Marty Machowski’s ‘Leading Your Child to Christ’ is one of those books that you can sit and read all in one go (I just did!) and will want to dip back into time and again.
He has put together a book all about sharing the Gospel with your children. It’s mainly for parents but it has a lot of useful things to say to anyone who works with children in church/youth club.
So what’s it all about? Well clearly Marty believes that children need to be saved. But he is clear that this doesn’t mean that adults should try to manipulate them or lead them to ‘right’ answers about what the Bible teaches. Children often want to please us and so will agree to things on a surface level. This is not advocated in the book.
Instead, Marty explains that our conviction should be that God works in a persons life. We tell the gospel but it is God who saves. This book gives practical suggestions as to how we explain the gospel and how we live the gospel in front of our children.
The book begins with giving examples of children’s testimonies and an explanation of where the book is going.
The main part of the book is a breakdown of leading your child to Christ based on A- Admit you are a sinner; B- Believe in your heart the full Gospel of Christ; C – Confess your faith in Jesus and D- Demonstrate the fruit of repentance.
This may sound like a formula but as the headings are explained it becomes clear that this is not the case. I particularly found the section on Belief helpful. It’s such a hard concept to explain as it is more than an acknowledgement of a set of truths. It is a full trusting of all of ourselves to what God has said and done- not always easy to explain.
Marty also gives us the core truths of what the gospel is. What’s great about it is that each statement begins not with something about us but about God.
Now the nitty gritty – the book is not expensive – I bought my copy from Amazon and it took a while to reach me. 10of Those sell it too – £2.60 for one copy. Well worth buying and reading. An excellent book.
