Latest / 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids. / Helping Children Understand the Trinity

Transcript

Helping Children Understand the Trinity · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Five Minute Parenting.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today I have a special guest, Jennifer Bosna.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: She is a grandmother.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: She has three grown daughters.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: She's been married for 35 years, and she's authored three Christian children's books.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, The Baby Garden, I Know the Plans, and the one we're going to discuss today because it helps parents teach their children about God and about theology at their own level.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, Jennifer also works, um, she's a consultant at the local pregnancy center.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: She was an elementary school teacher, and she loves Jesus.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And her books are just really special for kids.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you check out her website, which will be in the show notes, so you can find out more about Jennifer and her books.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, welcome, Jennifer, and tell us about this book and how it came into existence.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sandra, I am so glad to see you.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love you, and I love our connection through the years with being authors and your inspiration to me.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Your books have really inspired me as well.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for having me on the show.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: God is three and one is the one we're focusing on.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I would love to talk about God is three and one.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And God is three and God is three and one is about the trinity.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I like to kind of chuckle at that because, you know, I don't think any author sets out to first start write a book about the trinity because it's really hard for adults and kids to to grasp the concepts in it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I really kind of just want to give a shout out to Jesus for letting me be, you know, the author of this book to give me the ideas because it's only through him that I could do it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was um, you know, it's a tricky topic.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the story is kind of fun, a funny one.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was, I remember where I was exactly.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was with my granddaughter and she was four at the time, and we are walking in her front yard in Texas, and we are just kind of randomly chit-chatting as we we like to do.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: She's very chatty.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what I said something about the Holy Spirit, and she said, Grandma, who is the Holy Spirit?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh, what a question, Fendi.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go there, let's talk about the Holy Spirit.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then they lived in the they lived in the country there, and I looked and I saw her um, the chicken coop.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so back in the day, I would explain the trinity with the chicken coop, kind of like, okay, we have think of an egg.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: We have the eggshell, we have the egg white, and we have the egg yolk.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: All three parts are part of the egg, and that's kind of like the trinity.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she looked at me and she's like, Grandma, like the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and an egg.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: She was not making the connection.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of laughed.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, this is not working.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like eggs and chicken coops and Jesus, like it was not relating.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and then I just kind of walked away and I'm like, whoa, I think I need to do something with this.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when the idea was planted about writing a book on the Trinity.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then I just really prayed.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know Sandra, you do the same thing when God gives you that idea, you just kind of stop and pray, like, okay, is this from you?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: What do you need me to do?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, all right, Lord, give me the words.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then with it came, I remember just sitting on my porch, getting up early in the morning, watching the sunrise, and just editing and editing and editing.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it just came.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then it came to me in rhyme.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I like to talk about God is three and one is first written from the point of view of God the Father.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have I, so I picked a really like strong scripture to kind of go with God, and then God the Son.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: This next section is from the point of view of God the Son.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third section is from the point of view of God the Holy Spirit, and how we get the Holy Spirit in our lives is a very ending page.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I just really felt that that was a great way to tie it all in about how we had God.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we all know, I mean, I didn't really know this until the research, but one thing really interesting about the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit was all there from the beginning of time at creation.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then, like the more you delve, like when you're opening the word, it just kind of reveals to you.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I love the way that Beth Snyder, my illustrator, and she illustrated book number two.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know the plans and this book, but I love the way she, instead of going there in text, she did it with the illustrations of the doves in the air.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: God the Father, they're three doves.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so she kind of tied that in to show that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit has been there since the beginning of time.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot behind the illustrations there.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And Beth Snyder's a major Christian as well.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the way we draw from each other and make the book a little better and visually, you know, can go a little deeper with the with the visuals with it too.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how it got a long story on how that got started.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the illustrations are beautiful.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just actually looking at your book right now as we're talking because I do see the little dove theme.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the little child playing with the doves.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I see, you know, and I probably missed that the first time I went through the book.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So these symbols are just are beautiful and the artwork is beautiful.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so tell me what what ages is this book for?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Really good question, Sandra.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: I really wrote this for kids from four to 10.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think on Amazon it has it four to eight.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, adult kids too, because I think that's when I first started writing it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So four years old is really key because that's when my granddaughter asked me about it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of wrote with that age group in mind.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really fun.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have really enjoyed sitting and reading it with her and my other granddaughter, who's three, they really we sit and the questions that come out of it.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was, you know, we we should, they were really asking some really deep questions and they were pointing out some of the pictures.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the little boy in the picture is Jesus.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that um, they're like, Who is that, grandma?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Well, that is Jesus when he was a boy and he was born just like you and grew up like you.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and it's just really that's so that's kind of the age group, not for like the newborns, but definitely like even three-year-olds on up.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm looking at the back too, you have for further study.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me about how you chose some of those scriptures.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, the one when I sign the book, I write, You have a helper, and I put John 14, 26.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what I loved about the for further study is be on each section, like God the Father, we have Genesis 1.1, that introduces that part.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then um God the Son, I put John 3.16.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I was trying to get some key, key um verses there to kind of go with it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then Holy Spirit is Acts 1.8.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: But when you research, there's so there's so much in scripture about where God talks about Jesus in the Old Testament, you know, with Isaiah 53 and all the prophetic words of all the prophets.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to kind of for parents and people that are new to the Bible, I wanted to kind of dig in deeper so they can see all the spots, like in so many in John.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I after I looked, I'm like, it's really pretty lopsided with all the John scriptures.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: But he has so many in there when he talks about God the Father and then Jesus and then his helper with the Holy Spirit coming and all the different ways that he will be in our lives.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted just to give like a parent's springboard per se on how they can dig deeper and if their kids have questions of where they could go.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the other part I love on the further study is where it talks about um, you know, some of the definitions because what's a prophet?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: What's prophecy?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: What's growing spiritually?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to kind of give some easy definitions for that for especially the newbies, because the parents are going to be reading this.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them maybe won't have a lot of biblical knowledge, or and this is a great leapfrog for them.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then my other favorite part is um the names of God.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's beautiful.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, there's so many.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, the name of God with being Yahweh and and God the Father, there's so many different synonyms.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing with Jesus, um, with all the different names of Jesus, I like the savior, the messiah.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I really want to include son of man because we know of son of God, but son of man, that is son of man is what Jesus referred to him the most in scripture as him to himself is son of man.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I sorry about that little ring.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I did not hear it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good, good.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is great, like a great refour source for kids because they'll hear these terms and then they can go back and say, Oh, that's a name for Jesus, or that's a name for the Holy Spirit.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um this book is just really amazing.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the the fact that you put it in verse, oh my gosh, to be able to put the a theological book for that age in verse is pretty amazing.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I really want to tell our guests to go back and look at your website and your other two books.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, thank you so much for being with us today, Jennifer.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: You are so welcome, Sandra.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: They can find me at jennifermosma.com and and front parking spot is my podcast.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot to mention your yes.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, you're good.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: She has a great podcast for moms and helping and encouraging them.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So be sure to check out.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been on her podcast, so be sure to check out.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And your episode is coming out on election day.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're looking for a podcast and you want to hear Sandra on mine, I know the dates when this gets posted, but it's it's um episode 55.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And Sandra, you are my guest and you've done a wonderful job talking about we can talk about our uniqueness and everything with God with your book, Maisie.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you're welcome for being our guest today.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, loved it, Sandra.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.