Kids, did you notice in the Gospel story today that the people who didn’t like Jesus were trying to trick him? They wanted to trick him so that he would get in trouble with the Romans by saying that it is OK not to pay your taxes. Now your parents know all about paying taxes! And if we didn’t pay our taxes, we would be in trouble too! But Jesus saw right away that they were trying to trick him, and he didn’t fall for their trick. Instead, he said that we should pay our taxes and we should also love God. Especially we should love God.

So, we all know that God loves us, right? He will always love us, and he will always forgive us when we say we are sorry. But what Jesus said in this Bible story is that God loves us and we need to love God right back. God wants us to love him too just like we want to be loved by our parents, right? That is easy to say, but how do we love him? How do we love God?

I think there are a bunch of things that we can do to love God and they are not hard. First, we can talk to him… which is prayer, right? When we pray to God, we are talking directly to him and he likes that. In prayer, we can ask for his help, we can apologize when we have done something wrong and we can thank him for the good things we have in our life. For instance, have you ever prayed to God and thanked him for your parents? Or for your sisters and brothers? That is a nice way to let him know you love him too.

Second, we can read stories from the Bible. This helps us get to know him and learn how he wants us to act with our friends and family. All of his stories in the Bible teach us something about how he lived and how we should live too. 

Alright, we see how we can love him, but are there times we do not love him? We need to try to avoid that right? There are certain things we do or don’t do that show him we are not loving him at that moment. For instance, when we might be mean to someone, when we don’t do what our parents ask, or are not telling the truth. In that moment, we are not loving God, so we need to avoid that.

So, remember kids that God loves you and he wants us to love him right back.

Ok, parents… the same of course applies to us too. We can and should have prayer as a part of our faith lives, we should turn to him in our trials and we should thank him for the gifts he has given us. But, like a lot of things in life, our kids are watching what we do and say, and they imitate what we do… good or not so good. 

We can and should help our kids learn how to love God because that’s our most important job. I know we probably all pray for our kids which is awesome. But do they see us reading scripture and do we read them Bible stories so that they can learn about Jesus? Talk about a roadmap for life – it is all right there. 

If you’re not sure where to begin, ask God what he wants you to do. Take your kids by their hands and walk that path together so we all end up in the same place. And if you are feeling overwhelmed with the responsibilities that we all have as parents, remember that we are not walking alone. When Jesus walked this earth, he too did not walk alone. Whenever he had important decisions to make or was overwhelmed with all the expectations, he went off to pray quietly. And his Father heard him and loved him. 

Jesus was loved by the Father. 

We too are loved by the Father. 

Return that love and teach our kids to do the same, and the world will be a better place!