Kings and Prophets

This page is for you, the parent or teacher — not for the child.

Fifteen studies, five weekdays a week, three weeks. One short passage a day. It is built to be a child’s whole Bible time for the day and to take fifteen or twenty minutes, not an hour.

This is the fifth of the storyline plans. The people are in the land now, and they want a king like everybody else has. What follows is several hundred years compressed into fifteen days — so this plan skips more than the others do, and that is fine.

The shape of one day

1. Read the passage out loud. Twice. You read it the first time. Let the child read it the second time if they can.
2. Close the Bible and have them tell it back in their own words. This is the step everybody skips, and it is the one that does the work. If it comes out thin, read it again and let them try again. Don’t correct the retelling into a lecture — just ask, “what happened next?”
3. Ask the four questions. Let the silence sit. A seven-year-old needs longer to answer than you think, and the first thing they say is usually not the thing they mean.
4. Help them land one “I will.” Small and real beats big and vague.
5. Pray. The prayer under each day is there if they want it; their own words are better. Pray at the end, not the start — it’s a response to what they found, not a hint about what they were supposed to find.

The four questions

Every day, the same four:

1. What does this show me about God?
2. What does it show me about people — and about me?
3. What will I obey this week?
4. Who will I tell?

Under each day you’ll find a kid-sized version of each one. Use those if the standard wording goes over their head; use the standard four once they can carry them. They are the same questions the adults’ plans use, on purpose — a child who learns these four can walk into any Bible study for the rest of their life.

Don’t teach it

The strongest instinct you will have is to explain. Resist it. The moment you start teaching, the child stops discovering, and you have replaced a skill they could keep with an answer they will forget.

If they say something that isn’t in the passage, don’t correct it — ask, kindly: “Where do you see that in the story?” Let them go back and look. If they get something wrong and nobody catches it today, they will meet it again — the Bible is long and God is patient.

Day 7 is a song, not a story

Psalm 23 sits deliberately after the David days, as David’s own song. Handle it differently from the other fourteen: read it slowly, twice, and let the retelling be “what picture does this put in your head?” rather than “what happened?”

It is also the one day worth memorising. A child who carries Psalm 23 out of these three weeks has something they will still have at eighty.

The famous ones

David and Goliath, the fiery furnace, Daniel and the lions — several of these are stories your child may already know from somewhere, and familiarity is the enemy of discovery. When they say “I know this one,” that is the moment to ask question 1 anyway: what does it show you about God? Most children have the plot and have never once been asked that.

Watch, too, for the moral the culture attaches to these stories — be brave like David, be bold like Daniel. The passages themselves keep pointing somewhere else: the battle is the Lord’s, there is a fourth figure in the fire, God shut the lions’ mouths. Let the child find the difference.

Making the “I will” real

Put a name in it and a day on it.

✗ “I’ll pray more.” ✓ “I’m going to pray for Tomás every night this week before I go to sleep.”

Then ask about it the next day, before you read. Did you do it? Who did you tell? Asking is what turns this from a reading plan into a habit of obeying.

Ages, and mixed ages

Written for roughly ages 6–12. A six-year-old will need you to read it and will answer in one sentence; an eleven-year-old can read it themselves and write their answers down. If you have both at the table, read once for everybody and let them answer at their own depth. Don’t split them up — the younger ones learn how to answer by hearing the older ones do it.

The hard days

• Day 4 (David and Goliath). It ends with a beheading. Say it plainly, briefly, and move on to what David said before he ran: the battle belongs to the Lord.
• Day 10 (Mount Carmel). The prophets of Baal are killed just after our reading stops. If your child reads on and asks, don’t pretend it isn’t there. It is honest to say that this was a fight over whether God was real, that the stakes were life and death for a whole nation, and that you find it hard too.
• Day 12 (Jonah). Sailors throw a man into the sea. The tone of the story is not horror — the sailors do everything they can to avoid it and end up praying to God themselves. Read it that way.

If you miss a day

Pick up where you left off. Fifteen studies is fifteen studies whether it takes three weeks or five. Whatever you start, finish.