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Alright. Good morning, everybody. Very good to see you all on our family worship combined Sunday. Just for your information, as we are filling up in here, we have an overflow down in in the fellowship hall. If all these seats fill up and, we encourage, I suppose especially, parents with small kids, to head down there, the whole family, but it's it'll be on the screen out there, you'll get to hear everything.
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So know that that is an option if we fill up in here. But we are glad to see you guys. This is the day that the Lord's made. Let's rejoice. We'll be glad in it.
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Why don't we stand up together? We'll worship.
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Let's sing. Bless the Lord, my soul worship his holy me let me be singing your your name is great and your heart is kind goodness I will keep the end draws near and my time has come still my soul will sing your praise ten thousand years and then forever
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Alright. You all may be seated. Again, we welcome each of you to First Bee. If you're a first time visitor, very good to have you here. In fact, if you are visiting for the first time, could we just see a hand?
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Alright. Let's welcome these people. Yay. It's good to have you. Few announcements I'd like you to be aware of here.
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Renzi's gonna reel them. The schedule for Solid Rock is changing. Renzi is gonna send texts and updates, things like that. So just that you're aware of that. There is a yellow contact card.
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In fact, if you've got it, would you hold that up? And I know how these things work. You, see them and you go, I feel that some other time. So, what I'm gonna do is ask you if you are willing to please even take one minute right now to fill out this little contact card. This is some important information, for us about how you get your information and who you are, your family.
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So we have that information and you can put this in the offering plate. So can I ask you just to take a moment to fill it out? There are pencils in the seats in front of you and just take a second to do that. Renzi, do you have like some Jeopardy music or something that we could as you're filling those out, ladies first fellowship, they're gonna take a break this summer. They'll start again in the fall.
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Do we have anything else? Yes. This is very important. Right after this service today, there's gonna be a short, I'm saying very, very short, congregational meeting right here. So those who are members, and you can vote as a member, you would stay here for this congregational vote.
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Don't get up and go. Those who are not members, we invite you to stay anyway and and just listen in if you want. If you don't wanna do that, you see that big tent out there? It's fun. It reminds me of the circus.
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This is gonna be great. Afterwards, we're gonna have a potluck lunch under that canopy, and so we'd invite you then if you don't wanna stay for the meeting, you can start making your way into that canopy and eating. Does that make sense? So that's happening today. VBS is coming up.
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Open to community, ages preschool through fifth entering fifth grade, and there's a decorating day on June 21. And we'd love your help in that, but that's some information about VBS. And again, welcome. We're glad that you're here. Why don't we stand up together?
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Say hi to the people around you, give them a warm handshake, hug, or a holy kiss.
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Alright. If
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you can squeeze into your aisle, that would be very, very helpful and leave some room on the ends. We'll try to get everybody in here. And, again, there's some overflow in that other room. Everything is projecting in that other room. And, and so if there's no room left in here, you can head in there.
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Alright. We'll give thanks to the Lord here.
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Give thanks to the Lord, our
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God king. His love endures forever. For he's good, he's above all things. His love endures forever. Sing praise.
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Sing praise
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for the mighty hand and outstretched arm. His love
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endures forever. For the life that's been reborn. His love sing praise. From Denver, God is faithful. From Denver, is strong.
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Forever, is with us forever, forever, forever.
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And rising to the setting sun
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because love endures forever. The grace of God, we will carry on. Because love endures forever. Forever forever. Forever God is faithful.
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Forever God is strong. Forever God is with us forever forever
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Amen. We do serve a faithful God. Let's pray together. God, we are thankful for this morning. It is good to be here and it's good to meet with you and we don't just sing these words, we believe this word.
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Forever, you are faithful, forever you are strong and that is why we worship you.
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Lord of all creation, of
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water, earth, and sky.
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Heavens are tabernacle. Lord be to the Lord on high.
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Early in the morning
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Early in morning, I will celebrate night. And as I stumble in the darkness, I will call your name by night. God will wonders beyond our galaxy. You are holy, holy. You are holy.
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Holy. The universe declares your majesty.
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How many of you remember the song Jesus Loves Me? How many learned it when you were a kid? That was probably one of the most formative songs in my spiritual life. We're gonna sing it together this morning.
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Jesus loves me. Yes. I know. For the Bible tells me so. I've been so wants to loves Yes.
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Jesus Jesus loves loves me. Me. Yes. The Bible tells me so. Jesus loves me.
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He He will stay. He's prepared a home for me. Yes. Loves me. Yes.
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Loves me. Nobody tells me so.
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God, we thank you for your great love this morning. I thank you, God, for simple faith too. We don't have all the answers and we have a lot of questions sometimes, but we thank you God that, you're faithful, that you're strong, that you're loving, that you're kind, you're forgiving. And so Lord, we wanna hold on to you. We wanna hold on to your promises and we also got one not just keep this for ourselves, but pass this to the next generation.
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And that's what this is about. And I pray God that you would truly speak to us this morning. Amen. You may have a seat. The front, we're entering here into the worship of giving.
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If you're a first time visitor, we're not asking for money. Glad that you're here. Pray that you feel welcome. If you call first be your home, what's that? Yes.
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If you would, please put those yellow those yellow contact cards in the offering plate. That would be wonderful. Thanks for the reminder. Let's pray together and we'll send these guys out. Lord, we do thank you for being such a good and generous giver.
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And Lord, our goal is to be more like you and if we're to be more like you, it does include, not holding on to our resources with a with a closed hand, but rather an open hand to you and and an open heart and a cheerful heart and a joyful heart. So as we enter into this worship of giving, I pray that that would describe this church body. Loving, generous, kind people who trust you, and trust you with our time and talents and our and our treasure. And so in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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Kids. Kids. Wake up. Wake up. It's Sunday.
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Okay. Get ready for church. Brian? Brian? Wake up, honey.
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Brian, get up. Get up. Woah. Okay. I'm gonna hop in the shower real quick.
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You get the kids ready, and then we'll get going. Okay?
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What? You just lay out their clothes because
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it takes me five minutes.
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Honey. It's perfect.
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Seriously. Jack, well, we're already late for church. You're right.
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Get yourself dressed.
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Did you pick up my stuff from the dry cleaners? Okay, Jack.
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I'm gonna
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make you waffles. Can I have a sandwich? Yes. But you gotta make it by yourself. Jack.
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Okay. This
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is all I could find, and the zipper's broken. Alright. I'll go grab a safety pin. I have the high score. Anna, what are you doing?
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Daddy, I'm painting your fingernails.
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Well, that's great, sweetie,
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but go get dressed. I need you to stay still. Okay. Honey. Get up.
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Come on. Let's go.
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Okay. Everybody needs to eat. Here you go. Honey, go. Here you go.
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Okay. Here you go. I forgot my shoes. Honey, we gotta go, babe. I wanna take off my shoes.
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Nobody's taking off their shoes, and I want everybody to understand that
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we're No. One.
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We made it.
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Yep.
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How many of you can relate, either now or in the past to mornings like that before church? How many had one of those this morning? At first B, we know that we are not perfect people who have it all together. Sometimes it takes all the energy that we have and all the patience that we have just to get here on a Sunday morning. So, families, moms, dads, grandparents, great grandparents, and really everybody, we want to give you some encouragement this morning to keep it up, to hold fast to the faith that you have in Christ and pass it to the next generation.
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That's God's original design and God's plan for evangelism so that he would be known from one generation to the next, and that's what this family Sunday is about. We believe that our mission statement of with all we are, help me out, loving God and God. People through Christ begins in the home. We must first live out this mission statement in our homes and with our families. And our goal this morning is just to be reminded of that plan and encouraged to live out that plan because that is God's plan.
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So this morning, you're going to hear from one of our elders, Gary Geek, our youth pastor Renzi Reno, and myself on this command to pass this faith from one generation to the next. So I'd like to invite up Gary. We call him Golden Gary for a reason. When you when you talk with Gary, it's like a heart to heart every time. And so, I'd invite you to tune in and listen, to Gary and Gary's heart on this subject.
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Well, good morning.
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I think golden Gary is more shaking Gary right now. So you see me, a broken voice and a shaky knees. So the theme is family. So I want to share a little story. There was this little boy who ran to his grandma and gave her a big hug and a kiss.
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And then he goes, grandma, I'm so glad you're here. Now daddy can do his trick. The grandma goes, so what trick is that? The boy said, well, I heard daddy tell mommy, if you come visit again, he was gonna climb the walls. I think that story was more for me than you because it helped me relax, I guess.
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I believe one of the greatest statements in the Bible that talk about a commitment to God and a commitment to family was Joshua in the Old Testament. And I know many already know the verse that I'm going to quote, but I want to set I want to set it in context to why Joshua said it. God had Joshua assemble all the tribes in Israel together, and then he challenged them in three things. He challenged them to remember their heritage, where they came from. He challenged them in their spiritual condition, and then he challenged them in a commitment.
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That's when we hear Joshua say, choose this day whom you will serve, But for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I think how desperately we need Joshua's in our culture today to challenge us in those same three areas of our life. And I thought, I wonder what Joshua would say to us today. He was a 110 years old, I believe, when he made that statement. So I wrote down what I what I what I believe Joshua would say to our culture today.
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I believe Joshua would warn us. He would tell us when a people lose track of their heritage, they will lose a big part of their identity, and they will struggle to see purpose and vision in the future. And then I I believe he would remind us that this nation was not founded on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. That the freedoms we all enjoy, especially the freedoms to worship the Lord, came at a great cost, that our ancestors and forefathers paid a great deal to see us set free from the religion religious oppression. I believe Joshua would tell us that our Christian heritage is a responsibility of the family to honor and cherish and protect, that the family has a task to pass it to the next to their next to their children and the next generation, that it is the family's responsibility.
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Then I believe Joshua would help to see our condition. He would remind us that that what makes a great nation is the health of the family within that nation, that the foundation of the home will always become the foundation in the society. And then I'm afraid he would say that the families in this nation are in trouble. Non Christian families as well as Christian families. He would tell us that this nation has lost the fear of God.
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I believe he would help us to see how far we have fallen from God's design. He would tell us that 40% of all Christian or all children born in this nation will be born into a fatherless home, that there is virtually no difference between people of faith and those of the world when it comes to divorce, infidelity, and cohabitation. The only true difference is in what people of faith say, not what they do. He would tell us that the moral slide of this country and and values is directly related to the moral slide of our homes. He would remind us it matters what goes on in the home.
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Sadly, we have lost the passion for Jesus, and our kids see no deep felt convictions lived out in the before them, that faith is really dead in the home. They need to see Jesus is everything and every part of our lives. Parents, and I'll repeat this twice, parents carelessly set dreams and expectation for our children to what they will become, but they forget that the vast majority will become what they was what they have seen modeled to them and that what we are before them. I'll say that again. Parents carelessly set dreams and expectations for their children to what they would become, forgetting the vast majority will become what was modeled to them and who we are before them.
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He would remind us that the purpose of the home is to glorify God, and as Carl said earlier, to transfer to transfer the purposes of God to the next generation. He would encourage us to see that the that the greatest thing that we can do in the family and in the church is to help shape the next generation to who they are and what they will and what they have been called to and to serve God and people. The Christian family was designed to inspire and hope, to be an inspiration and hope to all the world, and it was a great call of God. And then Joshua, I believe, would call us to a decision. I believe Joshua knew that God's power always comes with a step of faith towards him.
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And he knew that the family is broken. Many find themselves in a broken family, but he knows that a step of commitment to God, God can do amazing things. I want you to picture if you can a 110 year old Joshua standing here and, like, making a mark in the sand and challenging us and saying, choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my home, we'll serve the Lord.
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Alright. Thanks, Gary. Bear with me a little bit. My voice is it's been going for a while now, but I think we can get through this. Like Carl said, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Rinsey.
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I am the youth director here at First Baptist, and I do a lot of the tech stuff as well. And like Carl said earlier, I'm gonna be talking about legacy. Legacy, that's exciting. And legacy merely just something we need to Easy back there. Let the guy have the booth for one second.
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My goodness. Yes, a legacy, something we leave behind for others when we when we pass on. You know, it can look like money, it can look like what we've taught the next generation, but it's that thing that we leave behind when we pass away for the next generation, for our community, for whoever is kind of left behind. Not to be confused with a Subaru Legacy, I think is a fair clarification being that we live in Jackson, Wyoming. If we have any visitors from Oregon or Washington, that's also a good clarification for you guys.
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Those things run rampant out in these parts. But back to legacy. So legacy, what I'd like you guys to do is just kind of think about legacy. What do you know about legacy? Was there a legacy left for you guys by your parents?
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Do you plan on leaving a legacy for your kids, for the next generation, for your community? So as you ponder that, I would like to take you guys down a quick stroll through the life of Renzi Reno growing up. Let's see here. Right there, that's my family, minus Kale, she wasn't in my family, that was after we got married. That gentleman right there, that would be yours truly.
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That's my little brother Dusty, Frankie, Renetta, Ron, Denise, and Kale. We used to have long hair back in those days. It's now much shorter. But, yeah, so the house I grew up in, pretty nice place. Right there.
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That's actually a smaller house than the one I actually grew up in. No, I'm just joking. That's not the house I grew up in. But the house I grew up in, there was a picture on the wall on the hallway hanging as you would walk down to us kids' bedrooms. So me, Frank, and Dusty, we shared a bedroom on the left, and my sister had a bedroom all to herself at the end of that hallway.
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And on that hallway wall was a picture. Many of you have probably seen it, but we had it's kind of the one consistent picture we had in our house growing up. It was framed. It had a glass cover. It was beautiful, and it was a picture of a train.
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And it's just chugging down the track, and what it has is the first half of Proverbs twenty two six, train up a child in the way he should go. And so growing up, I passed this picture probably a thousand times, couple times a day for twenty some years, and I did not move out when I got done with high school. It's twenty some years. So that's unfortunate. But in fact, Kale was my first roommate.
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We got married and I moved right in with her from home. That's pretty sweet. Yeah, Proverbs 22 says, Tramp child. So, I passed this thing thousands of times. And and so, the first half of that, train up a child in the way he should go.
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And you guys probably get that train. Let's see here. Train and train. There's a picture of a train. You guys know what that's called?
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A homonym. A little grammar lesson. It wouldn't be Sunday morning here without a little grammar lesson. Carl or Ray would say something like, I can't even do an impression of him, so I'm not even gonna try. But he'd tell us something about how it's a word that means the same or spelled the same, looks the same, sounds the same, but it's pronounced different.
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Whatever. I had to look it up to figure out what it was. So but anyways, passing that all the time, I had just memorized it, not because I sat and memorized it, but because I passed it so much and read it so many times, I knew what it said, you know, just kind of stuck in my head ready to pop out if I ever need to recall it. And the funny thing about it is passing it that many times, I never really stopped to think about what it said until I had a child of my own. And that meaning is simple, train up a child any way she go.
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But as any parents know, that is not a simple task. Training our children is not easy. It's not easy to tell your kids no, it's not easy to discipline them when they need some discipline, but that's our job, that training is what we're supposed to do. Those 10 words make up a command, train up a child in the way he should go. And when that command is taken seriously, it can be some of the best work that we do as parents.
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When it isn't taking, when it when it's neglected, it can cause hardships for generations to come. You see, God wants us as parents to play an active role in our kids' life. God wants us to be that person that's teaching them right from wrong, the person that's building those tough questions when our kids have them. You know, as parents, we're the ones who need to discipline our children and also teach them discipline and and just take an active role in getting to know our children. Now as Christian parents, we have other standards as well.
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We need to show our kids Jesus. We need to teach our kids that they have a heavenly a loving heavenly father. And, you know, we need to teach them about loving one another, loving people. And the list goes on. You guys can kinda fill in the blanks on what we do as parents in in training those kids.
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But if that's not enough, then we also have this role as a parent to be that example for them, you know. If if if we are telling our kids that God loves everybody and we need to love everybody, and then we're showing them an unloving we're being unloving to others, that can be confusing for kids. A big one at my house right now is potty talk. We are teaching Boone that potty talk is not okay. Potty talk can be anything from saying stupid to actually talking about potty.
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So we're trying to curb that a little bit. But if I tell Boone that we're not using any potty talk and then I'm using potty talk, that's too confusing for these, especially for him and our kids in general to understand. So our example, not only are we supposed to play an active role in our kids' life, but we need to be that example that we're trying to train them in. And parents, this is important. I want you guys to definitely understand this.
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The most influential person in your child's life is not their youth pastor, though I hear he's very charming. It's not their coaches at school. It's not their favorite athlete. It's not their favorite musician. The most influential person in in your child's life is oh, I'm already there.
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Is you, mom and dad. Mom and dad, you are the most influential person in your child's life. Earlier I said that these 10 words that make up this command to train your child in the way he should go, if taken seriously, could be the most rewarding work
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you ever do.
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If neglected, can cause hardships for generations to come. The reward in training our children in the way they should go is found in the second part of this verse. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. So the whole verse reads like this. Proverbs twenty two six, train up a child in the way he should go.
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Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. So legacy parents that we gain by training up our children is a lifetime of them. The opportunity of a lifetime of them knowing Christ. We're setting a solid foundation for them to understand truth, to understand what is good, what is right, and also what is wrong.
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And it's a legacy that hopefully our kids will copy and then give to their kids as well. And then generations and generations, you can see how that can be affected down the way. A quick example of this is that handsome man there on your guys' right, my left, that is my grandpa Frank. We called him Papa Frank. My Papa Frank, he loved Jesus.
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He taught my father to love Jesus. He trained him in in a in a godly way. And now my father, he loved Jesus, and he then passed that legacy down to me. I love Jesus. And now, I am trying to train this fellow that the Bengals are the greatest football team of all time, but also to love Jesus.
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And you can see. So how that works, train up a child in the way he should go even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now, if we neglect this command, I'll just read this here, we find our children trained by their culture, by their friends, strangers, by the overwhelming media, video games, TV shows, the list goes on and on. We find false ideals become truths in our kids' lives. And we find that that legacy that we so wanted to leave our kids is lost.
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It's lost, and and that and it ends there, hopefully to be picked up again. But the importance of this of this legacy is something that we need to take an active role in. And that's the hard part. We can go ahead and we can be the greatest parents of all time. We can all the kids in the neighborhood might like us.
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We might make incredible macaroni and cheese. We might just have it all together. But if we miss if we miss passing on this legacy, all of that all that is sort of it's it's small compared to the impact it can have by passing on this legacy. So let me give you a quick last story as to kind of drive the point home. You guys like the Olympics?
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The Olympics are great. At our home, the Olympics rule. So when they come on, Kale starts skipping work, and we don't go out anymore. We order clothes online, so we don't have to do laundry. It's an incredible time, but we're locked in when Olympics come to town.
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In 2008, the Summer Olympics in Beijing, we and we being The USA, USA, we had the fastest four by one sprinter. I guess it's called the four by one relay. That's what it's called. Four by one relay. We had the team that was supposed to win it all, these guys were a force, and they were all but guaranteed the gold medal, being that they were made up of four of the fastest guys on the planet at the time.
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So when it was time for the semi final race, they line up. Let me get picture of these guys. That's those fellows right there. They look fast. So they line up, the gun goes off, and they shoot off like a cannon.
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The first 100 meters and the hand off is great. The second 100 meters in the hand off is great. The third 100 meters is wonderful as well. But when we get to that hand off, Darvus Patton, that third 100 meter runner, as he's going to pass that baton to, I believe his name is Tyson Gay, our anchor runner. As they were going to pass that baton, they fumbled the hand off, and that baton hit the track.
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See that baton in nobody's hand? Unfortunate situation. Baton hits the track, USA team. This is in the semifinal race. They're disqualified.
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No shot at gold. They no podium. They don't get to come back for four years or two years. Are some of them mixed two years? I don't know, four years, okay great.
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So four years they don't come back. And the problem, it wasn't that they didn't have the confidence, it wasn't that they didn't have the speed or the athletic ability. The problem was in the handoff. Parents, a legacy to love and serve God is the most important legacy we can hand off to our children. And we as parents are the people for that job.
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The church, the youth group, Awana, they're all ready to come beside and help out in this. But that job to train our children in the way they should go, that's that's the responsibility of the parent. Do not underestimate your role in this handoff, and do not do not make the mistake of dropping the baton while passing it to our kids. And that pass doesn't start at high school graduation. The past doesn't start in college.
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It doesn't start at our kid's wedding. It starts the day we meet our children for the first time, and it goes until the day we meet Jesus in heaven. Parents, grandparents, those who wanna be parents, anybody who has an active role in in a child or or somebody looking up to you. Proverbs twenty two six, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.
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Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. So I'll ask you once again, what legacy do you hope to leave your kids, your family, or your community? If you're looking for a legacy to pass on, right here. That's a great verse to start with. I'm going go ahead and invite Carl back up.
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Thanks, Rince. We've been sitting for a while. Why don't you stand up? Just stretch just a little bit here. We've got a little bit more for you.
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All right. If you feel better, you can sit down. All right. For my portion of the talk this morning, what I'd like to do is to make a case for the importance of family worship in the home. In the home.
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That includes praying together. That includes reading God's word together, talking about the things of God, and living out our faith in home. Family worship. Because I believe that when we make family worship a priority in our homes, it creates a culture in our homes that is stronger and more compelling than the culture outside of our home. And I know that as I look around, I know that many of us really want that.
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We want a godly culture for our kids to live in. And I'm here to tell you there's a place where that can happen and it's in the home. It's in the home. In our homes, we can create a Christ like culture that's based on mutual love and service for one another, truth, kindness, forgiveness, dependence on God. And really isn't that a compelling culture?
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So where our faith is played out in every facet of our lives, and I'm just repeating what Gary and Renzi have been saying here, not just on Sunday mornings and and I want to contend church that that Sunday alone is just not enough time to instill the things of God in our children. It's just not enough time. You may have heard it said this right here. Faith isn't just taught, it is caught. And when faith is modeled in the home and we live a life of worship in the home, we make a compelling case for our faith in Christ.
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Our children say, hey, you know what? My parents' faith, it's not just about going to church on Sunday. We talk about the things of God all week, not just on Sunday or Sunday school, or not just my Sunday school teacher, but as a parent, I'm talking to my kids about the things of God. When I was a teenager, my mom would rush to the breakfast table. Like I would sometimes see her sprint to the breakfast table while we're eating with her Bible, and she would begin reading the Bible to my brother and I.
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And we're too old to be tucked in anymore. So, she would take any opportunity and every opportunity that she could to share God's word with us. And she would read verses to us, and she wouldn't just read the Bible to us, but she would tell us what those verses meant to her. She would say how the verse was speaking to her throughout the week. And of course, as a teenager, I was shoveling cereal and going cranky, but she still did it anyway, and I'm so glad that she did.
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My dad, he kept his devotional on his nightstand, and I just knew that he would read that, he would keep it there as a reminder so that he could keep in step. So my faith wasn't just taught, it was caught, it was modeled. And my parents, they made a compelling case for the faith that we profess. They're not perfect. I'm not perfect.
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I make so many mistakes as a father. But they kept with it. They kept with it. And that would be my encouragement to you parents and grandparents is to keep with it. Stats tell us that about seventy five percent, that's not a joke, seventy five percent of teenagers are walking away from their faith when they leave home.
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Seventy five percent. There are a lot of reasons why, but I think one of the main reasons is because faith isn't modeled in the home. Kids don't really know how, so they're drawing from other influences. Stats tell us that less than 10% of Christian families, that's that's 10 out of a 100 Christian families, less than that, are having any sort of prayer or Bible discussion or God talk in home. But listen, I'm not here to discourage you with these stats.
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I am here to encourage you, I really am. And tell you that family worship is absolutely possible. And I want you to think of it this way, its rewards are eternal. Its rewards are eternal. You're leaving a legacy that lasts forever.
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When you're passing your faith to the next generation, they're receiving the greatest gift that they could ever have. That's a relationship with God that begins now and continues in eternity. That's good stuff. If I were to ask you right now, what's the greatest thing that you could ever want for your children? What is it?
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You know? And I know there's a lot of answers out there. Know that some it's where they go to school, what they do, and who they marry, and where they live, and all these things. But as Christians, what is the greatest thing that we can give our children? It's Christ.
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It's Christ. It's eternal life. Let's go to Deuteronomy six this morning. This is our biblical mandate here for family worship. We wanna let you know we're not just pulling this out of thin air.
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This is biblical. Context to this is that God has rescued Israel from four hundred years of slavery. They now know the living and one true God, but how is the next generation to know? How's the next generation know? Well, let's take a look.
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Listen, oh Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I'm giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you're at home, and when you're on the road, when you're going to bed, when you're getting up.
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Tie them to your hands and wear them on your foreheads as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Does this sound kind of urgent? From this passage, I think there are three important things I believe God is telling parents, and I want to briefly share them with you. I mean, is a very abbreviated message, but first and foremost, here's where it begins, Right there.
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It begins with God. Now, this seems like a given. We're going, of course it does. Of course it does. I mean, it's so clear.
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But we need to pause and truly embrace that family is about God. Family is about God. It's always been about God. Raising a family isn't just about us passing on our name to the next generation. It's about knowing the Lord and making him known that God is the center of our families.
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That's where we start. So, I just want to put that in front of us because that's our starting place. Second is this one here, it's a matter of the heart. Verse five, the command to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength. The heart is the first on the list.
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The heart. And I believe that it's first on the list for a reason because it implies a loving relationship with the Lord. Faith in God is not the result of anything external. It's internal. It works itself from the inside out.
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Reggie Joyner says this, and I agree with him. Anytime we pass down rules, practices, or truths outside the context of genuine compelling love, you establish an empty religion. Would you agree with that this morning? Anytime we pass down rules, practices, truths outside the context of genuine compelling love, you establish an empty religion. We can't force our kids to love the Lord.
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But you know what we can do? We can show them what it looks like to love the Lord. We can show them. Simply put, if we want our children to love the Lord, they've got to see how we do it. They've got to see how we do it.
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Not just the externals of outward obedience, but genuine devotion that comes from a loving relationship with God. Parents, I want to ask you this this morning. You answer this for you, I answer it for me. How is your relationship with the Lord? Is it real?
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Was it just because? Or is it mean something to you? You depend on the Lord. You love the Lord. You spend time with the Lord.
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And then your parents see that or that your kids see that in you. Third is this, we must create a rhythm in our homes. And what I mean by this is that it's got to be intentional. Parents, grandparents, it's got to be intentional. It's got to be consistent.
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Verse seven says, repeat them again and again. Studies show it and we know it to be true. We learn best through repetition. If we hear something again and again and again, it's going to stick. I drive a school bus every day.
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K? Three of my favorite words yeah. I think you know what I'm gonna say because we have some other bus drivers here. Three of my favorite words are, please sit down. Please sit down.
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I feel like a broken record some days. Sometimes I'll just say to my kids, I look at them in the mirror, What's Mr. Carl gonna say to you right now?
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Please sit down.
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Yeah, sit down. So it is with our faith. Passing our faith is largely about creating a rhythm and a routine and a repetition in our homes. So it's strange when we don't have family worship. For most families, it's strange when we do.
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I remember when we were first doing that with our kids and they go, why are we doing this? Same, because we love the Lord. It means something to us. And slowly, began to do it again and again and again. It's something that they expect now.
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At dinner time and bedtime in our home, there's going to be Bible talk and prayer in our home. Are there nights when it doesn't happen and we're so exhausted and so frustrated with our kids, we're just going,
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go to bed. Go to bed.
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Are there nights where that happens? Yes, there is. Uh-huh. Are there nights when I've shared a great devotion and I see my kids looking at me like this? Blank stares, not a word.
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I'm like, is anybody home? I just poured my heart out to you. But do we do it anyway? Do we continue to do it? Yeah, we do.
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Because we're called to. Look at what Moses says about when to do this. When you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. Modern day translation looks probably more like this, mealtime, drive time, bedtime, morning time. Whenever we have an opportunity, take it.
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Take it. Talk about the things of God whenever we can. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be complicated. And you don't have to have all the answers.
