Faith Through the Eyes of a Child: What God’s Voice Looks Like

Did you know you can see God’s voice? According to my son you can. I love experiencing faith through the eyes of a child!

We were driving across the dam near our home recently and I heard him, from the back seat, say:

“Look, Mom! That looks like God’s voice.”

I looked out over the water to my right and saw light coming from the sky, looking something like this:

Every time we see the light coming from the sky like this, he says something like this. As I began thinking about this idea of whether or not we can “see” a voice (as we adults over complicate faith matters!), this song by Mandisa came to mind:

And then I thought, well, yes, absolutely it makes total sense. Even though … faith does not have to make sense! But I do love that when my son saw that, his first thought was that it looked like God was speaking.

These are the kind of moments I love as a parent, seeing faith taking root in my children’s hearts and playing out in their day-to-day lives in personal ways. It gives me confidence that their faith is becoming their own, slowly but surely, and that it will only continue to grow the older they get.

This is my prayer!

We only get one shot with our children and the days come and go so quickly, it seems at times.

I try to talk about God and faith with my children as much as possible throughout each day, letting the words of the Bible sink into their hearts so they know the way we are living is the way God has told us to live, not just some rules or life dictated by Mom and Dad.

God told the Israelites after giving them the 10 Commandments through Moses:

“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” Deuteronomy 6:6-8

Recent Teachable Moment

Just recently, our son has started requiring his sister to “use the magic word” when asking for something from him. While we do want them to be well-mannered and be in a habit of using the word, “please,” and I know he is really mimicking what he hears us saying, he generally has quite the demanding tone, and really, there are always times when even the most well mannered person may not say please when asking for something.

I had the perfect teachable moment just the other day to demonstrate this, and teach about what grace is, when he suddenly requested that I take a certain route home …. without saying please, that is. If I had asked him to use the word please, we would have been past the road I needed to turn down when he responded.

So I turned onto the road and then asked him if he had said, “please”? He paused and looked at me briefly, realizing that he had not. And he said, “No.” I explained to him that if I had waited for him to say please we would have already been past the road and would not have been able to go that way.

I suggested that he might think about showing his sister grace, as I had just done with him, in this type situation in the future, to which they both asked, “What’s grace?” I explained that grace is favor that is not deserved but just like God showed us this through Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins, we should show it to each other, too.

Now, I get that at 7 and 3 years old, they are too young to grasp the deeper meanings of grace, but I believe people often underestimate how much children do comprehend. And we do have to begin somewhere with them. What better way than through example when teachable moments like this arise?

What about you …. how do you help guide your child through his/her own personal faith journey?

If you missed the first post of this series you can read it here: What God Looks Like

About the Author

Adopted at age 2, grew up in the Charlotte, NC area. Obtained Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Appalachian State University. Loves being a Mom of two and taste-testing Chef John's culinary creations and sharing them with readers.

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