“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” –Deuteronomy 6:4-9
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The Bible consistently puts on parents the main responsibility for teaching God’s truth to their children. Don’t fall into Satan’s trap and believe that the church alone is enough for your kids. God has given this job to you! This is a tremendous privilege and a tremendous responsibility. To succeed in this task will bring you great joy, but to fail in this task is to disobey God and endanger your children. The burden that God puts on parents should drive you to your knees to ask God for help.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 lays out a pattern for how children should be brought up in the faith. There are three basic commands for parents in this passage. First, you are to hear God’s Word. Don’t neglect reading the Bible and don’t let Sunday’s sermons fall on deaf ears. This is important for every Christian, but especially for parents who are to pass on this teaching to their children.
Second, you are to love God with all your heart. What you treasure most is what you will end up teaching your children. Learn to cherish the infinite value of God.
Third and finally, you are to impress God’s Word on your children. Do this in every way possible because it is the most important thing you can do for your kids. Get your children to read their Bibles. Help your children memorize key Scripture verses. Talk about the Bible with them. Put up Bible verses in their rooms and around your house.
We have put together a Bethel Kids Bible Reading Plan for 2012. I highly encourage you to use this booklet with your children. Sit down with them and pick out one of the three plans for them to follow. Regularly ask them if they are keeping up with their plan and reward them for reading their Bible every day.
Also, on January 8th, we are kicking off a new series in KidzBlast called “Ten for Life.” Every week we will be teaching one of ten memory verses that we want kids to remember for the rest of their lives. The first four of these memory verses are on the back of this newsletter. Quiz your kids on these after church and during the following weeks. Together we can impress on your children some of the most important verses in the Bible.
If you hear God’s Word, love God with all your heart, and impress God’s Word on your children, you will accomplish most of what God requires of parents and you will help establish your children on the solid rock that will never fail.
By God’s grace,
Pastor Stephen
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