Kids in Your life? This is Amazing! For the Spiritual Development of the Digital Generation

Honestly, tenderly, at age 45, Amber Bolton had given up on being a mom. She was (and still is) the cool aunt — but she has now found herself parenting a pre-teen son. This new God-given blessing comes with its challenges as she navigates how to help him grow his faith through creativity while balancing the culture of the digital age. And I couldn’t be more excited about her direction here! Amber, a former youth pastor of 20 years, and a Bible journaling expert, comes to the farm table today with a vision to write God’s Word on our hearts and the hearts of the kiddos He puts in our lives. It’s a joy to welcome Amber to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Amber Bolton

---

“My child, never forget the things I have taught you. Store my commands in your heart.”

Proverbs 3:1, NLT

---

I was surprised to see Nathan sitting on the floor in front of the cabinet filled with board games and video games.

He wasn’t on his phone. He wasn’t playing with a game or deep in online levels. He was playing with paper.

I watched him fold, cut, color and create a fun board game of his own. You might think, was he grounded from electronics? Told to take a break from screens?

No. He chose to do this.

The digital world begged for his attention, but he chose scissors and markers to dream and be creative.

Nathan’s generation is growing up in a world of instant entertainment and AI enhanced videos, with a phone stuck to their hand that has an answer to literally everything. He doesn’t need to remember anything; his phone will do that for him. He doesn’t need to sit on the floor with paper; he can swipe through 10-second videos.

Creativity is outsourced to apps and AI.

“When God’s Word is tucked deep inside us, it becomes a part of our instinct, our reflex, our inner compass.“

And while these things aren’t inherently bad, I wonder what it does to our spiritual development. Will Nathan write God’s Word on his heart the way that Proverbs commands? Is God’s Word meant to be in the cloud or in our hearts?

How are we investing in our kids to help them use their own sense of creativity to write God’s Word on their hearts? Do we help them see the Bible as a map to follow? Do we encourage them to “ask God” more than they “ask Siri”?

My own childhood looked so different.

I still remember my family’s phone number, my childhood address, my social security number—facts that anchored me long before smartphones became the keepers of everything. I can close my eyes and trace every turn, curve, and hill from my college dorm to my parents’ home five hours away. Back then, our knowledge lived inside us, not inside a glowing rectangle.

“Memorized verses become the whispered truth when fear creeps in, the steady reminder of God’s presence when loneliness speaks too loudly, the anchor that holds when culture tries to pull them away“

What a wild time it was: reaching under the car seat to pull out a giant, accordion-fold map that highlighted the path from our house to the movie theater. Those maps never talked to us. They never “recalculated.” They simply waited for us to learn them, study them, and carry their paths in our minds.

Today, though, nothing seems to be kept inside our brains. It’s all stored in the cloud.

It was easier to memorize Scripture then, right?

So how do we help this generation get back to the basics?

When God’s Word is tucked deep inside us, it becomes a part of our instinct, our reflex, our inner compass. Kids who memorize Scripture carry with them a spiritual “map” even when they don’t have a Bible or a phone nearby. Memorized verses become the whispered truth when fear creeps in, the steady reminder of God’s presence when loneliness speaks too loudly, the anchor that holds when culture tries to pull them away. Scripture memory trains their hearts to know God, not just to know about Him.

It gives them something no app can ever provide: living truth stored in their hearts.

“Scripture memory trains their hearts to know God, not just to know about Him.“

The other day, I got into my car and plugged in my phone. The map app instantly pulled up a suggested route to a local coffee shop I visit every week. Part of me marveled at the technology. But another part of me wondered: If I go there every week, why do I need directions?

When did I stop remembering how to get to the places I know by heart?

This reminds me that while we teach our kids to memorize Scripture, we need to keep pulling out our “map”—the Bible. God gave us the Bible to shape our daily rhythms, our weekly patterns, the familiar paths we walk again and again. He wants His Word to become so woven into us that it guides us even when we’re not thinking about it.

I never imagined becoming a mom at 45.

“I want the Bible to be a familiar book—a treasure more than an app—and for him to know that Jesus isn’t just someone who answers his questions but is his anchor of hope in this world.“

Nathan, a pre-teen creative kiddo, is now someone I get to help guide in this life.

I have the chance, and the responsibility, to pass on a desire for Scripture and a deep love for Christ while cultivating his creativity. I want the Bible to be a familiar book—a treasure more than an app—and for him to know that Jesus isn’t just someone who answers his questions but is his anchor of hope in this world.

My hope is that kids like Nathan will grow up not only creating new worlds from paper but also discovering the deep, rich, life-changing world God unfolds through Scripture. Because when creativity, memorized truth, and God’s Word meet, a child’s heart is shaped for a lifetime.

For those of us from the 1900s, let’s take a step back and remember what it was like to be a kid full of creativity. Take a moment to think back to when you went to Sunday school and did “sword fights” looking for verses in the Bible, sat on the floor coloring Bible pages, and memorized Scripture to recite at church camp. Those things are written deep in our hearts.

Let’s do the same for our kids, all the kids we really love.

Let us spark inspiration in our kids to get on the floor together with crayons and a Bible and start writing the Word on our hearts with paint strokes and images.

---