5: God’s chief jealousy is to be known, admired, trusted, obeyed, and enjoyed above all others.

• Question 6: Is your enjoyment of the love of God mainly owing to the fact that he makes much of you, or is it mainly that he frees you to enjoy making much of him forever?

I press on these unusual questions because if we are God-centered simply because we believe God is man-centered, then our God-centeredness is in reality man-centeredness. But pressing the reality of God’s God-centeredness forces the issue of whether we treasure God because of his excellence or mainly because he endorses ours.

So, now people are agitated. The concept of God-centeredness isn’t fitting so neatly into their minds as they thought it would. They are troubled by the possibility that a way of thinking they’ve never dealt with might be true — namely, God’s God-centeredness.

Station 2: Validation Through Scripture

Now we flood the mind with Scripture about God’s God-centeredness. God’s eternal, radical, ultimate commitment to his own self-exaltation permeates the Bible. God’s aim to be exalted, glorified, admired, magnified, praised, reverenced, trusted, and enjoyed as a supreme treasure is seen to be the ultimate goal of all creation, all providence, and all saving acts. What I have found is that the following litany of God’s God-centeredness proves overwhelming to people, either winning them or losing them. Many professing Christians bury their heads in the sand of their own theological preferences and ignore the clear teaching of Scripture. But here’s what we find:

1. “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:5–6 my translation).

2. God created the natural world to display his glory: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

3. “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3).

4. “He saved them [at the Red Sea] for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power” (Psalm 106:7–8).

5. “I acted [in the wilderness] for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations” (Ezekiel 20:14).

6. After the people sinfully ask for a king, Samuel says, “Do not be afraid. . . . For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake” (1 Samuel 12:20–22).

7. “Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act [in bringing you back from the exile], but for the sake of my holy name. . . . And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name . . . And the nations will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 36:22–23).

8. “[Christ] died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

9. “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that . . . every tongue [should] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11).

10. “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake” (Isaiah 43:25).

11. “Whoever serves, [let him serve] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified” (1 Peter 4:11).

12. “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck [Herod] down, because he did not give God the glory” (Acts 12:23).

13. “. . . when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

14. “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24).

15. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).

Now, this Bible bath of God’s God-centeredness (God’s relentless self-exaltation) often creates a crisis, because people do not yet have a category for how God can be so self-exalting and still be loving.

Station 3: Clarity Through Objections

God’s God-centeredness is not megalomania because, unlike our self-exaltation, God’s self-exaltation draws attention to what gives us the greatest and longest joy — namely, himself — while our self-exaltation lures people away from the one thing that can satisfy their souls: the infinite worth and beauty of God in Christ. When God exalts himself, he is loving us. He is showing and offering the one thing that can satisfy our souls forever — namely, God.

Listen to how Jesus prays for us in his last hours in John 17: “He lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you . . .’” (John 17:1).

“Don’t underestimate how the Holy Spirit can use God-centered teachers to build glorious concepts into children’s minds.”

He’s asking God to glorify God by glorifying the Son. Then in John 17:24, he prays for us and draws us into this glory: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.”

Lest we think we might see him in his glory and not be able to love him and enjoy him as fully as we ought, he adds this prayer in John 17:26: “[I pray, Father, that] the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” In other words, “When they see my glory, grant them to love and enjoy it (me) with the very love and joy that you’ve had in me from all eternity.”

This is God’s radical and loving God-centeredness. And to receive it requires a profound, Holy Spirit–given concept creation, not just the adaptation of a biblical reality to a fallen, man-centered mind.

If a person has the greatest treasure in the world, and he wants to share it, most people would embrace that person as loving. But if a Person is the greatest treasure in the world, and he wants to share it, many people will reject him as an egomaniac. For that to change, the mind must be renewed. God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act, since love offers what is supremely and eternally satisfying — namely, God.

Station 4: Awakening to Happiness

If God is merciful in shaping this new mental framework that we have seen in the Bible, people awaken to the fact that the pursuit of their happiness in God is, in fact, the fulfillment of God’s purpose to be magnified. God exalts himself as the all-satisfying treasure of the universe, and we magnify that greatness by, in fact, being supremely satisfied with him. God’s pursuit of his glory and our pursuit of joy turn out to be the same pursuit.

This is what Christ died for. First Peter 3:18 says, “Christ . . . suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” And what does he intend for us to find when we are brought to God as the greatest treasure in the universe? Psalm 16:11 says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Children can get this. Don’t underestimate how the Holy Spirit can use God-centered teachers to build glorious concepts into their minds. You say to the first and second graders in your class,

Let me tell you a story about two brothers. One brother was sixteen years old and the other was just your age. He was seven. The younger brother liked his older brother a lot. He liked him so much that nothing made him happier than to spend time with his big brother. He would rather be with his big brother doing things together than anything else.

Now, the big brother knew this. He knew that he was the greatest treasure in his little brother’s life. He knew that he had great value in his little brother’s eyes. So, on his little brother’s birthday, he gave him a box about the size of a shoebox. In the box was a note that the older brother had written. His younger brother opened it and read,

Here’s a gift to make you glad,
Nothing wrong, and nothing sad.
The best I have, I’m sure you’ll see:
A fishing trip, just you and me.

Then you ask the kids in your class, “Do you think the older brother was bragging when he said that the best gift he could give his little brother was to give him a whole day of fishing with his big brother?”

The need is very great for the next generation to be rescued as early as possible from the natural man-centeredness with which we are born.