The Next Generation

With Waypoint and VBS now upon us, our Prayer Gathering group took time this week to read Bible passages that would help us see the next generation the way that God sees them.

One text was Deuteronomy 6:7:  “You shall teach them [i.e., truths from and about God] 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.”

I was especially struck by the ordinariness here:  talk with your kids about God when you “sit” or “walk,” “lie down” or “rise”; while washing dishes, driving to school, & doing Saturday chores.

Another passage was Psalm 78.  Consider verse 4, “We will not hide them [i.e., the words and works of God] 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.”

About that word “hide,” it’s shocking:  what believing parents would ever hide God’s Word from their kids?  Appalling!  And yet, are there times, by negligence or laziness or misplaced priorities, that we actually conceal the story of God from the next genera­tion?  Lord, search my heart—and don’t let me get in the way of your faith-generating truth going forward (Romans 10:17)!

Psalm 78 then tells us WHY we mustn’t hide God’s Word from our children:  “that the next generation might know them [i.e., God’s laws], 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” (vv 6-7).

WHY?  So that our kids would:  1) put their hope in God (and they can’t rest assured of the love of a God they don’t know); and 2) not forget God and his deeds (becoming careless and distant from Scripture severs the spiritual memory of God, and those who forget God are quick to worship that face in the mirror!).