In Deuteronomy 6:5-7 we are reminded that we cannot teach what we don’t know. We are told first, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (5), and then we are instructed to teach God’s Word diligently to our children (7). You cannot teach your children (or friends, or co-workers, or others you have opportunity to disciple) to love what you do not love yourself.
Parenting
God Is the Ultimate Leadership Role Model
The following content came from a January 2009 men’s breakfast at which I spoke. It is a sobering, awe-inspiring, standard-raising thing for God to say to us: “Be holy like I am holy.” The outline below includes just some of the many meditations that we might biblically derive from the call to be God-imitators:
Christ-Centered Parenting
He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments (Psalm 78:5-7).