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8 Ways to Help Your Family Know Jesus
Helping your children know Jesus doesn’t have to follow one perfect formula. Family discipleship can look different from one home to another. What matters most is the destination: helping our children know Jesus, trust Jesus, love Jesus, and live like Jesus.
FamilyLife shares eight practical ways parents can make faith a natural part of everyday family life.
1. Make Church Part of Your Family’s Life
Church matters, but simply taking your children to church isn’t the whole job. Children need to see their parents genuinely involved in a community of believers—not merely attending because they feel obligated to.
2. Pray Together
Prayer may be one of the simplest and most powerful places to begin. Pray together at meals, before bed, in the car, and during difficult moments. When children hear their parents honestly talking with God, they begin to understand that following Jesus is a relationship, not merely a religious activity.
3. Have Family Devotions
Family devotions don’t need to be complicated or lengthy. Read Scripture together, use a devotional, talk about Sunday’s message, sing together, or find another approach that works for your family.
Start small. Even ten minutes once a week can establish a habit that grows over time.
4. Read Together
For younger children, Bible storybooks and trusted Christian books can introduce important truths about God. With older children and teenagers, consider reading a book separately and then talking about it together.
5. Talk About Jesus in Everyday Life
Some of the best opportunities for discipleship don’t happen during a formal Bible study. They happen while driving, eating dinner, watching television, going to school, or simply talking about what happened that day.
Faith shouldn’t feel like something your family turns on for church and turns off afterward. Look for ordinary opportunities to talk about Jesus, what your children are learning about Him, and the questions they have about God.
6. Use What’s Happening Around You
News, entertainment, sports, movies, and other events can become opportunities for meaningful conversations about faith. Ask your children what they think, how Scripture might apply, and what following Jesus would look like in that situation.
7. Connect Faith With Activities
Think about where your family already spends its time—school, sports, work, hobbies, or the neighborhood. Talk about what following Jesus looks like in those places.
You can also turn biblical lessons into hands-on experiences. A lesson about God’s creation could become a family nature walk. A conversation about trusting God could become an activity that demonstrates trust.
8. Serve Others Together
Following Jesus isn’t only about knowing what He taught. It’s about learning to live like Him.
Serve at a food bank. Help an elderly neighbor. Support a missionary. Find someone who needs encouragement. When children see their family serving others, they learn that Christian faith is something we live out.
Start Small and Keep Going
You don’t have to start all eight things tomorrow. Choose one or two that make sense for your family and begin there.
Family discipleship is built through ordinary moments repeated over time. A prayer before bed. A conversation in the car. A Bible passage at the dinner table. An afternoon spent helping someone else.
Those seemingly small moments can add up to something much bigger: a home where knowing and following Jesus becomes part of everyday life.
