Our lives must be rooted in prayer. Do our kids ever see us pray? Are we teaching them that prayer is a few hurried words spoken at bedtime and dinner? Do they know that God hears their prayers at when they feel unprepared for their math test and at when their friend is mad at them? Do we teach them not only to talk to God about their fears and failures but also their victories and joys? Do we pray for them and do they know it?
When B spent most of the school year getting in trouble and refusing to participate, my first response was to discover the problem and fix it, my second response was to punish. We went through lots of really creative discipline before I realized the first and most important thing I needed to do was pray with and for him. Our God, who keeps all of his promises, has promised us that if we ask him for what we need, he will give it to us. Prayer needs to be our first response in life, not our last effort.
All in all, we have to take Moses’ words to heart. We remember and proclaim with him that the Lord is our God. The Lord alone! We will not serve anyone or anything else. We love God with all of our being and acknowledge that our love for God is the most important thing about us. And we do everything we can to make sure we never forget to put God above everything else and to love him completely. We make sure our kids know what we believe and why, we never stop talking about the great love our God has shown us and we surround ourselves with reminders of that love.
As parents, it’s easy to get drawn into the idea that we have to prepare our kids for life as adults. We worry about them not doing well in school, being involved in too many or too few extra-curricular activities, having too few good friends. What will become of them? It’s easy to fret over how the decisions we make now will affect their futures. But it is absolutely vital that we realize that our most important role is preparing our children to make the most important decision of their lives: to follow Jesus or to deny him. Our children’s happiness doesn’t hinge on our far-flung dreams for them. All of us here know that our kids can be happy without being doctors or lawyers or professional athletes. They can be happy even if money isn’t always easy to come by and people disappoint them. But their happiness is absolutely dependent on the choice they make for or against God and the effect that choice will have on the rest of their eternal lives. Living our lives in such a way that we bring glory to God is unequivocally the very best thing we can ever do for our kids.
The same thing hold true for us as a congregation. We have a responsibility to point everyone we come into contact with to God. We have to talk openly and honestly about the great things our God has done for us. And we have to make sure that everyone of us knows what we believe and why we believe it. In all of our lives let us remember Jesus’ promise to us that if we seek first the things of God, if we make following him the most important thing we do, he will supply all of our needs abundantly.
To Be Continued...
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