FROM DEUTERONOMY 6

 Hear, O Israel:  The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 

 I have been reading a book by Catherine Stonehouse, Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey.  She stresses that the foundation for passing faith in God to our children is contained in this chapter in Deuteronomy.  There are three principles here that God is teaching us through Moses.  First of all, we must believe in the one in the One True God who created the universe, who is sovereign over everything, and who gave us principles for life.   Everything rests on this belief.  Then God asks us to enter into a love relationship with Him; to love Him with ‘all of our hearts, souls, and might’.  And third, these commandments were to be internalized, and lived out – ‘keep them in your heart’.  “Only after adults had affirmed their faith in God, entered into a love relationship with God, and internalized God’s laws were they really prepared to teach their children. The goal is an awe-inspiring faith in God passed from generation to generation; only persons of faith can pass on the faith.”  Do we as parents, grandparents, or members of the ‘community of faith’ have an ‘awe-inspiring’ faith that we are sharing with children?  If not, we need to humbly ask God to do an incredible work of faith in our lives right now so we can glorify Him by ‘telling the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and His might, and the wonders He has done.’ Psalm 78:4

 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

 Biblical spiritual development in children does not primarily happen in programs in our churches; it happens in the home!  Programs for children are valuable tools in our children’s spiritual development only when they are strategically connected to the parents so that the teaching can be made relevant in our children’s daily lives.