Teach them

"Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth." ~Deuteronomy 18:11-21

I was thinking of these verses today when I was sitting in the living room reading 2 Samuel to the boys. We have been reading a chapter of the Bible almost every day for the past school year. I read it aloud to them and then we discuss it. We discuss definitions of words, meanings of names, context of the passage we are reading, and how we can apply the lessons to our lives. 

Before we begin one of us will pray and ask the Lord to help us learn from His word. It is really neat to see what the boys include in their prayers. 

These things are so important to our lives. Jesus isn't just someone we talk about on Sunday mornings, He is part of our everyday life. We talk about Him all the time. We talk about the Word of God all the time. We talk about what it says about how we are to live our lives. 

I wish we would listen to praise music and sign more often. It happens once in a while, but not as much as I would like. It just hasn't been something that I have made an effort to make happen. We did it a lot more before Silas passed away. He loved praise music. 

When we first moved to Georgia in 2009 we had home church. Every Sunday morning we gathered together in the living room and spent some time singing praises to the Lord. Then Archie would teach a lesson and then we would have children's church. Often Jason and Silas would set up a blanket on the floor complete with snacks, and we would have a children's lesson and maybe a craft and/or coloring pages. We did that for over 2 years until Silas was diagnosed with cancer. At that point we felt we needed to be part of a congregation. It was such a sweet time though, and I have no regrets about it. We worshiped as a family, we learned as a family, we spent time together as a family in the presence of the Lord! 

Although I didn't realize it at the time, I believe now, looking back, that we were doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing. It was preparing us, strengthening us, for fighting Silas' cancer, for being close as a family, and for dealing with his departure from this earth. I am so thankful to the Lord for directing us in this, He knew exactly what we needed then, and He knows exactly what we need for the future and is preparing us now.