December 8 - Teach Your Children

Today's Reading:
Deuteronomy 11:1-12:32
Acts 6:1-15
Psalm 51:10-19
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Focus Verses: Deuteronomy 11:1-2, 18-21
1 Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. 2 Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm...
18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

Insight:
The Israelites were finally taking possession of the land God had promised. As they settled down and established their new lives, they would need to be intentional about preserving and telling the stories of God's deliverance. They would need to live out their faith and be careful to pass it on to their children. They would need to tell the stories of wonders and miracles experienced, of hard-learned lessons, of God's faithful provision, of how God had given them the Law through Moses. They would need to live and teach the principles and practices that shaped their faith and worship.

Response and Action:
I want to be intentional about sharing my faith with my children. They don't know everything about my history. They haven't lived my life journey. I will be faithful to communicate the things God has taught me. I will make every effort to share stories, songs, experiences that have shaped and strengthened my faith. I will live out my faith in practical, visible, unavoidable ways that can be understood and copied.

O God, help me to know you and to live in truth. Make me aware of your presence and provision in my life, and help me to tell that story to others. By your grace, help me to share my faith with others–especially my children and grandchildren. Give me the clarity, the dedication, and the intentionality I need to nurture and strengthen the faith of those you would have me teach. Through Christ, I pray. Amen.

Spiritual Formation Verses: 1 Peter 3:15
15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect...

Resources:
Hope Has Its Reasons
by Rebecca Manley Pippert