Communication in the Home (Part 2)

Let’s look at what the Bible has to say about our communication with our children and young people, beginning with Deuteronomy 6:3-9 “Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

You will notice a few guidelines for parents in this text. The first is that a good home has its foundation in God. As parents, our foundation must be in loving the Lord with all of our heart. We cannot expect our teenagers to be godly teenagers when we ourselves have no desire to be godly. I was recently studying the idea of having passion in one’s life. It intrigued me how we can tie our passion or desire with the direction of our heart. In looking at Scripture, God convinced me that if my heart is in the wrong direction, my passion or desire will be heading in the wrong direction, also. This may seem juvenile to you as a reader, but you cannot deny that there are numerous examples of folks in this world who are passionate about something that is trivial. They have let their heart take them in a path that is insignificant when it comes to eternity. Many Christians today are running after possessions, positions, or pettiness, and they cannot figure out why they are empty. Our young folks must see that we are passionate about Christ and seeking Him first. In this passage, I believe God addresses our heart’s desires first, so we will align our desires properly towards God.

Second, we see that parents are to sit down and teach their children and teenagers. This seems to indicate that a family will sit down together and talk. This is a lost art today. There is a constant hustle and bustle in which a parent has to set an appointment with their teenager to have a chance to talk with them. This is a false concept of a home. I want my children and our young people to work and be busy, but there seems to be this concept, in the average home, that there can never be a time to sit down and eat as a family to discuss what has happened through the day or through the week.