Today we are continuing our series about the importance of investing in others, especially younger generations. We’ve talked about beginning that investment by making sure our faith and relationship with God is something worth passing on to others. We’ve also talked about sharing God with others as we go about our days and surrounded ourselves with reminders of God and His Word. We’ve been looking at Deuteronomy chapter 6 and what God said about investing in the next generation in those verses. Today we are going to pick up in verses 10-13 which say:

“Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name.”

While these verses contain some specifics about the Israelites and what would happen when they entered into the Promised Land, the principle and warning apply to us as well. God knows us, His creation, well. He knows that as He provides for us and blesses us, like He was about to do with the Israelites, that we have a tendency to become complacent and take things for granted.

Just like the Israelites were going into a land where they would have all sorts of good things that they did not work for, we often have blessings in our lives through no effort of our own. We don’t control where we were born or who are parents are, yet both of those things often establish aspects of our lives. God, directly or through others, often blesses us in so many ways. Sometimes we recognize those blessings, and other times we are so focused on what He hasn’t given us that we miss so many of the good things He has. Oddly enough, the more blessings we have received, the more it seems that there is a temptation to take the blessings for granted and either ignore God’s generosity in our lives or be discontent and disappointed because we expect more.

God knew this about the Israelites and He knows it about us as well. That is why we see His warning and command in verses 12-13: 

“then watch yourself, that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name.”

As we are following God and seeking to invest in others, we need to remember this. We need to stay focused on God. It is so very easy to get distracted by life’s demands, pleasures, and disappointments. This is something that we struggle with and something that those we are investing in will struggle with too.

We need to be intentional about not forgetting God and what He has done for us. Some of that starts with surrounding ourselves with reminders like we talked about last week, but the very act of investing in others also helps us to not forget. If we are spending time teaching others about God and His commands, it makes it easier for us to stay focused on God. It also helps the next generations learn more about Him too. When we leave it up to others to share God’s message with those He has placed in our lives, we aren’t just neglecting them. We aren’t just neglecting to do what God has told us to do. We are also neglecting our own relationship with Him. We are neglecting our ability to not forget Him and all that He has done in our lives. The more the tell our story, our God story, the better we remember it ourselves.

God’s design for investing those around us is amazing just like Him. Doing what He has asked us helps others, helps us, and helps our relationship with Him. So don’t forget. Who will you share your God story with today? Who will you invest in today?

This week we are continuing our series about the importance of investing in others, especially younger generations. We’ve talked about beginning that investment by making sure our faith and relationship with God is something worth passing on to others. We’ve also talked about sharing God with others as we go about our days. We’ve been looking at Deuteronomy chapter 6 and what God said about investing in the next generation in those verses. Today we are going to pick up in verses 8-9 which say:

“You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

We know from our previous articles that God was giving these instructions through Moses to the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land. During the Second Temple Period, after the return of some of the exiles from Babylon, some in the nation of Israel began to take these verses literally. They began putting mezuzahs on their doorposts and wearing phylacteries, or tefillin, on their arms and foreheads. These small boxes held parchment with scripture passages. I don’t know that these were supposed to be taken that literally, and even the Israelites generally only wore them during prayer times.

In American Christian culture though, our modern equivalent probably looks more like decorative signs from Hobby Lobby and shirts with Scripture or Christian sayings. Whether or not you like wearing Christians t-shirts or decorating your house from Christian bookstores, it is the principle in these verses that needs careful attention. Just like the previous verses emphasized the importance of teaching others about God and His commands throughout our entire day and everywhere we go, these verses give us another important insight about how we can help invest in the next generation.

As we read Deuteronomy 6:8-9, we see that we are to surround ourselves with God’s Word. Whether we take the verses literally as the the later Israelites did or look at the general principle, we see that we should be intentional about placing God’s Word and reminders of God’s Word all around us. We can do this for those we are investing in as well.

We live in a day and age where the options for Scripture reminders are endless: bookmarks, signs, stickers, bumper stickers, toys, clothing items, jewelry, bags, pillows, and the list goes on. If you can think of it, you can make it or have it made. The number of Scripture themed products that are available with the click of a button seems unending. These can be great tools, but we can even use simple things like post it notes or index cards and make our own Scripture reminders.

The point is, it doesn’t really matter exactly what types of reminders you are using or where all you are putting them. It’s more important that you actually use them. Surround yourself with reminders of God and His Word. Find the reminders that work the best for you. Place them in spots that you will frequently see, and change them up from time to time so they don’t just become a part of your routine background.

As you invest in the next generation, or others in general, and teach them about God and His Word, consider the reminders that might be most helpful for them. Some of the reminders that you use, might be great to share with others, but different types of reminders might work better for others as well. If you know someone who likes to draw, you might suggest that they consider making their own artwork as reminders. If someone spends a lot of time in the car,  helping them find reminders to put in that location can be good. Do they like jewelry? Do they read a lot? Do they spend a lot of time looking in the mirror? Is a lot of their time spent in the kitchen? Once again, the sky is the limit. The options are only limited by your imagination, but getting to know those you are investing in will help you figure out how to best help them surround themselves with reminders of God and His Word.

We are currently in the middle of a series about the Wonder of Discernment. So far we’ve talked about the importance of taking time to slow down and spend with God to seek discernment and putting it into practice as well.  This week we will be talking about the value of training our discernment.

In Hebrews 5:12-14, the believers were being challenged about the maturity of their faith:

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”

The author of Hebrews was really chastising these Hebrew believers for their lack of spiritual maturity. He indicates that those who are mature in their faith have practiced training their senses with discernment. Discernment is kind of like a muscle. The more we exercise it the stronger it grows. While discernment can be a spiritual gift, meaning that some people have been spiritually gifted with stronger discernment muscles, it is something that all believers are called to exercise. We all need to be able to discern good and evil and be able to use discernment, but we get better at it through practice. We need to train ourselves.

When it comes to exercise, I know there are some people who really love to exercise. For many of us though, it’s not something we necessarily love to do. We may have learned to love the outcome and benefits. We may just know that it’s something that will benefit us. That knowledge might be enough to motivate us to put in the time and effort to exercise and train our muscles and body. The same might be said of training our discernment. It might not always be enjoyable at first, but we are called to do it. The more we understand the importance of discernment the more likely we are to begin to exercise it. Eventually, with consistent exercise we begin to actually experience the value of having strong discernment. This in turn can motivate us to exercise it more.

There is another important parallel in the example of exercising our muscles. When we put work into training and developing our muscles, we grow stronger and we need to be wise in how we put that strength to work. We can use our strength to help others or we can use our new found strength to hurt other people. Unfortunately the same can be true as we train and develop our discernment muscles. We can use our discernment to help others, or we can turn our discernment into something hurtful and condemning. It goes back to the idea that our discernment must be rooted and practiced in love.

So how do we train our discernment? To find the answer to that we can look back at the verses from Hebrews 5 and consider the milk versus solid food analogy. To train our discernment we need to be growing in the Word. Just like a baby goes from milk to soft foods like cereal and purees to increasingly solid foods, we must go from learning basic spiritual truths to deeper and more substantial study of God and His Word.

I also find it interesting that these verses start off with them being told that they should already be teachers instead of having someone “again” teach them the “elementary principles” of God. If all we are doing is going to church on Sunday morning expecting someone to “feed us” spiritual nourishment to last us for the week, we are not practicing our discernment or growing. Practicing discernment and getting to solid food means going deeper than any preacher can go in twenty to forty minutes on a Sunday. We need a steady diet of increasingly solid food.

Instead of still being continually fed the basics, they should have been teaching others by this point. While you need to have some discernment in place to be teaching, interestingly enough the act of teaching itself helps to train your discernment even more. There is a famous quote from Aristotle that says, “Teaching is the highest form of understanding.” When you teach others something you have learned, or are learning, it helps you to understand it even better. Last Thursday, we started a series on the importance of investing in others, especially the next generation. So often Christians are hesitant to share their faith or teach others, formally or informally. Yet, in these verses we see that at a certain point we should be doing exactly that. Instead of waiting to feel like we’re “ready” or “equipped” or “know enough” to be talking to, or teaching, others, at some point we need to just try it. We will never really grow our muscles of discernment until we begin using them.