Teach Your Children Diligently

Deuteronomy 6:5-7 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. YOU SHALL TEACH THEM DILIGENTLY TO YOUR CHILDREN, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.”

There is a lot in these few short verses! I will not be going into the first verse about loving God with all of our heart, soul and strength! That is a major challenge in itself! That command is pretty clear and pretty much covers the manner in which we should live our lives! You know at least some of what you need to do in order to flesh that out, but I want to go on into what it means to teach our children diligently. What should we teach them and what are some specific things we can do to make sure this commandment gets followed in our homes? The thoughts in Deuteronomy 6 will be covered in two or three postings, so I will just be covering some thoughts about what needs to be taught and some practical ways to accomplish it.

According to Webster’s dictionary, the word ‘diligent’ means “to persevere with careful steady work”. This implies that teaching diligently isn’t something that can be accomplished in a very short time. It is my understanding that “teaching diligently” would take a lifetime. Now over the lifetime of our children from babyhood to adulthood, the style and content of the teaching would change, but it looks to me like it is an ongoing effort. There is no implication that there is a starting and an ending time.

So, what is it that we are to teach? Verse 6 says that we are to teach “these words which I command you today”. Then we look one verse ahead of that and we see in verse 5 the command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart…soul and ...strength.” So from this, I understand that we are to teach our children that God is to have first place in their lives! Well, as I have been thinking about this, I am not really sure that any of us really knows what that would look like, but I do know that most of us are not there and it is something that we need to work on VERY ‘diligently’!

So what are some practical and specific ways that we can accomplish this teaching? Verse7 tells us to “talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.” This pretty much encompasses the whole 24 hours in the day! I think this means that our Christian faith is pretty much a way of life and not something we put on and take off as we walk through our life! It means that when we are sitting in our homes, there should be reference to God and our Lord Jesus as if He were there in person. At first it may take effort to try to work conversation about God into your everyday household conversation, and you should take that effort to do it! For instance, when you are enjoying a fresh homemade cookie, talk about how thankful you are that God has provided us with stoves for baking good cookies. Talk about how wonderful it is that God made things grow so you could have the chocolate chips that are in the cookies! And of course, there is the usual prayer at the meals, but it needs to be more than that. When you are out walking (and you should be making time to be out walking with your children), talk about all the beauty and things that God has created. Probably one of the easiest things is to approach this idea by repeating all of the things for which you can be thankful. When you lie down is a good time to rehearse all of the wonders of the day and if the day wasn’t so wonderful, you can remember that God was there and gave strength for the day and how He has good plans for tomorrow. And of course, when you get up is a good time to pray and ask for God’s help and guidance for a new day! One big condition about all of this is that you need to be there in order to accomplish this. This will take time and it will take planning at first, but the rewards are eternal and well worth the effort!

Just one short thought to finish off for today is to remember that one of the main ways to accomplish this whole task is to live a good example of Godliness and thankfulness. As your children go from small children to being adults, it probably becomes more important than ever to live a Godly and thankful example. Adult children need you to show them how to live in the culture that is constantly changing. It is typical for your example to become more important while the words you speak become fewer.

Next time, I will continue this thought and cover some more in Deuteronomy 6. Trust you will have a great week and now I am off to make sure that I accomplish these things as I live my life before my adult children and my young grandchildren!