Katharine, my oldest, runs through the water, exploring each spout, dancing and singing through the puddles, making large splashes as she moves around. There is joy as she experiences new adventures, she immediately approaches any kids around her and desires to communicate and play with them. She has no reservations.
My younger daughter Maggie watches her sister and very cautiously attempts to follow along. She is carefully judging whether or not she has my approval and her feelings are easily hurt. She will play along with her sister for a time, and then run back to where I am for a quick hug.
I look at their unique personalities and I am confronted with the question: How do I raise them to become Godly women who use their unique abilities to bring glory to God?
Deuteronomy 6:5-8 says... You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all you 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 you 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 frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The first and greatest, all encompassing commandment, is to love the Lord my God with all of my heart, soul and might. This means that God needs to be my first priority in every area of my life. Jesus came, I believe, as part of God's master plan to reveal His redeeming love to us, in order to fulfill the law. Jesus has done the work and now the Holy Spirit can enable me as a believer to walk in His ways. Romans 8:1-4 : There is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. There is nothing more that I can do to fulfill the law than what Jesus has already done. There is rest and comfort in knowing this.
So looking back to the Deuteronomy passage, I can look at it knowing that I do not have to fulfill this requirement on my own, that His Spirit will help me, He will lead me. To love the Lord God with all my heart, soul and might means that I am continually renewing my mind in God's word, continually examining my heart's deceitful motives, continually removing idols that I have allowed in, continually reminding myself of how God has and will deliver me. It means that everything I do, everything I say is an outpouring of the love God has given to me. This love is so important, so vital, that I am to teach it to my children and display this love to everyone I am around, that this love would not only fill up my heart, but pour out of my life.
Deuteronomy was written to a mostly agrarian society. The family worked and lived together in order to survive. Now, husbands and sometimes wives are required to work outside the "family farm", outside of the immediate home in order to provide a sustainable income for their families. So how do we teach the most important commandment to our children? Living by example with transparency and honesty to our children. By allowing our children to see God's grace at work in our lives. By showing them where we go to ask for forgiveness when we have made mistakes. By allowing God's love to be so evident in our lives that it becomes the center of our desires. By praying together, studying scriptures together, by talking about our faith lives together. By being a part of a greater family of believers together: a church.
2nd Corinthians 2:14- : But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.
Teaching my children the "ways of the Lord" is a priority in my life. In 1st Samuel we see Hannah who dedicates her son's life to the Lord, but it wasn't until God revealed himself to Samuel for Samuel to be yielded to the Lord (1st Samuel 3:7). Samuel knew about the Lord, but up until this point, he did not personally know the Lord. In the same way, I believe that we as parents lay the foundation of faith, build relationships with our children, and model what a real relationship with the Lord practically looks like. As our children grow to become young adults, they need to independently respond to the Lord's calling so that their faith becomes living and real to them. That what they know in their heads transfers to what they know in their hearts. We as parents need to place safeguards in their lives and continually pray for wisdom in how to minister to our children. But it is God who calls them and it is our children as individuals who respond to His call...
The psalmist reminds us in 78:5-8... He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, and whose spirit was not faithful to God. As I continue to pray and ask God how to raise my children, I am comforted in the words of John 14:26... But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you. The Holy Spirit speaks to us. He will answer us. In every parenting, behavioral, and educational decision we face, we are not alone.
I think that it is so important for us as parents to rest in Ephesians 1:4 even that he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.. As much as I know my children, God knew me and them before the foundations of the world. He is not only our father, but our creator and redeemer. He knows all things about us, even about our inner weaknesses. In Ephesians 3:14-17: For this reason I bow my knees before the father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...
As I examine how God has worked in and through me, I am humbled and reminded that He is greater than any weakness that I may have. In fact, He uses my weaknesses to further His glory. I would include some of my personality traits as areas of weakness. To Katharine, my fearless leader, she needs to know that Jesus is not only her director, her righteousness and her guide through life, he can also be her friend who teaches her to sit at his feet and enjoy times of quiet surrender. To Maggie, Jesus can be her constant companion, her strength, the one person she draws her safety, love and acceptance from.
The great mystery that God revealed to us as stated in Colossians 1:26-27: Christ in you, the hope of Glory... It begins in our own hearts and it flows out into our childrens. Knowing personally, intimately my Savior, standing firmly in my identity as Christ's child, experiencing the struggles of this life with God's peace that flows like a river.. this is the basis on which I can live "walking in His Spirit" and "parent" as well.
Lord, I pray that as parents of this new generation, we would not be content with what everyone else has to teach our children. I pray that you would lead us to display our relationship with You to our children. I pray that they would see our faith being lived out in our everyday lives, in our attitudes, and in all of our decisions. And I pray that when we make mistakes, that we would humble ourselves and ask for forgiveness. I pray for the strength to diligently teach our children scripture, to pray with them, to talk with them. I pray that You would reveal yourself to them in very real, personal ways, that they may know the Hope to which they have been called...
As I watched my girls that day in the park, so God watches over us as His children. As He looks upon us, may He see His Son- the Hope of Glory in every area of our lives.
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