How can young children glorify God?

In this video, Dr. Joel Beeke speaks to children and shares several ideas of how they can glorify God while playing with their siblings. He suggests sharing toys and not being selfish, as loving your neighbor is a commandment of God. He also emphasizes the importance of getting along with siblings and not being greedy while playing. 

Dr. Beeke tells a story of two girls who were tempted to eat cookies meant for their grandmother but decided to obey God instead. He reminds children that God is always watching and that they should live to please Him, even while playing with siblings.

Ephesians 6:1 (NKJV) - "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right."



Let me talk to you boys and girls a little bit here. If you were eight years old and you were playing with your brothers and sisters, how can you glorify God while you're playing with them? Well let me give you a few ideas. One idea is simply this, that you are willing to share toys. You're not living selfishly.

You want your brother and sister to be happy. Because when you glorify God, you obey, you obey the law of God. Just like when you honor your dad and your mom, you obey them. And God says in his law, we call it the Ten Commandments you remember, you are to love Me above all and you're to love your neighbor as yourself. That's right, yourself.

And who's your neighbor? It's your brother. It's your sister. So you share toys. You don't hog everything to yourself.

Say, I want all these toys. And you don't fight. But you get along well, because you love your brother and your sister. You're not greedy and you want to play to the glory of God. And you want to be aware that God is always seeing you in everything.

God knows everything. You can't keep any secrets from God. It's like a story I read once of two eight-year-old children who had a box of cookies, two girls, from their mother, and they were supposed to bring them to their grandmother. And their mother said, don't you go eating one of those cookies now as you bring them to grandma. Because these are all for grandma.

The girl said, oh yes, OK. They got halfway to grandma's house and the one girl said, oh, I'm hungry. And her sister said, well, I'm hungry too. And the first girl said, I don't think mom would mind if we just took one cookie. I mean, well, mom might, but grandma won't.

Grandma would give it to us. And the other girls said, yeah, I think so too. So they set the box down on the ground. The first girl went to reach for a cookie and she said to her sister, are you sure there's nobody watching? And her sister said, no, there's nobody.

So she took the cookie, she's about to pop it in her mouth. Your sister said, wait a minute, there is someone watching. God is watching. We have to obey God. We have to glorify God.

That cookie went right back in the box. So you need to remember, God is always, always here, right now, right now, wherever you