A Faith Their Own – Part 3
This is the final post in this series where you have been learning about making sure you give your kids what they need most, a relationship with Jesus. In the Part 1 you learned to Imagine the End and how you need to picture where you want your kids to end up in order to make sure they have a destination you are leading them toward.
In Part 2 you learned to Widen the Circle. You read of the importance of having other people speaking into the lives of your children and making sure they are there before they need those voices, so they will be there when they need those voices.
It is important to Imaging the End and to Widen the Circle, but those both take time. Time. Its moving fast. It’s limited. We will never have more of it than we already have. So it is not an issue of how do we get more, but how do we become more intentional about what we have? If you want your child to have A Faith Their Own, you have to Create a Rhythm.
Your house has a rhythm. You may not intend to have one. You may not even plan to have one. Reality is, we all end up with one. Rhythm is simply how we arrange out time. If you were to analyze the rhythm at your house, you would soon discover that much of life consists or repeated patters.
These patterns are why newborns are put on a schedule as soon as possible. Its why we typically go to the same gas station. We take the same route to work. We don’t change sides of the bed. These patterns are why we keep a calendar. Tv shows lock in a time slot.
In Deuteronomy chapter 6:5-9 Moses shares with the Israelites the importance of creating a rhythm and building spiritual discipleship into the rhythms of our daily lives. He says,
And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Moses recognized the danger of a compartmentalized faith. He suspected there would be a tendency to segment God into an isolated category of life instead of viewing Him as the integrating force that influences all of life. He was concerned that society might one day view God as only a smaller part of culture and life.
There are four specific times I think Moses mentions in Deuteronomy 6: eating meals together, walking or traveling together, tucking kids into bed, and getting up in the morning. If families decided to take advantage of the times already built into the rhythms of life, the routines, the patterns, initiating spiritual interaction would be more natural.
Parents who engage in small ways can make a big difference in the lives of their kids or teenagers.
We teach our children to depend on us to fix every thing, rather than trusting that God will allow, do, fix whatever is best. We teach our children that nothing bad should ever happen to them. And if that’s not a set-up for disappointment down the road, I don’t know what is!
Nothing is more important than helping your children develop a faith of their own. The day will come too soon when mom and dad can’t fix it. The best thing we can do for our kids is help them develop a faith of their own.
Think about this statement, what I give to my children or what I do for my children is not as important as what I leave in them.
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