Teaching Spiritual Rest for Kids

May 12th, 2025

Do your kids or the kids you teach in church participate in sports or have a favorite athletic activity? If so, you have an excellent opportunity to help kids understand their own spiritual health and promote healthy spiritual rest for kids.

Anyone who is athletic and wants to excel in their chosen sport learns to care about diet, exercise, skill, and rest. They want to get every possible edge in order to do well. Many kids in sports are always trying to come up with the best protein shake or recovery drink, the best exercise to improve that weak muscle, and the best technique to master a particular skill. Great attention to even the smallest details can make all the difference, and the same is true for our spiritual health. Just like rest for kids is important to aid in athletic activities and recovery, so too must they learn how to have spiritual rest in the sabbath day and their devotional time to truly rest their spirit in the presence of God, growing stronger in their faith.

Welcome to the fourth and final part in our four-part series correlating spiritual health with athletic activities for kids, where we take a look at the areas of diet, exercise, skills, and rest one at a time to think about how to use them as spiritual illustrations for our children. So far, we looked at diet and how our spirit needs feeding as much as our body does. Then we looked at spiritual exercises where faith grows stronger with daily “reps” or repetitions of applied truth, with Part 3 covering our look into spiritual skills or disciplines as worthy habits of developing. Today, we’ll be talking about spiritual rest for kids through observance of the sabbath day and daily devotional time as an important facet to spiritual health and raising godly children.

The Importance of Rest for Kids

Ask most any kid and they’ll agree: rest is underrated. Kids often feel invincible or want to stay up too late, while early school days cut into their rest. And yet, a Johns Hopkins study shows kids need at least 8 to 8 ½ hours of sleep a night, which increases by another hour as they grow into their teen years. Besides the benefit of physical rest for kids, adequate sleep is good for brain development and prevents a multitude of mental health issues, like depression.

To help kids understand the importance of rest, you might want to ask kids how their day went and see if you can help them make the connection on their own between how important having adequate rest for kids is to having a good day. For parents or guardians, a good practice might also be to set all devices on a charger in the parent’s bedroom by bedtime, eliminating the temptation for kids to be on their phones late into the night. When we connect adequate physical rest for kids to good health, it becomes easy to connect spiritual rest for kids to good spiritual health too.

Using the Sabbath Day for Spiritual Rest

God gave us a wonderful gift when He gave us a sabbath day of rest. Jesus said the sabbath day was made for man, not man made for the sabbath day. In other words, God gave us the sabbath day because it’s good for us to have a day of physical and spiritual rest, not to burden us with a religious tradition. Taking a day to worship and get additional physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual rest is good for the soul and good for the spirit. Going to church, relaxing in fellowship with family and friends, taking a nap, taking a walk in nature and praying aloud, reading a book, calling loved ones, writing in a journal, or having a family game night—these are all practices which will re-energize and refresh the spirit as a day of rest for kids.

Sadly, in many homes, the sabbath day has become a catch-up day for work or chores, while many athletic activities like games or practices are scheduled for Sundays. If your goal is to be raising godly children, we encourage you to set an example of honoring the sabbath as a day of physical and spiritual rest for kids, so they can remember and hold it as a habit when they get older. Keeping Sunday as a day of spiritual rest prepares you for the week ahead, just like a good night’s sleep prepares you for the next day. It gives space for relationships to thrive in your home and for your spiritual health to improve with God.

Spiritual Rest for Kids Through Devotional Time

Spiritual leaders and athletic coaches alike both know there needs to be consistent reflection on ourselves and where we’re going in order to grow and improve in our spiritual health or athletic activities. A daily spiritual rest for kids before God, called a devotional time, is a great way to assess what God is doing in their life and how He wants them to grow. If you can teach kids to have a regular devotional time early in life, you’ll already be well on your way to raising godly children by instilling habits of spiritual rest for kids, rather than the time wasted on rehabilitative efforts if they’re not able to assess themselves or their own spiritual health.

For a solid devotional time, teach them to answer these questions for themselves:

• What emotions have I been feeling?
• What motives or attitudes do those emotions reveal?
• What does God’s Word say about the situation and feelings I’ve been having?
• How can I apply that with correction or celebration?

Writing the answers to these questions in a journal or a summary of things learned through their devotional time will multiply the benefits of spiritual rest for kids. Prayer, also, as a personal assessment of one’s spiritual health is a great way to bring spiritual rest to your soul and body. 

Improve Devotional Time with CEF

Want more help with raising godly children and equipping them for a devotional time? Child Evangelism Fellowship has a wide variety of devotional books perfect for kids of all ages, guiding them into spiritual rest with God as they learn more about Him and themselves through their devotional time. Visit cefpress.com for a full catalogue of devotional books, including The Wonder devotional book for older children and Every Day with God devotional for younger children.

Psalm 16:8-9 says, “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.” 

May you and your kids enjoy the spiritual rest God has gifted you through the sabbath day and a daily devotional time with Him.

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