By David ReayFriday 10 Jul 2015LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (NLT)
It is a very big mistake to assume the Christian faith is a matter of accumulating information. Being in a classroom and studying books is only part of it. While our faith has its formal belief systems and we do well to be well informed about it, we learn to follow Jesus best by being with others who follow Jesus. Our text today tells us how important it is to live out our faith in our families.
Children are not to be taught the faith by mere study and reading and formal devotions. They are to see it in practice. We are to communicate the faith not merely as one compartment of our life but in our everyday activities. This principle can be extended to communicating and living out our faith more generally. If we are to ‘disciple’ another person, we have to do more than just enrol them in a course or give books to them.
We need to hear good preaching and good teaching, but it is not enough to hear it. We need to put it into practice.
And this can only happen if we have models of such practice.
When it comes to faith, we need to show as well as tell.
Blessings
David Reay