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The thing I never realized about parenting until I became one is that none of us really knows what the heck we’re doing. For some reason, as single young adults, we often think we know exactly how we’ll parent. [Not to mention how everyone else is doing it wrong!] But when that first baby comes along, we realize we don’t have a clue. I think this is, in some ways, by design. God often asks us to do more than we’re capable of in our own strength, to ensure that we stay in step with Him, relying on His grace.
However, though the intricacies of parenting are complicated and require absolute reliance on the Holy Spirit, God has given us the broad strokes in His word. These “broad strokes” provide a framework that we can easily implement in our families to keep us on track in the day to day. Fortunately for us, the framework is simple, easily understood, and takes minimal effort to implement.
Very early in the history of His people, God laid out the basics of this foundation in Deuteronomy 6:4-9.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Breaking that down, we see that the first thing we must do as parents is to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength. Let’s not just gloss over that statement. Sometimes we hear that so much as Christians that we just dismiss it as a given. We assume that we already love God with all of our heart, soul and strength simply because we’re supposed to. But let us not assume that knowing is the same as doing. Let’s take a moment to examine the endeavor. To love anyone or anything with ALL of my heart would require a great deal of focus and effort on my part. Jeremiah 17:9 tells me that my heart is “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.” My heart is fickle, scattered and tricky. In order to love God with ALL of it, I have to intentionally harness it, direct it, and fix it upon God. Over and over again. It could take a lifetime.
The same is true of my soul and strength, so we would do well not to underestimate what an undertaking our first task in this passage is. Fortunately, the next sentence provides a key to accomplishing the previous one. “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” This is how we direct and harness our hearts–by knowing and cherishing God’s word. I love The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve read it several times now. It’s a sizable book, but nowhere as big as the Bible. Though I enjoy the book, and have read it repeatedly throughout my life, I wouldn’t go so far as to say the words are on my heart. I mentioned The Hobbit here to illustrate what we must do in order to have God’s word on our hearts. It’s not just loving the book and reading it a couple of times. It requires a focused and intentional cherishing of the word. It’s setting the word before us continually and drawing from it the life it gives. This practice enables us to know God and draws us closer to Him. It encourages us and provokes us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength.
Now, here’s where things come together for our chosen topic–parenting our children in the way God intended. It is when we are doing these two things–endeavoring to love God with ALL our heart, soul, and strength, and setting His word upon our hearts–that we are able to parent our children God’s way. Deuteronomy 6:7-9 says, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” God’s way of discipling children is for us to teach our kids the same words that we are continually setting our hearts upon. Notice that it says that we should teach them (God’s commands) “diligently to our children” AND that we should “talk of them” throughout our daily lives. This is not a weekly prepared Bible lesson. God wants His word to be a continual part of our daily family lives.
Don’t let that thought overwhelm you, friends. This is good news! We don’t have to prepare lessons, crafts, and presentations in order to teach our children the Bible and raise them in a godly way. It’s meant to naturally flow out of our personal relationship with Jesus, out of our daily Bible readings, and our own prayer lives. It’s meant to be natural and organic. Does it require intention? Yes, absolutely, but it doesn’t require us to be anything other than ourselves
In our next post, we’ll explore some practical ways to implement these ideas and principles in our homes. Until then, leave me a comment letting me know what questions you have about putting these principles into practice, and I’ll include those topics in the next post.
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