“Fangs, Feathers, Faith ! A Devotional for Nature Lover’s 8 and up”

by Victoria Peace Green

(3/2017 I recently changed the title to appeal to a larger audience)

 

 

“Fangs, Feathers, and Faith! A Devotional for Nature Lover’s 8 and up“, is a fifty-two-week nature

and animal devotional created to help your tweenager discover God. As

I began to pray about how best to capture a tweenager’s (ages 8 and up)

interest, God reminded me of what I so immensely enjoyed as a child

and still enjoy to this day: animals and all the curious things of nature.

Spending time in nature often made boring days as a child explode into

days of discovery

Fangs, Feathers, and Faith is a devotional intended

to excite even the most reading-challenged youth. Your tweenager can

begin at any one of the fifty-two themes. Each devotional is planned

around the five week days to free up the weekend for your family’s participation

at your place of worship. Having written children’s Christian

non-fiction for fifteen years, I found that sharing God through His creation

of critters and nature is a sure way to help kids focus. Whether in

solitude or with you, your child looks forward to discovering more of

God’s miraculous design of life.

On the first page of  Fangs, Feathers, and Faith is

day One, where your tween reads about one of God’s critters or creation.

They’ll also read the What About You section which parallels the article.

This section helps your tween grow to begin experiencing the love of

God. The Holy Spirit begins to grow your tweenager’s interest in God

and reveal how God is involved in their personal life. I chose each scripture

to reinforce both the What about You segment as well as introduce

your child to how God’s living Word can be applied to their everyday life.

The New Living Translation (NLT), the New Century Version (NCV),

and the God’s Word (GWT) translation, are my choices because they

are easily understood by any age child. Looking up each verse in their

Bible and underlining it emphasizes how God’s Word is to be a constant

companion. To help your tween easily navigate the scriptures, there is a

list of the sixty-six books of the Bible.

Days Two, Three, Four, and Five build on the theme from Day One

and are to be read in order. A place is provided for your tween to jot

down their thoughts after reading from each day’s study.

  • Day Two, Check It Out, your tween is encouraged to discover for themselves, with

your permission, additional information about the first days reading,

online, at the library, or around your home. God, who made the heavens

and the earth and all that “crawls upon it,” draws your child to Himself

week in and week out through this segment. God is in all that is big as

well as the microscopic details that He planned so man would be without

excuse to find Him!

  • Day Three, Check Within, will help your tween come to understand

they were made to have a personal relationship with God through His

one and only Son, Jesus Christ. Further Bible study brings understanding

of who Jesus Christ is, how He came to bring saving grace, and what

is needed to receive the gift of God.

  • On Day Four, Check Around begins to develop a compassion and

tender heart in your tweenager toward friends and family. Once your

tween chooses to receive Jesus’s grace by faith, this segment begins to

bring awareness of and the desire to be the hands and feet of their Savior,

Jesus Christ. Your tweenager is asked questions like: How might you be

a friend to someone that no else likes? How can I be a kid that can help

others be their best?

  • Day Five, Check With the Lord is all about prayer. “The

prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16, KJV). Prayer

is the doorway into God’s heart. Throughout  Fangs,

Feather’s, and Faith, your tweenager learns to pray to God by reading a

prayer as well as writing their own short prayer. On other weeks they will

read a Psalm before they pray. Through Bible reading and the working

of the Holy Spirit, they begin to experience how prayer connects them

as one with God. It is my prayer that through Fangs, Feathers, and Faith, your tween will

uncover God’s tender, unconditional

love and mercy.