Two Tips #9
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. –Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Leading our families in worship can be intimidating. But the reward is worth the effort. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 connects the way we teach our children to our own love for God. It also instructs us to weave our teaching into our lives, so that it infuses whatever we’re doing, whether we’re sitting, walking, or lying down. The instruction to write God’s instructions on doorposts and gates is an encouragement to be intentional about reminding ourselves and our families of God’s instructions. Each month, we provide you with two tips for developing your personal and family discipleship from dads who, like you, are taking on the challenge of investing spiritually in their families.
Tip #1 for Personal Devotion
Cultivate Friendship
Though our tips often involve helpful resources to purchase, the best things in personal devotion (like life) are free. Friendship, for example, is vital for vibrant faith, and all it requires is a bit of time. However, American men are in a “friendship recession,” with the percentage of men with at least six close friends falling by half since 1990, from 55 percent to 27 percent. This requires intentional effort to overcome (SNL hilariously suggested “man parks”). Friendship is worth the fight because we are made for friendship (Genesis 2:18; Ecclesiastes 4:9–12) and made by our friendships (Proverbs 13:20; 27:17). Here are eight ways to build Christian friendships.
Tip #2 for Family Discipleship
Torchlighters Videos
Hebrews 11 famously uses stories of heroes of the faith to inspire faithfulness. But this type of inspiration doesn’t have to end with the Bible. Torchlighters is a series of free animated videos you can watch with your kids, which will introduce them to faithful Christians from Perpetua and Augustine to Amy Carmichael and Jim Elliot, who have made great sacrifices because of their “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
