”Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:4-9
I read this passage in Deuteronomy quite often because it’s a passage that is foundational for me in my parenting. As I was meditating on it recently, it struck me that the command to love the Lord with all your heart,soul, and strength precedes the verse to “impress them on your children.” Is it because effective training of our children in the Lord comes as a result of our love of the Lord?
Some days are real struggles for me as a parent. I’m tired, irritable, and impatient. The kids seem to fight more and it takes numerous instructions before they do what they are told. Exhausted, I come to the end of the day and I can’t figure out what went wrong. I open the word and this passage in Deuteronomy pierces my heart. The Holy Spirit points out to me that I can’t teach, disciple, train and discipline my children in the Lord if he is not the center of my heart.
I need to be daily connected to the vine to receive my sustenance and strength. Loving God with all my heart means that all of my being lives for God and God alone. He doesn’t just want outward performance or attempts to perfectly obey him; he desires my heart. “My son, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways.” (Proverbs 23:26) He wants me to seek him first in all things; nothing else should replace him in my heart. When we are deeply in love with someone, it’s painful to be separated from them. The same should be true of our love for God; the very core of our being desires to be with him all the time.
In order for me to be effective as a parent, I need to immerse myself in the word and drink from the fountain of life found there. I need to pray and feed on his word each and every day or my soul will become hungry. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I’m hungry I become irritable. Our soul needs its daily nourishment as does our body.
When my heart is fed each day and is full of love for God, then it overflows as I pour it out in my children. I can effectively teach them about his love because it fills my heart, I can adequately disciple them in the word because my soul has been fed by the Bread of Life, and I can impress them with the truth of God everywhere and in all situations because he has strengthened me through prayer and the word.
For further reading: Psalm 119, Matthew 18:1-6, Mark 12:28-34, Psalm 51:16,17
From Devotions for Moms
