When do I do the What?...

When do we do it? We are all busy and stretched, and rarely do we have 15 minutes to sit and just teach and train our kids. So when do we do it? Let’s look at the instructions on when in verses 7-9, “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” We have to get creative and use the regular minutes of our day to not only relate to our children, but model how they relate to God. Now, we all keep a crazy schedule. Many of us have a spouse who is working, or maybe you are a single parent with no choice but to be away at work. So when do we do it? When do we have time to help them with memory verses for bible fellowship and Awana, do a daily devotional, read from scripture and pray with them? Some possible practical suggestions to do are: table setting cards, like a dinner party name card, with the memory verses on them at the place where they sit at the table. They are in front of them at breakfast and dinner and we can talk about them then. We have to schedule and structure our day. We can have devotion time scheduled in the morning so this means bedtime has to be set as well. We can pray at night with them and in the morning getting ready for school or daycare. Have them pray before ball games and on the way to school or daycare in the car. Have them choose a yearly verse, with your help, and print it on nice stock and have it framed in their room so they see it everyday, all year, and talk about it. You have to be deliberate in the minutes of everyday to find the when.

God has called us, the parents, to be the disciple maker of our children. He’s called us to model the relationship with Him for our children. We need to be the spiritual giant in our child’s life, not the pastors, or teachers at church or anyone else. We must understand what to do, and that we are not called to a choice in this, we are commanded. We must have structure and be deliberate in the everyday minutes of life to be successful raising children rightly related to an awesome God. Read and commit Deuteronomy 6:1-9 to your heart and mind and watch your child relate to you and most importantly, God, in the way He intended.

And as it says in verse 2, “so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live.”