. Deuteronomy 6:5. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your heart. Then impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your foreheads and hands, and write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. But Verse 12 warns, Be careful that you do not forget the Lord. Well, the Bible says here that your children are going to need a love relationship with the Lord if theyre going to make it, where they love the Lord their God with everything theyve got. That is an inner guidance system that you can plant in a child that keeps them from crashing when youre not with them. Its that internal spiritual strength that keeps them from collapsing when the external pressure on them is intense. They need this deep, real, personal relationship with the God who made them, who is the key to their purpose for living. But youve got to breathe that spiritual oxygen before you can give it to them. Thats why it says this has got to be impressed on your heart before it can be impressed on theirs. Youve got to love Him first. Frankly, theres nothing like the needs of our kids lives to expose the needs of our own lives. Look in your sons or daughters eyes, and youre face-to-face with your own inadequacies, your needs, your pain, your failures; parts of you that you may want to deny or excuse. When we look at our kids those things stare at us in the mirror right there in the lives of our children. And their spiritual needs? Well, theyre the mirror of your own. We cant lead them where we havent been. Maybe its time for you to experience for yourself as a Mom or Dad this love relationship with God. First, we have to recognize why we dont have one. Because of this monster called sin, its the self-rule of our life really. Secondly, we need to recognize how we can have that relationship. And the Bible makes it clear its by visiting the cross where Gods Son took the rap for our sin and made it possible for the sin wall between us and God to come down. And then thirdly, we need to pin all our hopes on that Savior; telling Jesus that Hes in charge from this day on and then beyond that commitment. We cant settle for a relationship thats mostly rules and rituals and religion and meetings, and beliefs. Theyre not going to sign up for that. The only Christianity that our kids will breathe themselves is one that is lived out before them in the real stuff of everyday life. Our children and our grandchildren need the oxygen of Gods love as never before. Its a stifling world, and theyre meant to get that love from Mom and Dad. But if youve never experienced Jesus for yourself, you can have Him change your family by changing a Mom, by changing a Dad. By saying, Jesus, I bring you all of my needs and my failures, my mistakes, my sin, my inadequacies and I lay them at your cross where you died for me. Beginning this day Im Yours.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 16:05:53 +0000