Faith for the Generations (part 2)
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Faith for the Generations, part 2
May 2, 2010
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
We now continue our look at a fairly famous passage of Scripture out of Deuteronomy. We are going to look at it again and continue on towards the last end of it. So we are going to look at Deuteronomy 6. We are going to read verses 4 through 9 again because we can never get too much Scripture. So, follow along with me:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 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. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
God’s word for us today. Would you join me in prayer?
Lord we do want to see you and we will clap and we will shout “Glory” because you are the one who is worthy of that glory. So Lord we praise you. We thank you this day, that you are here and you are among us; so Lord we ask that by your Spirit you would quicken our hearts to hear what you have for us today. We ask that because of Jesus. Amen.
Well, it had been a great senior high retreat. All the students were on the bus asleep on the way home, all except for one girl. Her name was Meg. Meg was sitting looking out of the window with tears running down her cheeks. The wise youth leader came up to her thinking that she was probably disappointed because the weekend had come to an end. She said that she was sad that the weekend was over, but that was not why she was crying. She said, “My dad hasn’t spoken to me or my mom in weeks. He just sits in his chair and watches T.V. My mom is an emotional basket case,” she said. “I feel like her mom, many times.” She said, “My brother just yells at all of us. I don’t want to go home.”
What Meg was experiencing, and that, by the way, was a true story, was a home that had become a war zone in many ways. She was living and experiencing what experts are calling relational deprivation. Relational deprivation, by the way, is one of those things that the children of the emerging generations, those that are probably twenty and under, are experiencing, experts are telling us, on an ever increasing scale. If we were created for relationships, and I believe that we were, then from a human standpoint our primary relationship should be with our parents, shouldn’t it? Our children today, from preschool all the way through college because they are telling us that adolescence is actually extending past just high school into the mid-twenties for many of these children, they desire relationships where there is nurturing, where it is characterized by love and by vulnerability, by listening and by openness. Family relationships are the place where those kind of characteristics are best learned and best experienced.
I think that is one of the reasons why the words of Deuteronomy 6 what we learned from last week, is also known as the Shema, are so important to us. For what we are doing is we have taken last week and this week and we are looking at this passage as a way to pass on the faith to the upcoming generations. Last week we looked at the great commandment as a place to anchor our faith. So today what we are doing is we are looking at what Moses is calling out to the Israelites on how to carry out that faith in their families. Remember last week we said that even those who don’t have children under their roof right now they still have a place in this process and we will speak to that in just a little bit. I also said that much of what we are talking about here is covered in a book called Think Orange by Reggie Joiner. So what we want to do today is we want to focus on verses 6 through 9. So we want to start with verse 6 today. Moses continues and he says “Keep these commandments that I have given you, keep them in your heat” because he is saying in verse 4 and 5, “your identity is found in God and God alone.” Then he says “We are to live in that identity by loving our God,” being in that kind of loving relationship with him.
Now he continues on and he says these things have to be in your heart before you can hand them off to your children. He is saying if we are concerned about who our children are becoming then we must start with who we are becoming. Our relationship with God will effect how we pass off our faith to our children. I think it is time to get rid of that notion that faith is more caught than taught. That is not an effective way to pass on the faith. So if our children are watching, and they are, they are, don’t assume they understand why you do what you do with your faith. Children need to see how our faith becomes part of who you are, how it becomes personal to you, how you are seeking to grow spiritually and relationally and emotionally. For, if your faith is not relational with God, it is never going to be relational for your kids. So the most important thing you have to give your kids is your relationship with God because everything else flows out of that.
I once heard a youth speaker a few years ago say that the children of the upcoming generations (and when I say that I am saying those who are everyone in the generations from baby-boomers and younger, baby-boomers are kind of the cutoff going the other way, that’s me; so what we are probably talking about is those who are now probably in their thirties to thirty-five and younger), and he said they have what is called a built in BS detector and I think he is right. What he meant by that is our kids know when we are faking our way through our faith. Some of the most powerful moments we can have with our kids is to allow them to see their parents work through with their faith those difficult circumstances and situations that come into all of our lives. The more we can make our faith intersect with our life, the more our kids will see what real faith looks like.
Kevin Leman is a Christian author and speaks a lot on family ministries and he said “My own personal prayer is that my life would be such that my children would see the reality of my relationship with God. A healthy prayer life and demonstration of a proper relationship with God can go a long way towards building healthy self-esteem in our children,” he says.
So passing on the faith starts with your faith. Is your faith real? Is it present tense; and if it is, how are your kids seeing that? Are they seeing it in action? That is what Moses is saying in verse 6. Then he moves on through the rest of the Shema and what I think he is basically saying here is that there needs to be a rhythm in our faith. There needs to be a natural flow in terms of how we go about living out this faith. He says we need to bring it into the everyday. I think as part of that he is saying don’t compartmentalize your faith, and aren’t we really good at that? Aren’t we really good at that? I mean, today it is all about compartmentalizing, polarizing, and quantifying and separating everything in our lives into nice neat little manageable bites, because we are told all of them are important and they are, aren’t they? So what we do is we take our sports life and our school life and our religious life and our work life and maybe our social life and we have them all sitting right there and it is almost like we are spinning plates. You know, we’ve seen that trick done before. We have to keep them all spinning in our lives because they are all important and we are told we have to keep them in balance. So we just keep spinning, we just keep spinning. Is it any wonder when we show that kind of life to our kids that experts are telling us and our kids are telling us they are living under ever increasing levels of stress? Hmmm.
I was at a conference this week and one of the ways that this speaker talked about he said “If you think of our lives as like a box,” he said, “what happens is we put God up in the corner.” Remember when you were like, maybe this is just my artistic talent, you put a little sun in the corner so you put a little quarter of a turn up in the corner and little lines coming out of it? That was my artistic talent. That’s God, and then we have all the other things we do in our lives. The goal is to get God out of the corner of our life into all the areas of our life. That’s what he is talking about. Bring it into the everyday.
Case in point, there was a study done recently at USC that showed that families are spending less time together. Surprise! Surprise! huh? It said the proliferation of social networking has taken the time that family members spend together and it has dropped from 28 hours a month, on average just five years ago to today and it is down to 18 hours per month. One of the senior study fellows from the study said, “It can’t be a good thing for families.” Boy, talk about the obvious there, huh? He said “It ultimately leads to less cohesive and less communicative families.” So if we think about what Moses is tell us when he says God is one, God is one alone, he has to be the one and the only. If that is what God is in your life, then show it. Show it, by bringing the story of God and the relationship you have with him into everything that you do. I think what Moses is talking about here is really being intentional about how we use our time with our kids. So if kids learn best through routines, I think this passage from Deuteronomy gives us some clues. Talk about your faith with them when they are in the house, maybe it is simply eating a meal together and talking about how your faith has intersected your life so your kids can see that. And maybe they have begun to see how their faith is intersecting their lives. That will send a strong message to your children. When you are traveling in the car that is a great time for informal conversations to help them think about what is going to transpire in their day, or what has transpired in their day, as we are carting them all over the place.
Saying “good night” helps but maybe instead of sending them off to bed, how about if you take them to bed even in they are a little bit older and it feels a little weird; because maybe in that kind of setting you will have the opportunity to have conversations with them that you would not otherwise have. Maybe in the morning as everyone is running around and everyone is trying to get their stuff to get to the bus, to get to work, to get lunches, whatever it might be, maybe it is an opportunity just to encourage them and inspire them to focus on whatever it is that is going on in their day.
One of the standard practices for any youth worker that is worth his or her salt is to create places where they can intentionally spend time with students. When I was on a ski trip with students, I always picked out probably anywhere from three to a half dozen kids that I wanted to focus on and made sure that I road the chair lift up the hill with them. They weren’t going anywhere. It is about creating a rhythm, a rhythm in your family where you have a chance to make an impression on your child’s life and communicate what is most important, what is core for you. So it is not just about spending quality time but it is also about the quantity of time, as well. I think that is what Moses is impressing on us in these verses, first to the nation of Israel and, I think now, to us.
Then I want to go back to the very beginning of the Shema. I want to start with that very first phrase: Hear, O Israel. Think about this for a minute. Moses has just been talking about how to pass the faith on to the next generation. Who’s he speaking to? He is not speaking just to parents, folks, he is speaking to the whole nation. He is saying what I am talking about here, folks. It is not just for those who have little ones; but they are for all of us, including parents. Moses was speaking to the nation. If he was here today he would be speaking to us as a Church. He says God is one and if the Church is to exhibit that unity with God, exhibit that unity with Christ, but also exhibit it with the families that have children in this church. The Church is responsible to come alongside of parents to help, to encourage, and to support that most important task that parents have.
Notice here that we are not to replace the parents. The Church is not to replace parents as the faith educators. The Church is not to teach the children the faith. They are to help parents teach the faith to their children. And yes, for sure the Church will cover things of faith without a doubt, but they are meant to supplement what parents are already doing at home, not replacing. That also includes that the Church is to become a resource center for parents in that process. We as the Church are to be the equippers of parents as they carry out their task of passing on the faith. Well what kind of resources do we have here at the church? Just look around. Those of you who do not have children under your roof, guess what? Parents are looking at you. You are the resources and that is where the family of God can become the family for the children of God. In other words, it is an opportunity for us to become spiritual aunts and uncles, grandparents, siblings and cousins. It is what Reggie Joiner calls “widening the circle.” That is what we need to be about in the Church.
Those older adult Sunday school teachers, youth leaders, parent mentors, how about that folks, anybody here think they could be a parent mentor? They are all in place to help influence parents and their children in faith development. The goal there is not just to become a friend, to become a friend to parents or to become a friend to our students. That is not the goal. The goal is to develop a relationship where you can get to the point where you can speak into their lives whether they are parents who are struggling with their kids or whether it be our students. Because a lot of times in a student’s life an adult influence outside of parents can have a significant impact in that student’s life outside of and reinforcing what they are hearing from home. And they are many times desirous to hear what that adult is telling them.
So parents and people of Faith what we are talking about, we are just scratching the surface of what it means to build up a lifelong faithful generation in our midst and the children that will come after them. So God’s call to us, to the people of God, is still in force. So instead of: Here O Israel, the word for Faith Church today is: Hear O Faith Church. Here O Faith Church.
Let’s pray:
Lord Thank you that you are Lord over all and that you are the One. So Lord in that we ask that you would help us in this most important task that you have entrusted to parents as you give them the gift of their children, and that we as a Church may come alongside of them to strengthen them, to lift them up, to hold them as they get weary; for Lord, we know that this world seeks to draw children away from you just as it did for the Israelites going into the Promised Land. So Lord, help us in this most important task. Bless these parents for they need to know your hand is upon them and you are guiding them. Help them to know what they are doing is vital for their children and in your sight, and may we as a Church come alongside of them to be the encouragement and strength that they need. We ask that because of Jesus. Amen.