How to lead a child to Christ (Part 1)

It is true. Children really can make a genuine decision to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior? The Bible is clear in Matthew 18 that children can be saved. I am evidence of this. It was at the age of 5 that I gave my heart to Jesus. Now we need to be careful. It is easy to manipulate children to make a decision that they don’t understand and are not ready to make. However, if done correctly, we can be sure that a child does understand the Gospel and that they are truly being drawn to salvation by the Holy Spirit. It begins by being sure that children understand the Gospel. While spending 3 summers working for Child Evangelism Fellowship, I was taught the G-O-S-P-E-L approach. In every Bible story we told, we made sure the following 6 facts were always included:

G = God Loves You (John 3:16)
O = Only Perfect Son (II Corinthians 5:21
S = Sin Of Us All (Romans 3:23; 6:23)
P = Precious Blood (Romans 5:8; Hebrews 9:22)
E = Ever-Living Savior (I Corinthians 15:3-4)
L = Let Jesus In (Revelation 3:20; John 1:12)

At the end of each story we would then give an invitation. For this we would use what we called the S-P-L-V—R-D approach. This stood for the following:

S = Sin…Remind them that they have a need
P = Precious Blood…Remind them that Jesus paid for their sin
L = Let Jesus In…Remind them of God’s way of salvation
V = Verse…Use a verse to show them salvation in God’s own words
-- = Close Eyes…Reduce any distractions by having them close their eyes
R = Response…Guide the child to an affirmative response
D = Direction…Direct those who respond to a place to be counseled

After the child has heard the Gospel and responded affirmatively to the invitation, we would then carefully counsel the child using 9 strategically constructed questions which I will give in tomorrow’s blog.