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Faith At Home
This week’s Loft Prompt is Scripture. Picking a verse and blogging about it. So, I am taking the opportunity to share somethings I have planned to share for a while, that is something I am passionate about.
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 6:5-9
This is a concept my old church was introduced to several years ago at a D6 Conference by D6 Family Ministries. You can check out their website that is full of great tips, curriculum, articles, and ideas to help build your family in faith. Based on the above verses of Deuteronomy 6. The D6 conferences are also on RightNow Media if you have access through your church.
The concept is simple: being intentional about passing along your faith to your children, not replying on the church to do the job.
We need to view the church, not as some kind of faith warehouse that we go to once or twice a week to ‘stock up’, but as something to encourage and reenforce what we are doing at home ourselves.
Over and over in God’s Word we are called to train up our children, to tell our children about the wonders of the Lord.
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb,
Deuteronomy 4:9-10
Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 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.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19
Assemble the people—men, women and children, and the foreigners residing in your towns—so they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. Their children, who do not know this law, must hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
Deuteronomy 31:12-13
When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 32:45-46
Our faith must be much more than religion. It must be a real and vibrant relationship with the Lord. A real, everyday part of our life.
We are still figuring things out, but here are a few ways we are trying to make it part of our family life:
- When the kids are finishing up breakfast we read Scripture.
- We pray. A lot. You can read a bit more about that in this post.
- They are young, but I look for teachable moments. Little things we see or do that we can relate to the faith.
- We have our own ‘story time’ where we sing action songs related to faith, do faith based rhymes and read Bible stories.
- We put on praise and worship music and sermons when we’re cleaning.
- We talk about God.
- We talk about teachings from the Word.
- When we see a person in need or are asked for help we try to do what we can to help.
- We look for little ways to be Jesus to this world.
A good book I would recommend on the subject:
[The below link(s) are Amazon Affiliate Links. For more information on what that means please click here.]
Faith Begins at Home
I have also shared more at Lo Tanner’s site.
What are some of the ways you make your faith part of your everyday life? How are you intentionally passing that on to your kids?
The Jewish people have this down pat. They begin teaching their children the Scriptures very early. Oh, if only we, Christ-followers took this mandate seriously. Thanks for linking up at The Loft.