By Starr Meade

It can stagger our little minds to consider all that God holds in his. He knows every fact and every property related to every created thing, the billions of facts that all humanity combined know as well as the billions more that remain unknown to man.

Why it’s important

As your child goes through life, what he knows of God will prove a tremendous comfort to him if God is his God. One of the things he should know is that God possesses all knowledge. When your child faces a decision or fears an unknown future, he can trust that the God who has promised to lead him knows all that he does not know. In times of strained relationships, when others have misunderstood or wrongly judged him, your child can rest in the assurance that God—whose opinion matters most—knows his heart. Even the assurance that God knows all our sin brings comfort. Isn’t it true that if even our dearest loved ones knew what we were really like they would turn from us in disgust? But God knows his people inside out.

Your child can rejoice in the love of God who knows the very worst about him—and who goes on loving. God will never discover something about your child that will cause him to cast him off. God already knows it all.

Tips for teaching

You can get your child to begin to consider what it means for God to know everything by asking her to tell you some of the things she doesn’t know. “What will the weather be like on your birthday?” “What is your best friend doing right now?” “What word am I thinking of?” “How many stars are there (exact number, please)?” “What are the names of every person who was alive on the earth five-hundred years ago today?” None of this is difficult for God. He knows all. You can help your child to practice living in the awareness of God’s unlimited knowledge by reminding her, when good things happen to her, “Did God know you would like that?” Likewise, when things aren’t going her way, “Does God know what you would rather have? Does God know what’s best? Can you trust him to choose this for you instead?”

Don’t be afraid to expand their vocab!

When we give our children vocabulary, we familiarize them with the concepts the words represent. You can demonstrate how words are like Lego bricks; you can take them apart and reassemble the pieces with other parts to make something different. School-age children probably know the terms carnivore (meat-eater) and herbivore (planteater). Explain to them that an omnivore eats all things, plants or meat. Bears, skunks, and humans are omnivores. Then use omni and add it to present, meaning here, to get all-present or present in all places. Add omni to scient (related to science and meaning knowing), and you have omniscient, all-knowing. You can also do this with potent, a word for strong. Omnipotent means all-powerful. People avoid theological words in general, and especially with children. But theological words have such wealth of meaning! So, instead, let’s use them and make sure to teach their meanings to our children.

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This article is adapted from Give Them Truth by Starr Meade