DEUTERONOMY 6:6-7 NIV
“These commandments that I give you today are to be on 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.”
A recent series of surveys demonstrated a rapid decline of spiritual vitality in the Western world. Only 35 percent of American congregations now describe themselves as spiritually vital and alive. Other surveys have found the percentage of people claiming no religion has risen in every state in America, and the number of Americans who claim to be Christians is rapidly decreasing. Headlines warn of the “coming collapse of evangelical Christianity in America.” —The most alarming statistics involve teenagers and young adults. Masses of them are leaving the church after high school, and only a percentage of them return in a regular, sustained way. I firmly believe that Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is the most vital parenting passage in the Bible. If followed, it has the power to reverse young lives and those statistics. This passage gives three golden rules for rearing children: Love the LORD your GOD with all your heart, soul, and strength. The single most powerful influence in a child’s life is his or her parents’ visible, passionate love for the LORD JESUS CHRIST. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
His Word must be on your heart. We must love GOD’s Word and read it daily. It’s more important than news media, newscasts, sports, or hobbies. Our children should see us pouring over GOD‘s Word every morning or evening (Deuteronomy 6:6).
We must share with our children spontaneously and naturally any verses GOD gives us. Speak about them when we sit at home, drive down the road, lie down at night, and get up in the morning. When the natural conversations of the home are sprinkled with GOD’s Word, it’s like constantly planting seeds in the fertile hearts of our young ones (Deuteronomy 6:7-9).
The believer is to place GOD’s Word in his heart. The Word of GOD is to be foremost in the believer’s life. We are to cherish it, and cradle it in our heart. Simply stated, the believer is to be totally and wholeheartedly committed to the Word of GOD.
The believer is to diligently teach GOD’s Word to his or her children (Deut. 6:7). Educating children with the Word is an absolute necessity. And note: education is not just teaching facts and principles, not just passing along information. Teaching is experiencing the truth personally, living out the truth before the children. It is applying the truth to one’s heart and experiencing the truths within one’s own life. The children then see the truth of GOD’s Word lived before their very eyes, and they absorb the truth, pick it up automatically. The truth becomes a part of their lives. This is exactly what Moses was preaching: the believer was constantly to talk about the Word of GOD when he sat at home, when he walked along the road throughout the day, when he laid down, and when he got up. The whole thrust is that we are to live by the Bible, experience it, obey it, and set the dynamic example before our children with our everyday life with them.
Prayer:
Dear GOD, we love Your Word more because it comes from You. We Praise and Thank You for Your supreme and and all- sufficient Word and its many blessings, including peace from and hope through Your Word. We commit by Your grace to obey all that You command us which are for our greatest good and for Your greatest glory. Help us to enjoy reading and sharing Your Word to everyone in our family and to all who need to know You and JESUS CHRIST Your Son. We pray this in the wonderful Name of JESUS.
Amen.
Pastor Wally