Years ago, Dr. Bruce Ware wrote an excellent book titled, Their God is Too Small, in response to the false teaching of open theism. Open theism denies God’s omniscience and immutability. Like all false teaching, it “downsizes” the greatness and worth of God. It attempts to make God smaller and more “palatable” for the sinful, self-centered human heart. In the end, it also undermines confidence in God and praise and worship of God.
One should pause and wonder: Is the God we teach in our homes and Sunday school classrooms too small? Do we sometimes, without even intending to, make God smaller than He has revealed Himself to be? Are we giving our children something akin to a Happy Meal version of God?
These types of questions were what first motivated us to produce resources for the local church. The glorious majesty of God being preached from the pulpit was, at times and unintentionally, being down-sized in the children’s Sunday school classrooms. As our pastor preached big truths about God from texts such as Acts 17:25, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything,” we were teaching children that Jesus needed helpers. Ouch!
Hence, here is one of the distinctions we are committed to promoting at Children Desiring God:
A Big Vision of God
Our curricula aims to acquaint children with the incomparable majesty of the triune God by digging deep into His divine character as revealed throughout Scripture. We believe that children should be taught the beauty and grandeur of His manifold perfections. In completing our scope and sequence, children will have learned and explored, with increasing depth, more than 20 distinct attributes of God.
Carefully examine the curricula and resources you use. Observe what is being taught in the classrooms from preschool to high school. By the time your children and students reach adulthood will they know and understand what it means that God is…- Almighty
- Beautiful
- Blessed (happy)
- Creator
- Eternal
- Faithful
- Good
- Glorious
- Holy
- Incomprehensible
- Jealous
- King
- Love
- Merciful
- Omnipresent
- Omniscient
- Patient
- Righteous
- Savior
- Self-existent and self-sufficient
- Sovereign
- Spirit (invisible)
- Unchanging (immutable)
- Wise
- Wrath
