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Well, it is back to school for the Ray family this week. I know everybody starts school at different times, but for us, school starts back this week. I’m so excited. And with school comes a lot of different ideas about new rhythms and routines that we wanna implement as a family. I personally get really excited about it, but one thing that God has been putting on my heart over and over again this year is implementing rhythms of faith to go alongside our rhythms of school and that is what today’s episode is all about.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.

Okay, I’m doing something new and exciting on the podcast for the first time this episode, and that is, I’m videoing it at the same time as recording the audio and it feels so weird. I’m just gonna say it. It feels so crazy to be videoing it. I’m used to doing this in my girl's bedroom closet in sweaty workout clothes with no makeup on, so this feels very different.

I can’t promise that I won’t show up here in sweaty workout clothes with no makeup on. But today you caught me on a good day. I am excited to try something new, though, and to allow you to maybe put a little bit more of a face with a voice as you listen to the podcast. And hopefully you’ll feel like you really get to know the person behind this podcast a little bit more.

But bear with me. I’m learning as I do this and just trying something new is a challenge. It’s fun for me. So thanks for bearing with me. Okay, let’s jump into today’s episode. I have a lot of things I feel like God has been teaching me and just pressing on my heart that I wanted to share with you as we start the school year.

And I’m gonna start by reading Deuteronomy 6 verses 4–9: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I’m giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up, bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your home and on your city gates.

I read this verse this last week and so many different things stuck out to me. Obviously it’s the greatest of all the commandments. Jesus says that when he teaches. I think sometime around the Sermon on the Mount, somebody asks him what’s the greatest of all the commandments? And he says this, he quotes this. Love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul, strength, and then love your neighbor as yourself.

But what stood out to me, and I’ll get into this a little bit more in the episode, is that the words I’m giving you today are to be in your heart. And after they’re in our hearts as parents, then we take them and repeat them to our children. When we’re eating breakfast, when we’re walk, taking a walk as a family, when we’re taking them to gymnastics or piano practice, when we’re going to a soccer game, when we’re putting them down to bed.

You know, obviously, I’m paraphrasing in like today’s world, but it’s like whenever you wake up, whenever you’re doing life, we are to be teaching our kids scripture. And I love my girls’ school. My, my two girls are the only ones in school age this year. They’re going into first and third grade. My two boys are still at home and in preschool.

And anyway, my girls’ school’s fantastic. And on the first like intro day of school training that the parents have to go through because it’s a hybrid school—this is a little bit of a tangent, but I homeschool them three days and then they attend school two days in person—so I have to go to like teacher trainings, so I’ll know how to teach them first and third grade.

Anyway, at the training there is this guy who gave this devotional word a challenge to all the parents and he said, you have to be the ones to teach your kids scripture. It has to be in the home. It can’t be the church. You can’t rely on the church to be the ones to teach your kids scripture all the time. It can’t be school if your kids go to a private school. It can’t be, and you can’t even just put them in front of Christian TV shows or Christian educational things. Like you have to do it in your home. It starts with us.

And I was so encouraged by that all over again. I started thinking on a lot of different things that I have heard of or things that we have done or things that my friends have done where we can implement rhythms of faith into our school rhythms and really make sure that I am doing that, that I’m teaching them scripture in the home, that Will and I are are the ones to disciple our kids first.

And so this episode is it, it doesn’t matter what school your kid goes to, your kid can go to any school. It still falls on us as the parents to disciple our kids. So I just wanna say this episode isn’t for, you know, a specific kind of school that your kids attend or parents. It is for everybody who wants to follow the Lord and teach your kids his ways. So I’m gonna share four things that I think are great ways where we can implement rhythms in our family or in our home life alongside rhythms of school to teach our kids scripture and disciple them at home.

The first one is to choose a theme for the school year based on scripture. This is something that our girls school already does, but I think that any parent can do this if your school doesn’t do it. And I’ve only ever heard it done at our school. So I think most schools actually do not do this. But I love, here’s some ideas for you that our school has used the last several years.

One year the school theme was “Press On” and it was based on that scripture “press on towards the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Another year it was “Shine Like Stars” and it was that scripture that talks about shining like stars in a crooked and depraved generation and, you know, be a generation that doesn’t grumble or complain but shine like the stars in the heavens. And that was the theme, “Shine Like Stars.”

Notice it’s like these short phrases: “Press On,” “Shine Like Stars.” This year, it’s “Take Hold, Stand Bold,” and it’s all about the armor of God and we’re gonna be going through the armor of God the entire year.

And what’s so cool is yes, they’re learning so many things in school, but you can look back and remember that year—oh, that was the year that we learned all about pressing on. That was the year we learned to shine like stars. And just having a theme for your school year is really a great way to just keep coming back to a verse, memorizing it, talking about it all the time, what it really means, even applying it.

Funny side story: The year that we had “Press On” as our theme, I’ll never forget, I was homeschooling Millie on one of her homeschool days and I was like, “Millie, what is, let’s think about this. What does this mean?” We’re working on memorizing the verse.

And at that time I would let her do three or four subjects and then watch one show on TV as a reward. And then she would do a few more and then we would watch another show and then we would be done. And I was like, what does it mean right now? You’re getting really discouraged. Like we gotta press on, come on, let’s press on. And she was like, it means that I’m pressing on toward the upward call and the goal of watching TV and I need to keep pressing on.

I was like, oh, well okay, that’s kind, you’re kind of getting it, but it’s a little bit more than that. Anyway, just funny side story, but in their own little minds they like under they, they start to understand and piece it together. And then of course as they get older they really take hold of the meaning of what those verses mean and how they can apply to their lives.

So first encouragement is maybe to consider choosing a theme based on scripture for that school year. Number two, memorize one verse a month as a family, a friend of mine in small group does this. I would really love to do this this year as a family and, and my thought is I’m gonna write it in Sharpie on a poster board, maybe cut a poster board in half, write it in Sharpie and just hang it in our kitchen or in our homeschool room so I can see it. I’m such a visual person. But memorizing one verse a month, what that allows for is a very simplified approach to memorizing scripture. You do it as a family. It’s something that you can go back to and talk about often and it also can be a guide for family devotions.

If you have maybe one night a week where you wanna have family devotions, you can lean on the scripture, the memory scripture that you are memorizing together and studying together to guide your family devotions for that month. I think about the verse I just read, this is one that I want our family to memorize.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

You could break that apart over three weeks. What does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your heart? And just talk about that one night,and then the next week, what does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your mind? And really dig deep into that and talk about that. What does it mean to love him with all your strength? And then the fourth week could be like, love your neighbor as yourself. What does that mean? What does that look like in our lives? And just allowing this memory verse the space and centrality in your home so that you can come back to it and discuss it on a deeper level during family devotions.

So that’s the second thing, just memorizing one verse a month as a family. The third encouragement that I have for you is to make time on the school mornings before your kids wake up for you to really connect with the Lord, you the parent. So this doesn’t have to do with the kids necessarily. This one is an encouragement from my heart to yours because I know I have to have that time with the Lord first.

And hear me when I say it, it doesn’t have to look a certain way and it doesn’t need to be exactly what I do. God is bigger and he understands our seasons, especially for the mamas listening who are sleep deprived. Please know that God meets us where we are.

But once Benji started sleeping through the night and I felt like I could have a little bit more of a predictable schedule and I started working out again in the mornings, a friend of mine really challenged me and encouraged me. She was like, I have to be in the word first. She was like, I don’t, you do what you want, but I have to get up and get in the word first before I workout, otherwise it’s just not gonna happen. And that really just stuck with me. And now I’ve kind of adopted that as my own.

I get up and I just wanna hear from God. Like I just wanna spend time with him, even if I’m groggy and I’m drinking coffee and I, I just, I try to get in the word, I try to get truth in my mind and then I try to just pray and connect with him and just ask him to help me. Now if you can’t get up that super early or your baby’s waking up a lot at night, make it simpler. Get on your knees right when you get outta the bed. Like if your kid wakes you up every morning, the baby’s crying, just hit your knees first and just say, “God, help me. Bless my day and, and turn my heart towards you because you’re my strength.” And then move on. I mean, it can be a 15-second add-on.

But whatever it is, my encouragement to you is don’t grab your phone and look at it before you’ve connected with God. Don’t go workout or get busy with your routine before you’ve connected with God. Make sure there is a connection point with God because Deuteronomy 6, it says, these words I’m giving you today are to be in your heart. They’re to be in your heart. And then once they’re in your heart, it says, repeat them to your children.

So my third encouragement is just for you to take some time to find that connection point with God to get in scripture and to pray before the hustle of the day begins.

And then the fourth encouragement is to implement a simple family rhythm to guide you and your children’s hearts to the Lord at the beginning of their day.

So there are a lot of different examples I’m gonna throw at you. You can choose one, you can make up your own. But for me it really helps me to kind of listen and hear what other families do so that I can know what might work for my family. So I’ve been listening to Habits of the Household, which has been such a good book. It’s so good. If you’ve read it, you know, one of the things they talk about is they all stand at their doorway every morning and the mom and the dad and all their boys, they hold hands and they just say a quick prayer over their day and then they all part ways and go about their day. Very simple, but I love that they kind of view it as like a sendoff of the family.

But before the family is sent off to do all their different things, they pause and they, they invite the Lord in and they ask God to bless their day and they look to him and they just acknowledge him before their, their busyness, which I love.

Another example is maybe you have, you know, 10 minutes while your kids are eating breakfast. And maybe we just say, guys, we are going to eat breakfast in silence while mom reads scripture and prays over our day. A friend of mine just posted recently on Instagram that she is taking her girls through the book of James over breakfast. And so they’re just gonna read one Bible verse a morning, maybe two, and talk about it through the whole school year. And this whole school year, they’re just gonna be going through the book of James and it’s gonna be at breakfast because that’s what they can do.

Another option that you could consider is just listening to scripture while you’re driving your kids to school. If you have to take your kids to school in the morning, just listen to scripture on a Bible app and then talk about it.

One thing that we love to do is listen to a worship playlist that I’ve made on Spotify. It’s awesome. It’s so fun. It’s like really pump you up, worship God, get ready for your day. You’re strong, you’re brave, you can do this. Let’s be grateful. Let’s worship him. He is our strength for today. Just that kind of theme, going through all of these different songs reminding us who God is, reminding us that he’s the one who gives us strength for our school day, and we love doing that.

And then another thing that we do, just kind of has like, I don’t know, it just started last year, maybe the year before as we were driving to school, as soon as I turn into their school, I turn it off, I turn the music off and I say, it’s time to pray. And I just say a quick prayer over all of the kids for their day, right as I’m dropping ’em off. And then we hug and kiss and say goodbye.

So just consider doing any number of those things. The last thing I did wanna say—I just remembered another one my friend had shared—she always leaves our kid, her kids with a challenge for the day. And she says, “Okay kids, I want you to find someone to bless today. And I’m gonna ask you when I pick you up from school who, who it was that you blessed and how did you bless them?” And so kind of leaving them with a challenge. Or, hey kids, I want you to find someone that you don’t know and ask them their name and make them feel welcome today. Or find a new kid in school and sit next to them at lunch or ask them three questions. So anything, just leaving them with a challenge and then following up on that challenge at the end of the day. I love that as well.

So just think about it. Think about what are simple rhythms that you’re already doing as part of your school routine, and how can you add a rhythm of faith into that to encourage your children to turn their hearts toward God again and again to look to him to be their strength as they go about their school day. And how can we do that too as parents before the craziness of the days begin? Because goodness, the Lord knows I need that. I need some extra patience and strength as we start out this school year.

So I just wanna end the episode by challenging you and ask you, is there anything that you need to change about your schedule? Or maybe you don’t even need to change anything. Is there anything that I’ve mentioned today that you could maybe add in or try as part of your family routine, adding a faith rhythm to your already existing school rhythms so that we as parents can be discipling our kids, teaching them scripture, and building them up in Christ as they go about their school year.

It was Sally Clarkson who said: