2. The Parent’s Privilege: Gifting the Faith to Our Children by Speaking Up
- Gifting the Faith to Our Children by Speaking Up.
“Our children will also serve Him. Future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord. His righteous acts will be told to those not yet born. They will hear about everything He has done.” (Ps. 22:30-31).
Homework. As soon as wife and husband become mom and pop, God gives them a homework assignment… Speak up with the children about faith in Him. Even if a parent is on the shy side, a bit of an introvert, and has a low daily quota of spoken words, the assignment remains. You have been given an extraordinary privilege, says the Lord, and that is to pass the faith on to your children, and encourage their trust in Me to continue on forever, from one generation to the next. You don’t need a personality transplant to simply refer to me every day as life’s reference point. You don’t need to browbeat children about Me, or force-feed Scripture down their throats, He says. I basically want the Lord to be a household name, a natural point of discussion. I want your children to recognize Me as the one and only true God, and become familiar with Me enough to love me with all they got… heart, soul, mind and strength.
Lord Protect My Child – Susan Tedeschi
The Shema. God’s homework assignment was clearly explained in the central Jewish mission statement in Scripture, known as the “Shema.” It has been paraphrased this way: “Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your home and on your city gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-9, the Message).
No Higher Calling. All you public speakers out there… Remember that your first and primary audience is waiting for your spoken words at home with your family. A public speaker begins his/her career as a private speaker. Church pastors, your first responsibility in spreading the word, to evangelize others, is in the home with your own children. Don’t forget that your micro world at home is your first priority as you evangelize and disciple in your home, and then you can feel free to take on the macro world at your church and beyond. School teachers, your first students are your own children in that little schoolhouse where you live. Don’t forget your own flesh and blood who need to see your teaching abilities demonstrated on the home front. Start your teaching at home as you are teaching other people’s children in your classroom at work. Youth group leaders, don’t forget that your first and most important youth group are right there in your own home. They deserve your primary attention as you guide and disciple other people’s kids. When you invent an exciting activity to teach the faith to your youth group at church, see what your own kids think of them first. CEOs, you have your own little company right there at home with wife and family. Lovingly manage them, stay intimately connected to them in a meaningful way, as you invest your energies in whatever other company you’ve got down the street or across town. Political figures, your abilities to wisely discern right from wrong and articulate the virtues in your speech behind a podium are needed first at home. Your family looks to you for learning how to be civilized.
“Let all the parents joyfully shout to their children in exuberant praise about Your powerful acts, one generation to the next, proclaiming Your mighty deeds and declaring Your great strength.” (Psalm 145:4).
Psalm 145 gives us some profound details regarding what parents are to tell their children, and how they are to tell them. This powerful passage outlines which of the Lord’s character traits and attributes are to be declared to the children in the home, and the various ways to express them. The bottom line is that God is worthy of all this attention and praise, and if there is one thing Jewish worshippers were not shy about, it was their praise of the Lord. As Dr. Ellen Davis once wrote, “The area of ancient Israel’s greatest creativity, and so what they did best, was the praise of God.” (Getting Involved with God). The Hebrew writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, made praise an art form. Each verse below from Psalm 145 is expanded somewhat by including the meaning of some of its Hebrew words:
Ps. 145:1 = “I will extol, exalt, and lift You up, my God and King, and bless on my knees Your awesome name with honor forever and ever!”
145:2 = “Every day I will bless you on my knees in adoration, and wildly celebrate Your name with my arms raised, forever and ever!”
145:3 = “Great in importance is the Lord Yahweh, and greatly to be praised and celebrated; His incomparable majesty is unsearchable, beyond finding out, impossible to fully investigate!”
145:4 = “Let all the parents joyfully shout to their children in exuberant praise about Your powerful acts, one generation to the next, proclaiming Your mighty deeds and declaring Your great strength!”
145:5 = “I will ponder deeply within myself, considering the glorious and beautiful splendor of Your majesty and the heavy weight of Your presence, meditating on Your miraculous deeds and wondrous handiworks!”
145:6 = “People will speak in affirmation of the powerful might of Your fearful and awesome accomplishments; and I will declare in detail the dignity of Your greatness and majesty!”
145:7 = “They will gush out of their mouths the famous memory of Your abundant goodness and moral excellence, raving in celebration, singing and shouting loudly of Your righteousness and Your saving justice!”
145:8 = “The Lord Yahweh is gracious in His generous favor and in His compassionate mercy; He is patient, longsuffering, and is slow to anger; He is abounding in faithful lovingkindness and is rich in His loyal love.”
Vineyard Worship – The Lord Is Gracious And Compassionate [Official Lyric Video]
145:9 = “The Lord Yahweh is bountifully good to everyone and everything; His tender mercies are over all His creation, His creatures all resting in His love as if they were in God’s nourishing womb.”
145:10 = “All of Your creatures applaud You in praise, O Lord Yahweh, and worship You with hands held high; and all Your faithful saints and godly ones shall bless you on bended knee in reverent adoration.”
Here is God Revealing His Heart. As in so many other passages in the Hebrew Bible, the psalmist here in 145:8 is quoting from a vital self-revelation of God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The Lord reveals here His true nature, the eternal qualities of His essence, the attributes of His heart, and His divine motivation in all His dealings with the human race. And this passage has remained the key to unlocking God’s mysterious identity ever since… “God passed before Moses and proclaimed, “I AM Lord Yahweh! I AM Lord Yahweh! A God who is compassionate and gracious, longsuffering and slow to anger, abounding in faithful mercy and truth, preserving loyal lovingkindness for thousands of generations, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty or allowing sin to go unpunished.” (Exodus 34:6-7).
What We are Declaring to the Children. So what do parents tell their children about God? Children get used to hearing their parents declare that He is majestic, beautiful, powerful and mighty, gracious to everyone, generously good to all creation, tenderly merciful and compassionate, faithful and loyal in His love, righteous and just in His dealings, fearful in power, miraculous and wondrous, honorable and awesome, worthy to be celebrated and praised and blessed! Worthy to be loved with every inch of our being! God is all this and so much more that we couldn’t even begin to reach the end of His character traits and His attributes. And mystery of mysteries, God is far beyond us and at the same time within us and in our midst.
How Do We Declare This to our Children. The simple word ‘praise’ does not do it justice, since, thanks to the Jewish believers, there are so many biblical ways to praise Him. Scripture doesn’t define the word “praise,” but it offers plenty of descriptions and numerous praise-words. Praise can be described as an outward expression of gratitude for all that God has done for oneself, for the community, for the world. Praise is a recounting of the many blessings that God has provided in His grace and mercy. Praise is a grateful appreciation of God’s mighty works. Praise is an expression of thanksgiving to the Lord, an acknowledgement of God’s righteous deeds. To praise God is to thank God and celebrate His presence in the world… whether by kneeling down and adoring Him; by celebrating Him loudly in song and shout; by throwing our hands into the air in worship; by wildly jumping, twirling and dancing; by splitting the ears with joyful noise; by falling flat on the ground in humble adoration; by clapping the hands in gladness; by jubilantly singing with all kinds of instruments; by welcoming spontaneous songs of praise. Praise can become an art form in the home, with the parents leading the way and the children following along. Acts of praise in the home begins with simply speaking up.
Perhaps one’s children would be inspired in the faith with this Want Ad:
WANTED: Adventurers who want to explore the Person of God as the Final Frontier, the greatest Wonder of the World; must be extremely curious about the nature of God’s Being; motivated to know more about God than you know presently; inspired by the thrill of discovery; the willingness to be challenged and changed in the process of exploration; have the courage to step into a safe unknown; able to invest considerable mental energy to pursue life inside God with a mustard seed of trust in Him; be comfortable with the certainty of endless exploring; have the patience to pursue the quest one step at a time for as long as it takes; must explore with the vision of C. S. Lewis in his Narnia tales, “Further Up and Further In!”
“We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about His power and His mighty wonders. He commanded our ancestors to teach them to our children, so the next generation might know them – even the children not yet born – and they in turn will teach their own children. So each generation should set its hope anew in God, not forgetting His glorious miracles and obeying His commands.” (Psalm 78:4-8).