What are you teaching?

            Our society values a good education.  We send our children to school when they are little more than babies and expect them to stay there well past adolescence.  We know the importance of math and science for technology, and how important it is that they read well.  Somehow, however, teaching God’s word and the things of God has been relegated to one hour on Sunday morning and perhaps an hour on Wednesday evening. 

            This is not enough.  A new study reported that most (over 80%!) people who accept Christ as Savior do so before the age of twelve.  We know that most of our attitudes and values are in place before we start school.  Yet for many children, two hours (or less) a week is all the spiritual training they get.  Un-churched children get none.

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”  Deuteronomy 6:5-7

            We are told to teach the children diligently.  We are told to talk of God when we sit in our house.  Time to turn off the T.V.  We are to teach of God when we walk by the way.  Hang up the cell phone.  We are to talk about God and our love for Him when we lay down and when we get up.  Sounds like more than two hours a week to me.  The command was given to the whole nation of Israel, not just parents (vs. 4).  Everyone was to be involved in teaching the children, whether they had children of their own or not. 

If you are a parent, a grandparent, if you have nieces and nephews or if there are children in any aspect of your life, get involved.  Volunteer for Kid’s Creek, teach Sunday School, help at your midweek youth program, mentor a young person, or invite a backyard Bible school to be taught in your home. Invite Child Evangelism Fellowship to conduct a five-day club for the kids in your neighborhood this summer (http://www.cefonline.com/index.php?Itemid=100050&id=14&option=com_content&view=category). Start a Bible study. Volunteer at the local coffee house.  Get involved.

My children often remind me that I should be nice to them because they will be the ones choosing my nursing home.  Good training is important!  Our children are our future.  Our involvement can have eternal significance.

Dear Jesus, help me to remember the importance of the children in my life.  Regardless of how tired I am, or how many hours I’ve worked, regardless of how important the project I’m working on is, help me to be available.  Help me to invest in things of eternal significance. 

Prayer

“Call to Me and I will answer you,

and I will tell you great and mighty things which you do not know.”  Jeremiah 33:3

            For many of us, prayer is a mystery.  It’s hard to talk to someone you cannot see, and yet God tells us to bring all things to Him.  We don’t understand it, yet we are better because of it. 

            As we look into His word, God shows us reasons to pray:

            First, we need it.  We need to bring our concerns, our burdens and needs before the throne of Jesus and leave them there.  Only by giving them to Him, by acknowledging our need for Him and His sovereignty in our lives can we experience His peace.  By coming to Him in petition and in worship we express to Him and to ourselves our trust in Him and His dealings in our lives.  He works through prayer.

            Second, because He asks us to.  For some reason almost beyond our comprehension, God desires a relationship with us.  He longs for fellowship with us.  He wants us to make our concerns known to Him and delights in answering them.  We can begin to understand this as we look at our own children.  Even when they are very little we desire a relationship with them.  We talk about their day, about what has happened while we were apart.  We delight in hearing them tell us what they are learning.  It wasn’t anything new to us; we mastered the alphabet years before!  Yet still we want to hear about it.  Their personality shines through, and often we end up laughing or crying together over events in their day.  As they grow and mature we continue to enjoy our conversations on topics of politics, current fashions, their love lives, and spiritual issues.  We are touched by how they deal with life.

            I imagine God feels the same about us.  He seems to want to be included in our lives and to delight in the ways we are maturing.  He wants a friendship with us, a cool-of-the-day kind of easy conversation that comes between people who are close.

            Non-Christians would say that the only power in prayer is psychological.  They are wrong.  We do not understand the power of prayer, but we do know that it holds power.  God works through the prayers of His people.

            Call out to God.  He is waiting.  He has great and mighty things to share.