How to Disciple the Next Generation | Deuteronomy 1-34

Campbell: Today's Scripture reading will be from Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 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."

Chris Sherrod: Good morning, everybody. How are we? My name is Chris Sherrod, if I haven't met you before. I'm the family director here. It's my privilege to open God's Word for us today. Some of you who know me know my wife and I have eight kids. We have a big family. Four of our kids are married. We actually have six grandkids.

When my son-in-law first came to visit… He was in college dating my daughter for the first time. He came over to our house. He tells the story of being intimidated, because he came from a home with just him and his sister, and he talked about how loud it was. There were all of these conversations going on at one time, and my younger boys were running around wrestling. He was trying to concentrate on who he was talking to.

Then COVID hit, and he moved in with us for two months, so this was a time of him trying to figure out, "What does it look like to be part of this family? Do I want to be part of this family?" Another fun thing we do is on somebody's birthday we do this love bombardment. Whoever's birthday it is, we all go around and say why we love that person, what we love about them. So, here he is in front of the family, having to tell his girlfriend why he loves her. It was like, "This is what it's like to be a Sherrod, so welcome to the family."

I share that with you because we're going to look at the book of Deuteronomy today. If you've been reading along with us in Year of the Word, we did the first 20 chapters this week, and we'll finish it up this coming week. Just so you get a picture of what's going on… The way my son-in-law was learning, "Okay, that's what it means to be a part of this family," Deuteronomy is a book… It's the second giving of the law. It's not a second law; it's the second giving of the law to a new generation.

They didn't really know and see all of the same things their parents had seen. That generation died out, and now they're learning, "So, what does it look like to be part of this family? What is this going to involve?" God is giving them the reminders he has already given the earlier generation. Moses is going to give this in three big speeches. He kind of reviews where they came from, reminds them to love and listen to the Lord, and charges them to go into the land. Basically, how to go into Canaan without becoming Canaanites is what he's reminding them of.

The setting is they're on the plains of Moab east of the Jordan on the edge of the Promised Land at the end of their 40 years of wandering, and Moses gives some of the most important reminders to the people of Israel that we're going to get to look at today. Chapter 6 is going to be our main text, but I want to remind you or point you back two chapters earlier, in chapter 4, where God reminds them that he poured his love out on them way before he even gave them the law, that he just chose to love them.

It says in verse 37, "And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power… Therefore you shall keep his statutes…" It's a great reminder that the inheritance, the love, and the deliverance they had was before any expectations of the law were put on them, and now they get to obey it rather than have to obey. Does that make sense? It's out of this love you've received that now you get to follow the Lord your God.

So, that's leading up to chapter 6. This is what's called the Shema, and it comes from the Hebrew word hear, the very first word that's given there. Here's why I want to make sure we're sitting up and listening. Jesus said, "This is the greatest commandment." We need to let that sink in. Like, "Okay, we need to pay attention if he were to say that." So let's look at verse 4. We'll walk our way through it and then make some application today.

It says, "Hear, O Israel…" That word hear (shema) means listening with the intent to obey. The word is actually translated obey a lot of times. It's "I'm going to hear. I'm going to respond the right way." If you're a parent, you might say to your child, "Why didn't you listen to me?" What you mean is, "Why didn't you do what I said?" That's what this word shema means.

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children…" By the way, this is the only time in the whole Old Testament that phrase teach them diligently is translated that way. It always is translated either sharpen or to pierce. It has something to do with arrows or swords. What he's saying is you sharpen your kids with God's Word.

"…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."

In other words, a Word environment is what we're trying to create here. So, I'm going to give us three applications today that I'm going to see from this passage. First, a singular passion (verses 4 and 5); secondly, a saturated heart (verse 6); and thirdly, a centered home (verses 7-9). The truth is this is really just one command that naturally overflows into the other two applications. You love God with all your everything, and then naturally, you're going to want to hear what he has to say. Naturally, you're going to talk about what you're passionate about. Right? So, let's go through this one at a time.

1. A singular passion. I would describe that as a surrendered life that listens and loves. There's that word listen (shema) that we talked about. "…and loves." That's what it looks like. Your whole life is surrendered. I don't know if you've had this happen where you need to go to the store for something. Like, that's the whole reason you're going. You go to the store, and while you're there, you see other things you need and get them, and then you're halfway home and realize you didn't get the one thing you came to get. Anyone have that happen? It's so frustrating. That was the whole reason we were going.

Like we were just singing, I am so prone to wander. I know I'm supposed to keep the main thing the main thing. I know that, but I get so distracted by other things that I pick up and think, "That's more important. That's more important." God is like, "No, this is what you do. You are loving God with all your everything." I love what Saint Augustine once said. "Christ is not valued at all unless he is valued above all."

In chapter 5, you get the Ten Commandments. He's reminding them, "Hey, these are the Ten Commandments." What I love here is he says, "I'm going to boil all of those down into one: you're loving God." You love God first, best, and most with all your everything, your heart, soul, mind, strength, will, and emotions. Everything is what you love God with. That's what we just sang about. This undivided God (the Lord is one) is seeking undivided worshipers, that our hearts are fully committed to him. He has united our hearts.

Then he talks about loving, which is supposed to be the motivation. Love is an affection, but it's a decision. It's an emotion, but it's also a decision you make in your life. So, your true motivation is to be God's amazing love that he has poured out on us. In fact, in the next chapter, God explains to the people, "Hey, just so you know, I didn't set my affection on you because you're so great, because you're so large, or because you're so powerful. You're actually pretty small. I just chose to love you."

That's God's amazing, steadfast love. We see that in the New Testament. "We love because he first loved us." And Romans 5: "While we were still helpless and sinners and enemies, Christ died for us." That gives you this unconditional, secure love and a secure identity, because you realize, "It's not based on my performance. It's just based on what Jesus did, his all-sufficient merit."

So, now you live with this passionate purpose, and you're even (we're going to talk about parenting in a minute) parenting out of that secure identity. Now you can sincerely think less of yourself, more of others, and most of Jesus when you have that order correct. So, this is an important question to ask. What fuels your passion for the name and fame of Jesus? What is it that you can do to increase your love for God as your singular passion? What keeps you satisfied in him? What gives you lasting joy?

What that means is for all of us, our top priority, our lifelong vocation, is to be satisfied in Jesus and enjoy him. That's our goal. In Philippians 3, Paul says, "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…" That's his singular passion.

He says a few verses later, "But one thing I do…" I'm laser-focused on this. "…forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." In other words, I am pursuing with white-hot passion the one who first pursued me. That's my focus.

Jonathan Edwards put it this way: "The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean."

So, number-one priority… You need to ask, "What stirs up my affections? What gets me excited about my faith?" Is it meditating on his Word? Is it worship? Is it hearing someone's testimony? Is it spending time in God's creation, certain writers you love to read, or a friend who challenges you to go deeper? Maybe it's just remembering your own rescue.

So, how do you obey a command to love God, to feel this love for God? Well, one way is this. I said love is both an emotion and a decision. God created you with a heart for affection and emotion, but he created you with a mind for reason, for thinking, for handling truth. So what you do is what David did in Psalm 103.

First of all, David tells himself to bless the Lord. He's talking to himself. Then he spends the rest of the psalm listing all of the amazing things of who God is and what he has done, and he invites other people to bless the Lord with him. Then he ends with the same command to himself: "Bless the Lord, O my soul."

What you're doing there, what he's doing… You use your mind to gather all of these reasons for how awesome our God is, and then you take that to the furnace of your heart and throw it on your heart like kindling to inflame that love for God, the name and fame of Jesus, and then it overflows into worship.

C.S. Lewis, early in his faith, struggled with this idea of God commanding us to praise him, but here's what he came to realize. He said, "I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise… I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?'"

You guys realize we show this all day long through social media. If I see a pretty sunset, I want you to see that pretty sunset. I'm going to show you that picture. If I saw a great movie, I want you to see that great movie. "Did you hear that song?" This is what we're wired to do. Whatever we're excited about, we invite people to join us, naturally. That's just what happens.

Lewis ends with this: "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation." So, if God is the only ting in the world that can ultimately satisfy me…even though I try other things, unfortunately, all the time, he's truly going to satisfy all of my longings…I have to remember that my joy can only be found in knowing him and serving him.

My pursuit of lasting joy finds its fulfillment in him. That's why Psalm 16:11 says, "In his presence is fullness of joy." You have all the joy you need, and then that joy naturally overflows into either praise to him or praise about him to other people. So, that's our first application. We have a singular passion.

2. A saturated heart. I would describe this as an invested disciple who meditates and memorizes. You're saturating your heart with God's Word. As we just sang, "Teach me your way, O Lord. I want to know more of who you are." My challenge for you is this: What do you believe about the Bible? Do you believe it's the inspired, infallible Word of God and your final authority? Do you believe what Isaiah 40 says, that the grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever?

Do I believe Hebrews 4:12 that the Word of God is living, active, and sharper than a double-edged sword because it pierces to the very center of our being and judges the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts? If God has spoken, nothing else is more important. Do you realize that? I tell my kids this all the time. "You can't be close to God and far from his Word." I need it. That's how I get to know his heart. That's how I partly abide in him.

So, we're reading and meditating on God's Word. Maybe you need to come up with a plan, a place, a time, a goal, like, "This is going to be my new focus." I'm meditating on God's Word. I love the way Jen Wilkin put it. "The heart cannot love what the mind does not know." There are so many amazing things in God's Word that I could love, but if I don't read it, I'm not going to know it. The heart cannot love what the mind does not know.

I don't just want head knowledge; I need light in my head and heat in my heart. I need both of those things. Paul Tripp says, "We're meant to read Scripture, not with a goal of just information, but for the deeper purpose of heart and life transformation." What your eyes linger on is what your heart learns to love. The more you spend time in his Word…

In my life, I know that originally it kind of felt like my duty. I was supposed to read it. But the more I did that, it became my desire, and then my delight. That's saturating your heart. This is how we train ourselves to think biblically, not emotionally. When it comes to God's Word, just remember we make time for what's important to us. If something is important, we make time. If it's not important, we make excuses.

So, we're making time to meditate and then memorize God's Word. A lot of you know Psalm 119:11 where it says, "I have stored up [treasured] your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you." This is an interesting sidenote. When Jesus was tempted and he quoted Scripture back to Satan, do you know he quoted from Deuteronomy every time? That's what he used to resist the lies of the Devil.

John Piper says God calls us to study, memorize, and soak in his Word until it saturates us to the center of our being. Then, what's in your heart naturally overflows into what you talk about. That's the way it works. We'll get to that in a second with parents on "What do I talk about with my kids?" Well, what's on your heart?

3. A centered home. I'm going to talk to parents in a minute. You have an immediate application. But for all of us, our purpose here, as a church, with Watermark, is to abide in Jesus. This is what we're doing: abiding in Jesus, we're making disciples together. So, all of us have a responsibility to think of the ladder mindset, where I'm climbing up the ladder of my faith and growing closer to Jesus, but I'm reaching up to take the hand of those who've gone on before me while I'm reaching down to take the hand of those who are coming behind me.

That's why the Bible says, "Older women, teach the younger women." We're a family. Each family is a little church, but each church is a big family. We call each other brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers, and the Bible calls us a household of faith. What's significant is to see how often in Scripture God has these corporate gatherings or feasts or celebrations with the whole body that then spark a conversation with the individual houses.

This is what's interesting. It's like the Passover or the Communion or baptism is seen there in the community, but then it's explained in the family. That's God's bigger plan for this, that the corporate celebration sparks the personal conversation. You see it in the group, and then it's explained and clarified in the home.

Church also reminds us, especially our kids, that we're a part of a bigger believing community, and it reinforces our basic beliefs. So, we're all to join together in investing in the next generation. Whether it's serving in kids' ministry or blessing a single mom or helping out an adoptive foster family or a family with special and additional needs, that is our calling as a church family.

By the way, if you want to serve in kids' ministry… Some of you don't know this, but on average, we have about 2,000 babies through fifth graders every week. That's a lot. If you want to be a part of serving our body that way, where you can say, "Hey, follow my example as I follow the example of Christ," you can go to watermark.org/servekids. It's really simple to do that.

I want to remind you grandparents as well. Your job is not over when your kids move out and now you're a grandparent and you get to spoil your grandkids. Deuteronomy 4:9 says, "Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children…" That means my job is not done when my kids are gone, but I'm continuing to say, "Hey…" Not just Bible stories, but "Let me tell you what I've seen God do." All of us have that responsibility.

So, the third application from Deuteronomy 6 is we want a centered home. I have on there intentional discipleship that is visible and verbal. When we talk about our individual homes, especially moms and dads, you need to listen, because God gives us some really helpful instructions here. He says, "Hey, moms and dads, these words are to be on your heart, and you're to teach them diligently to your children Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights." No, that's not what it says. It doesn't say that.

It says you teach them and just talk about them…when? Well, let me give you some ideas. When you sit in your home. Okay, any other ideas? Yeah, when you walk along the road. Okay, great. Any other…? Yeah, at the end of the day. Okay, how about the beginning of the day? It's just a part of what your family is made of, that you're looking for these moments where you can pass on God's Word. God's plan from the beginning was to use the family to be the means for intentionally entrusting the heritage of faith to the next generation.

You have your own discipleship center here, and God tells you the who, the what, the how, and the when. Parents are the who. God's Word is the what. How? You're sharpening them. You're training them. You're teaching them. Then, when? Let me give you four opportunities: mealtime, drive time, bedtime, morning time. Just pick one of those. Make it a part of your life.

That's what discipleship is. It's visible and verbal guidance toward a genuine love for God. That's all it is. I'm giving you a visible example, and I'm giving you verbal guidance toward a genuine love for God. My friend Chris Legg says parenting is just discipleship that neither party can escape. It's just happening.

But why emphasize the home? What about the church? Well, I tell parents all the time, "When your kids are here, we are going to do a great job for the hour and a half that they're here with us," but over and over again, studies tell us the greater impact is the home. In the book Handing Down the Faith, here are some examples of essentially what they say.

"Parents, by far, are the most successful and influential player in their kids adopting the Christian faith compared to any other influence…not their peers, not the media, not their youth group leaders or clergy, not their religious school teachers." Then they say, "Parents are the greatest single evangelists for the gospel in the world, and its greatest arena is the family."

The number-one way to evangelize someone is to raise them in a home where Mom and Dad are passionately in love with Jesus. Basically, about 85 percent of decisions for Christ happen between ages 4 to 14, so it's an important window you have there. Here's what they also found in this study: parents who have warm and kind relationships with their children are more likely than others to transmit similar levels of religious belief. This is what we were talking about.

The studies also say what shows when you talk about something is that it matters to you. So, when parents are wanting to pass their faith on, they say the strongest association is with parents who regularly talk with their children about religious matters as part of ordinary life. It's not compartmentalized, like, "This is just what we do on Sundays. This is a thing we check off."

When parents talk naturally and substantively about religion and its place in life throughout the week, that effectively indicates to children that in the mix of life's many priorities and values, this stuff matters a lot. That's what the studies tell us. If I never talk about my wife, either I don't have one or I'm not that excited about her. Right? But if I'm talking about my wife, then you realize, "Okay, there's something about that." What you talk about you're excited about. It's on your heart.

Parents not talking about their faith to their kids other than the scheduled time, like, after church we're not talking about anything that went on… That also helps compartmentalize them. "Well, that's just something we do as a family." Here's what that means. The issue is not what's happening at Watermark on the weekend; the issue is what's not happening at home during the week. That's the bigger issue.

This is why God says, "Hey, families, this is where it starts." Your example, moms and dads… You love God first, best, and most, imperfectly, and then his commands are on our hearts, and then we talk about it naturally and regularly. Let me just read to you my favorite quote from this book Handing Down the Faith. "The most important factor is the sheer consistency and honesty of the parent's own imperfect faith and practice."

In other words, you're not having to be perfect, but it's consistent. I'm just fumbling and stumbling along the way, trying to follow Jesus, but it's real. The kids see it in your everyday life. Our kids aren't looking for perfection. Do you guys know that? They just want to see the reality of a relationship with Jesus that actually means something, that changes our lives.

The Bible is a book full of how God uses broken families, so we're not going for perfection. The kids just want to know, "How does this affect the rest of our lives, Mom? Dad, what difference does this make for you in your work or your convictions or your values?" For a lot of kids, they're not rejecting our theology; they're rejecting our hypocrisy. Do you understand that? They're not rejecting our theology; it's our hypocrisy. We're saying one thing is important, but then we're not living like it's important. They just want to see that it's real.

A little bit later in Deuteronomy 6, it says, "When your son asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?' then you shall say to your son ['Go ask the rabbi.']" That's not what it says. It says you tell him your story. "We were slaves, but God entered history and rescued us. The blood of the Passover lamb covered the wrath of God. We were saved. His wrath passed over us." That's our story.

If you're a believer… "I was born a slave to my sin, but God entered history, and because of his blood, I'm freed…that Passover Lamb. His wrath passed over me." That's what we're supposed to tell our kids about. So, my challenge for you this week… For some of you, here's a big challenge. At dinner sometime this week, tell your kids the story of your rescue. Tell them. Do they know that? If that's the most important thing that has ever happened to you, they should know it.

So, how do we intentionally live this out? Let's get practical with some applications to this. The formula we're seeing here is, moms and dads, you personally possess this faith, and then you intentionally pass this faith. So it's real with moms and dads, and they pass it on. They're living it, and then they're giving it.

They're modeling it, then they're molding their kids. That's the pattern. The goal is multigenerational faithfulness. If you read Psalm 78, it talks about one generation telling the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord. Why? So that the next generation puts their hope in God. We'll see how that plays out as we go through Joshua and Judges.

Guys, if you do the math, from the time your children are born until they're 18, you only have 216 months. That's not very long. George Barna also found that by age 13, most young people's worldview is firmly established. It's in place. I think we think of 18 years old, but it's already by age 13. They're just entering the youth group, so when was all this formed? Earlier in the elementary years as we're shaping them.

So, how do we live this out? Think about this. When your child leaves home, what do you want most for them? That they're socially adjusted, academic performance, athletic accomplishments, or faith and character? We know the right answer, but what are you communicating? What gets most of your time and energy and money and words? What are you focusing on?

Is your vision for your kids any different than anyone else in the world? "I just want my kids to be happy, to be safe, to be good." The world tells us we should have well-rounded, happy, well-educated kids, but God says, "I want you to raise kids who are Christ-centered, biblically anchored, and missions minded." Like, they're thinking of the kingdom. That's success.

You do this by creating this Word-centered home, and then you're initiating faith conversations. So this isn't a program; it's a lifestyle God has given us. His Word is modeled and talked about in daily conversations. See, we have formal training and teachable moments. Guys, parenting is not about raising perfect children; it's about pointing our broken children to a perfect Savior. That's what it's about. We're pointing them to the point.

We mentioned this centered home is a visible and verbal faith. Let me talk about this visible part. It's a visible faith that is authentic, active, and attractive. What are we modeling for our kids? Is it a faith that's authentic? Again, you're not perfect, but there's a pattern there. You're real. You're honest. There are no compartments. You're honest about your failures. Your kids see, "Okay, I think this is a real thing." It's active. They see that you've grown or that you're involved or that you're serving or that you're faithful. You're modeling that for them.

And it's attractive. Again, we're not perfect, but they see something different, that you have joy or hope or peace. There's evidence of real life change. As the saying goes, kids will be what they see. It's not so much what you say you believe; it's what they see you believe. That's what they're looking at. The truth is (this is a great reminder) you can't make your kids believe, but you can make it really hard for them to doubt, that what they see in your life is something that's like, "I think that's real."

When parents model what it looks like to passionately love Jesus, understand their identity, and possess a hope beyond anything, then they can confidently say to their children, like Paul said to Timothy, "You know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, patience, love, and endurance. You've seen it in me. So follow my example as I follow the example of Christ."

So, you have a visible faith, and now you have a verbal faith. It's a verbal faith that initiates conversations. What I love here is God says, "Here are four windows you can do this in. Here are four opportunities." You can't always plan deep conversations and stuff, but you're just available where it could happen during these times.

First, how about mealtime? That's most often when I'm sitting at home with my family. The mealtime is formal connection and direction. Think of it as like, "This is the time where I have everybody all together here and undivided attention. We're going to talk." Start off the meal with prayer. Are you teaching your kids to pray? Not just generic, "Thank you for this day. Thank you for everything you've given us. Thank you for this food." You're actually talking about how we honor God, how we praise God. Say the Lord's Prayer together, including the gospel, but you're teaching them how to pray.

You can use the mealtime as a time to debrief your day. Katie and I always do our highs and lows with our kids. Everybody has to share their high and their low of the day. That partly helps you interpret life and talk about what they're going through. This is also when you could do Bible reading or memorization. We have monthly verses in this Year of the Word. You can go through the Join the Journey questions. There are discussion questions. If you go to Join the Journey Jr., we have discussion questions for whatever age your kids are that are already given for you.

Or just review what you learned that morning. What did you read that morning? I can't tell you guys how powerful it is… Think about this…a dad who says, "Can I just show you guys what I read this morning? I've never seen this before." What does that tell your kids? "I'm spending time in God's Word. I'm teachable. I'm growing. I'm excited about it. I want you to hear about it." So just review what you have already read.

It's interesting when God says, "I want you to be together over meals." A lot of celebrations in the Bible are over meals. Listen to this. Regular meals establish stronger family bonds, meaningful traditions, and family values. Anne Fishel, who founded The Family Dinner Project, says parental engagement fostered around the dinner table is one of the most potent tools to help raise healthy, substance-free kids.

I read this study. After two decades of research, the Harvard Graduate School found that simply taking a few minutes each day to turn off screens and genuinely connect with each other over food positively affects every family member, but especially kids. Listen to what they found. This is amazing.

With kids, they found increased empathy, compassion, self-esteem, and sense of resilience; improved social skills and vocabulary; reduced stress, anxiety, and depression; improved academic performance; reduced risk of substance abuse and teen pregnancy; less likely to develop eating disorders; and lower suicidal thoughts in teens, all for those who spend more time eating together as a family. That's fascinating. It has an impact. It's a bigger impact than a lot of us realize.

So, that's the first one: mealtime. God also says, "During transition time." This is drive time, so, in the car. This is informal questions and ordinary fun. This is a little more laid-back, but you're listening to what's going on with the kids. What are they talking about? You're asking questions. The little details, things that maybe seem insignificant, are a big deal to kids a lot of times.

This is where, again, you're making the most of that time, getting to know your kids. You're being present. You're paying attention. Our family listens to Adventures in Odyssey in the car a lot. Anyone else grow up with Adventures in Odyssey? They're still putting them out. Sometimes I'll drop my kids off. I'll be driving away and realize I'm still listening to it on my own, because it's so good.

Guys, this is where you're making the most of teachable moments. You're saying, "Hey, everyone look over there. Look at the sunset. Isn't our God amazing?" Or you hear a siren or see an accident. "Hey, who wants to pray for those people?" You see a homeless man. "Let's see if we can help him. Let's pray for him."

What are you doing? You are discipling your kids. You're giving them the eyes of compassion, the eyes to see like Jesus sees, but it has to be intentional. So, informal questions and ordinary fun. By the way, we also have a thing here called Drive Time for parents. If you sign up for it, we'll text you questions of what the kids just learned in their class that you get to ask them.

Third is bedtime. This is when you lie down. This is intimate conversations and reflective rest. If you have little kids especially… I get this. It's so easy for bedtime to be the finish line, like, "Now my life can begin" or "Now I can go to bed." Have you heard that quote? "It seems unfair that the people who want to go to bed have to put to bed the people who don't want to go to bed." Right? But that's part of it.

So, instead of a finish line you can't get over fast enough, look at this as this unique window. You get to read with your kids, read a Bible story, or just sing with your kids or pray with your kids. This is where little conversations can happen as their hearts are starting to settle down. Maybe you can use it to pray the Numbers 6 blessing we read about a couple of weeks ago.

Imagine the cumulative effect on a child when, every night, the last words they hear are their father saying, "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his countenance toward you and give you peace." I look back. Every night, my mom said that to me. Think of the cumulative effect on all Watermark kids if that's what we did, if our kids felt blessed by their parents.

This happened in our family. Last week, my son Christopher and I were talking. We had been in Tyler for my grandson's dedication, and they did Communion. Chris was asking me questions at bedtime, and we started talking about the gospel, which he has heard a lot, but I really felt like, "Maybe he's getting it."

We just asked him. He kept saying that, and I was like, "Okay. I think we're going for this." I was like, "Do you want to pray that now?" We prayed, and he became a Christian. Amen. But notice what sparked that conversation: the corporate celebration. We were doing something together that's symbolic, and that led to a more intimate conversation. So bedtime is an awesome time.

The last one is morning time. I'll just call it purposeful exhorting and encouraging. Again, if you're trying to get out the door…you're leaving or trying to get the kids to school…this can feel like a rush, but do some kind of maybe daily routine. Katie and I circle up with our kids, and we have a little reminder about our identity that we say together.

Or maybe before you drop them off, it's reminding them, "Hey, be a joy to your teacher. Be a friend to the friendless. Hey, remember, you're not your score." Reminding your teenager, "Hey, know who you are, be who you are, and enjoy who you are." Maybe that's when you do the Numbers 6 blessing, but just telling them, "I love you. You're going to do great today," using that morning time to encourage them.

Here's the deal. You are most likely doing those four activities. Are you doing them with intention and purpose? Again, you can't guarantee all of these great conversations, but, guys, here's the problem. Those windows that God says we're supposed to be passing on our faith are now filled with noise, busyness, and hurry. There's all this other stuff going on, and they're not intentional. God is saying, "Listen. Slow down."

This kind of discipleship takes attention and intention. We have a thing we have provided for our families here called Faith Path. Our family team is committed to partnering with parents to build Christ-centered homes. This is just an example of what you could do from when your kids are born until they graduate, of things you could teach them, and here's what we say: Spend a whole year on just one of them. Don't feel all this pressure to teach all of these things at once.

Hey, 6 years old is a great time for prayer, teaching your kids how to pray, praying more together as a family. Just spend the whole year doing that. You're not going to waste your year. The next year, talk about Bible reading. Get your kid their own Bible. Now you're starting to make that a priority. You're not dropping prayer, but you're continuing on. But that circle is to give you tools.

Here's my final reminder. When all is said and done…all the modeling, preparing, and talking…ultimately, we have to pray. We have to be praying for our kids. Nancy Guthrie says what we want most for our kids is something only God can do, so we pray. My wife loves to pray Jeremiah 24:7, because it's 24/7, where God says, "I will give them a heart to know that I'm the Lord." So, we're trying to come up with the right environment for our kids and do these things, but ultimately, Lord, it's you, you lighting the fire there.

Here's how Deuteronomy ends in chapter 32. "And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, he said to them, 'Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law.'" We're living it out. "For it is no empty word for you, but your very life…" God's Word is central. This is what we pass on.

So, what's God's plan for his people as they now enter into Canaan, this polytheistic, sex-obsessed, relativistic culture? He's like, "Hey, the game plan is, moms and dads, are you being faithful to pass these on? Are you loving me with all your everything? Is my Word central in your life?" That's still God's plan. The home is the most effective tool, the most effective vehicle for passing on our faith to the next generation.

God has made this promise we have been following that from someone's line, from Abraham's line, and now from Judah, we're going to learn, is going to be the Serpent crusher. It's fulfilled in Jesus. Hebrews says Jesus is the better Moses. He's our final deliverer, that by his sinless life and sin-bearing death, now he has conquered all of the things that kept us from God, and we get to spend eternity worshiping him. He's the supreme revelation of who our God is.

I just want to remind you guys: Jesus is not a hobby; he's King. A lot of us want to fit Christ into our lives, where we're still the producer, the star, and the director, and Jesus has a role. I'm the landlord; Jesus gets an apartment. It's my schedule; Jesus gets an appointment. Fitting my life into Christ is the opposite. He's the star. He's the producer. He's the director. He's the landlord of my heart, every single compartment. The schedule is just his. That kind of faith lived out in front of our kids shows them the value and worth of Jesus, and it overflows into everything we say and do.

So, for some of you, I want to give you a minute to reflect. What's your application from this? Is it always fighting…? And it's always going to be, but is it "I just need to fight harder to have an undivided heart to stay focused on what actually matters: loving God first, best, and most." "I need to spend time in his Word." Maybe some of you need to jump on board with us in Join the Journey or you need to have a time, a place, a plan, and a goal. Maybe it's you need to trust him as your rescuer, as your deliverer, as your sinless substitute for the first time.

For a lot of you here with kids, are you being intentional with the time God has given you? You have these little hearts that he's saying, "I want you to mold them." Model it, and then mold their hearts. Pass on your passion for the name and fame of Jesus, the supremacy of God's Word above all other sources of knowledge or truth. That's my prayer for us. Will you pray with me?

God, thanks so much for this reminder from Deuteronomy 6 about the amazing salvation you offer. Before you give us the law, you remind us how much you love us, and then in response, we get to obey. We get to love you, not because we have to. We thank you for your Word that's living, that it's alive. God, I pray that we would allow it to shape our hearts. God, help us to be responsible with the lives, the souls that are in our own homes, that we would be diligent to pass on faith to the next generation, whether that's our own kids or those in our church family. We love you, and we bless you. It's in your name we pray, amen.