How Will They Know if No One Tells Them?

 But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?  Romans 10:14

A few months ago, Dylan and I were snuggling in bed one early morning. She said to me in a voice filled with distress, “You know, I was talking to Hannah* about God, and she don’t really remember him.”

Dylan isn’t converted, and I pray that God would truly open her eyes to himself soon, but I am thankful that she has an understanding of who God is, not because we are some great parents, but because he has helped us understand the magnitude of our high calling as parents.  

I want Dylan to see her father and mother savor Christ.  I want her to be able to close her eyes and picture his character in her mind based not only on Scriptures she has been taught by us but by the vivid picture we paint of him in our lives, by stories we tell her of his faithfulness, discipline, love, omnipresence, and holiness.  I want her to see me at my wits end- and I want her to see me turn to him.  I want her to remember when things get tough and her heart is aching that her parents went through heartache and trials and rejoiced in them because, by God’s Spirit, they were able to recognize that those afflictions were blessings from God to make them more like Christ.  I want to know that though she may not KNOW him now, she knows about Him, she can in no way doubt his existence, his presence and his faithfulness in the lives of her parents.  I don’t want to fail her in this.  I pray that I would point her to Christ when she’s being disciplined, that she may know that these commands she has been given are impossible to keep apart from a change in her very nature,  I pray that God’s mercy would be reflected at times in me when I can show her that though she deserves much punishment, I will show mercy to her as the Father has shown much mercy toward me.  I pray that I show her humility and my own need of Christ when I deal with her wrongly and must ask for her forgiveness.

"And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:6-9

I think that these verses speak of what our goals as mothers, parents should be.  We should be breathing Christ to our children.  It shouldn’t always be like this, ‘Now sit here, open this bible and study this memory verse until you know God.’  Though, there is a time and place for that most certainly.  But Christ should be on our lips, in our hearts, in the way we speak to our children, the way we play with our children, the way we discipline them, how we drive in traffic, how we love our husbands, the way we pray, and how we serve our church.  I think in “writing them on the doorposts of your house,” it’s more than an actual written word, but a declaration by the life of your home,  “We are God’s people, we speak of him, we live for him; he is our identity.” 

May our children never say to us, ‘Why did you not tell me about God?”  May it never be said of our children, “They don’t really remember him.” 

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord , and his might, and the wonders that he has done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments. Psalm 78:7