The Word Hidden in a Child’s Heart Outlasts Any Program

Awana has been part of Wednesday nights in a lot of churches for a long time. Children learn verses, hear Bible stories, and play games, and plenty of parents are thankful for it.

David Cloud of Way of Life Literature has written an article called “Awana Then and Now.” It follows the program from its fundamentalist start in 1941 to what it has become. If you pastor a church, teach children, or have a child in the program, read it with your Bible open:

https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/awana-then-and-now.php

Weigh it by the Word, and take what you find to the Lord.

Ministries seldom drift in a day. A line gets softened here, a standard gets loosened there, and one day the thing is no longer what it was built to be. That is reason enough to hold every program up to Scripture, the ones we love included.

A warning alone doesn’t help a family, so here is what we do at Pilgrim. Our Sunday school is family-integrated. Each week, the children receive a memory verse and a one-page lesson review to take home. The memory verse is the parents’ work with their children. The lesson review becomes the devotional for the family altar. The church hands over the material, and the home does the teaching, which is where God put it:

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

A father who sits down with his child over one verse a week is doing what that passage describes. It takes no headquarters or handbook, only a King James Bible and a man willing to open it. Keep it in the care of your own church, where you know what is being taught. Then the child hides the Word in his heart, “that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11).

The name Awana came from a good verse, so let’s end there: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/