October 13, 2023
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If a flight attendant ever faints during a safety briefing on a flight, well, I think I could take over. Yeah, I've heard about the seat belt, and the seat and the tray being in the right position. Oh yeah! There's one thing that they mention that I've never experienced, and that's fine with me-the oxygen mask. It goes something like this, "In the event of a sudden change in cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down from the compartment above your head." And then they explain this, "If you're traveling with a child, please make sure you put your mask on first, and then put it on your child." That's a good idea. Make sure you can breathe, and then take care of your child.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Greater Gift You Can Give Your Child."
Our word for today from the Word of God; we're in Deuteronomy 6. I guess I'd call it flight instructions for parents. It's addressed to parents who are raising kids in a culture that is more pagan than the one they grew up in, where their kids are going to be handed what their parents had to work for. That's kind of true of the generation this was written to, and it's kind of true today.
Deuteronomy 6:5, the flight instructions begin this way. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your heart. Then impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your foreheads and hands, and write them on the door frames of your houses."
But verse 12 warns, "Be careful that you do not forget the Lord." Well, the Bible says here that your children are going to need a love relationship with the Lord if they're going to make it, where they love the Lord their God with everything they've got. That's an inner guidance system that you can plant in a child that will keep them from crashing when you're not with them. It's that internal spiritual strength that keeps them from collapsing when the external pressure on them is insane and intense. They need this deep, real, personal relationship with the God who made them, who is the key to their purpose for living.
But you've got to breathe that spiritual oxygen before you can give it to them. That's why it says this has got to be impressed on your heart before it can be impressed on theirs. You've got to love Him first. Frankly, there's nothing like the needs of our kids' lives to expose the needs of our own lives. Right? I mean, you look in your son's or daughter's eyes, and you're face-to-face with your own inadequacies, your own needs, your pain, your failures; parts of you that you may want to deny or excuse. But when we look at our kids those things stare at us in the mirror right there in the lives of our children. And their spiritual needs? Well, they're the mirror of your own. We can't lead them where we haven't been.
Maybe it's time for you to experience for yourself as a Mom or Dad this love relationship with God. First, we have to recognize why we don't have one. Because of this monster called sin, it's the self-rule of our life really. Secondly, we need to recognize how we can have that relationship. And the Bible makes that really clear. It's by visiting the cross where God's Son took the rap for our sin and made it possible for the sin wall between us and God to finally come down. And then thirdly, we need to pin all our hopes on that Savior; telling Jesus He's in charge from this day on and then beyond that commitment.
We can't settle for a relationship that's just mostly rules and rituals and religion and meetings, and beliefs. They're not going to sign up for that. The only Christianity that our kids will breathe themselves is one that is lived out before them.
But if you've never experienced Jesus for yourself, you can have Him change your family by changing Mom, by changing a Dad. By saying, "Jesus, I bring you all of my needs, my failures, my sins, my inadequacies and I lay them at your cross where you died for me. Beginning this day I'm Yours."
Man, I'd love to help you nail down that relationship so you know you have Jesus for sure. Would you go to our website? It's ANewStory.com. Because it will be a new story for you and for your family.