" Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I
give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about
them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down
and when you get up." Deuteronomy 6:5-7
So how do we diligently teach our children truth the
way we are called to in Deuteronomy? I have to admit that it seemed a daunting
task to me even a year ago. I didn't know where to start and I was tempted to
shirk my responsibility letting it fall to the Sunday School teachers at
church. That was until my eyes were opened to these verses in Deuteronomy and I
realized that this was the real reason that I was called to stay home- to be
there to tell my children about Jesus in all of those ordinary everyday
moments. Right along with my daily tasks I am to point my children to Jesus
whenever I can, however I can, and as often as I can.
I want to fill my children with as much truth as
possible. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will be able to bring scripture to
the minds of my children whenever it is needed because I will have helped to
lay the foundation for it to be there in the first place. I love how my sister
expressed it recently one day when we were talking about this and she said,
"My job is to deliver truth and God's job is to make it grow and to
connect the dots." She has seen
evidence of that when my six year old niece asked her why she was dressed up to
go out on a date with her Daddy. My sister replied that she wanted to look nice
for him and my niece replied, "Oh, I get it! You want to honor him!"
My sister had never made that connection for her but scripture on honoring had
been taught which allowed the connection to be made nonetheless. Our children
understand and perceive more spiritually than we will ever know. That is why it
is so important to act on that right now and not let time continue to pass. The
window of sensitivity is closing even as we speak and we don't have time to
waste. We must feel the sense of urgency.
Before we dive into some sort of scripture or Bible
teaching program though we need to look at our own personal relationship with
Jesus first. We can't teach our children about a love that we don't have. We
have to get ourselves right with Jesus first. Any attempt on our part will be
fake if we don't and will be perceived as such. Beth Moore in her DVD study
called The Law of Love Lessons from the
Pages of Deuteronomy says that, "Loving must proceed the living,"
meaning that our life must be lived as an outpouring of the love that we have
for Jesus. If we genuinely love Him we will want to tell others and share with
others what He has done for us including our children. We will want to do for
others as He has done for us. We can't fake that kind of love. Others will
naturally want what we have and will see it as real and genuine, especially our
children.
At this preschool age hearts are exceptionally tender
for the things of God. I have witnessed it often as my daughter prays
spontaneously and talks about Jesus throughout the day. The home environment
had to be conducive though to encourage this heightened awareness of God.
Stay
tuned to the next devotion where I share specific ways that have worked in our
home to diligently teach God's word and to help us keep our focus on Him.
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