Fruitful Kids

This program contains portions from the following episodes:

"More Than a List."

"Treasuring Christ in Our Traditions."

----------

Dannah Gresh: Do you love gardening? I sure do! Okay, I realize it’s December and, at least in our part of the world, everything has turned brown. But I can still think back a few months ago. I’m mostly a flower gardener, but this year I tried my hand at grape tomatoes. My twin granddaughters Addie and Zoe love them! So, I took them to the greenhouse. They picked the plants, and then we got our hands in the dirt and planted those little sprouts of green. Then when Addie and Zoe came to visit, they’d get out their little snail-shaped, yellow watering cans, and . . . well, they’d make a mess, frankly. But those plants got good and watered, and they got sunshine. Before we knew it, to the delight of my granddaughters, there were shiny grape tomatoes. Well, Addie and Zoe plopped them in their mouths and I wish you could have seen their faces . . . .ah . . . the joy of fruitfulness!

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. 

Fruitfulness. It might be a less fruitful time of the year outside, but thankfully when it comes to fruitfulness in Christ, it’s never out of season. Today we’ll look at how we can help the children in our lives become fruitful kids who grow into fruitful adults. We’re gonna park in the book of Deuteronomy and hear some different perspectives about the same passage of Scripture.

Do you have little ones in your life like Addie and Zoe? Children, grandchildren (I’m up to four),  friends’ kids? Children bring joy! And, they need direction in becoming who God wants them to be. Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth along with my friend Holly Elliff talking about how to pass God’s truth on to the next generation.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: One of the most important principles that you’ll find repeated over and over and over again, in the Old Testament in particular, is the importance of parents teaching their children the ways of God.

Ladies, if you don’t teach your children how to think biblically, don’t expect that the world is going to teach them how to think in a way that is right. What a responsibility is yours, as a parent, as a mom, to teach your children the ways of God!

But you know, it’s not enough just to set an example. If you don’t set an example, this next point you won’t be able to do effectively. But even if you do set a good example,you’ve still got the responsibility to actually teach and train your children what’s right and what’s wrong. And let me say, don’t start with a list.

Start with the principles of God’s Word. Teach your children, beginning at the earliest ages, what God thinks and what are the principles that need to govern our lives.

Deuteronomy 6 says that God has given us commandments and rules. Moses taught them to the people of Israel, and he said, “You need to obey these laws. And as you’re obeying, you need to make sure you’re doing it out of a heart of love for God.”

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (v. 5) so that your obedience is not just rigid and legalistic, but your obedience springs out of a heart of love for God.

Then he says, “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children” (vv. 6-7).

Now, he’s not saying that you just sit down for one hour a day and say, “I’m going to teach you how to obey the principles of God’s Word.”

There are times, formal, structured times, to sit down and teach your children the ways of God; but more is taught in the course of everyday life using teachable moments and opportunities to instruct in the ways of God than is taught from the formal, structured times where you think your kids aren’t paying any attention.

That’s why Deuteronomy 6 goes on to say, “Talk [about these things] when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (v. 7). All day, every day, be naturally communicating with your children the ways of God.

Now, I thank the Lord that my parents did this. I think about my dad who, just in the course of everyday life, would just talk about the ways of God. I don’t remember those as being sermons or lectures because it was just interwoven into the fabric of our everyday life.

He says, “You shall bind [these words] as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them of the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (vv. 8-9).

Ask the Lord to give you, as a parent, creative ways to teach your children, starting at the earliest ages, what it means to be modest, why it’s important, and why that’s a blessed way to live.

This past week I was interacting with my friend Holly Elliff, who is the mother of a number of children at different seasons of life, and I asked her for any thoughts she would have as a mom about teaching children.

I asked her today if she would just share with us some of the thoughts that she emailed me, but I thought it would be more helpful for you to hear her say about the importance of the way that we teach these things to children. Holly?

Holly Elliff: I think, probably, as Nancy was saying a minute ago, it is “as you go.” I think probably one of the most important things I’ve learned is that if I wait until a moment when I think my children are ready to hear what I have to say, it may not come.

So as we go, whether we’re in the car, whether we’re at the grocery store, or we’re in the middle of doing school or we’re on our way to pick up somebody . . . whenever those moments come, when we have an opportunity to teach truth, then we take advantage of those.

The other day we were driving down the road, saw a billboard that was interesting, and we just started talking about it. In the Hebrew culture, one of their main methods of teaching was not to tell somebody what the truth was, but to ask them questions so that they could discover that truth themselves.

I don’t know about you, but if I learn something for myself—if I go to God’s Word and study it for myself—then I have ownership of it a little bit, and it’s much more valuable to me because then I can turn around and teach that more easily to someone else.

So if I will ask my kids questions about things that we encounter and have them think, have them reason through that, and then give them some references in Scripture where that might be addressed, and just say to them, “What do you think this verse means? Do you think that relates to that in any way? Is there any way in which you see a connection between what God said right here and what we’re talking about?” and have them tell me what they’re thinking, what they’re seeing, what they’re hearing.

As you do that, then what happens is you begin a pattern in your children of becoming Berean Christians, of becoming students of the Word.

They may not know where the verse is; they may not know what God says about it, but if they will begin to question, “What does God say here?” then that pattern will be with them the rest of their lives, even when they are grown and married and I’m not there to tell them what the truth is. If they will become students of the Word, they will always have a resource to find truth.

The other day we were watching TV. My kids had the TV on. I was in the kitchen, and I heard something on the TV that I wasn’t familiar with, so I walked into the den and watched a couple of minutes of it, and I said to the kids, “What are you watching?”

And they told me, “It’s this new show.”

I said, “Is it good?”

They said, “Well, yes, we think it’s fine.”

And I said, “Well, I don’t know anything about this show; let me just sit down with you for a minute.”

My first reaction was immediately to say, “No, we’re not going to watch this. Let’s turn this off.” But I said, “Okay, we’ll give it ten minutes.”

So I went in and sat in the den with them, and we watched that show together for about ten minutes. I could tell during the ten minutes that they were getting nervous because every once in a while, when something would happen on that show, they would turn around and look at me. And something else would happen, and they would look at each other; then they’d look at me.

So when the ten minutes were up, we muted the TV and I said, “Okay, what do you think about this show? See any problems with it?”

And they began to say, “Well, yes, they’re not very nice to each other in the way they talk, and they are kind of disrespectful.” And they began to come up with things one by one that were issues with that show.

Now, what happened was, they began to ask those questions. I didn’t have to sit down and say to them, “We’re not going to watch this movie because I said so.”

Now there are times when I say, “No, because I said so,” and I want them to obey. If they are getting ready to touch a hot pot, I want them to stop when I say stop. But, just as important to me is them learning to become men and women who will ask questions of God, go to His Word, and find answers.

So as we go, we need to be intentional about training them to think biblically.

Nancy: Holly, one of the things I appreciated about what you said in this email is that you’re not just wanting to teach your children rote obedience—though that’s not all bad, to learn to obey God and our authorities just because we are to obey.

But Holly says that she’s looking for something in her children that’s more than that. She’s wanting to train their hearts, to shepherd their hearts, and to focus more on their hearts than on their behavior.

So I would say, if their heart is to please the Lord, and their heart is to make choices that are based on the Word of God, then you will have really trained your children not just to live by your list of rules while they’re within your eyesight but to really have developed a heart.

And, in that sense, you’re training kids who don’t just conform to a list that you’ve come up with, but kids who really will be difference-makers in their culture and in their generation. It won’t be your faith. It won’t be your religion. It won’t be your standards now; it’s going to be their standards, their faith, and their heart to please the Lord.

Could I just say it’s so important that you start when they are young. Don’t start teaching your children these principles when they’re 15 years old and all of a sudden you’ve got an issue with the way that they’re dressing. That is going to ensure a big scene in your house, maybe an explosion.

Lay the foundation early. It’s amazing, when children are just taught, then these are things that are going to go with them into life. They are principles and foundations that you will have laid when they were little.

Dannah: We can plant the seeds of truth in our kids’ lives, but God is the one who makes them grow and produce fruit. That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, along with Holly Elliff, taking us to the book of Deuteronomy to show us our responsibility as we raise children.

Noël Piper says traditions can be a good way to pass values on to coming generations. Some years back, she wrote a book called Treasuring God in Our Traditions. We’re about to hear part of a message she gave on that topic. She’s going to define what a tradition is. We’re picking up where she had just asked the question: “Are God-honoring traditions mainly for the kids’ sake?” Here’s Noël Piper.

Noël Piper: So go to Deuteronomy 11:2, He says specifically, “Consider today (since I am not speaking to the children)” why? because they "have not known or seen it." He’s going to talk about it—"seen" what? You "consider the discipline of the LORD your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm.” He goes on for quite a long way, here, with the works of God. “Your eyes have seen all the great work of the LORD that he did.” 

Tradition first of all is for our own hearts and souls. And where our own heart is, is going to make a huge difference in how our traditions play out for pointing us toward Jesus. I want you to notice that He’s talking to all the adults—not just the parents. This is a community. The Israelites all come from one father, so in one sense they’re all one family—in the biggest sense—as are we here. We are all in the family of Christ.

Now, what makes something a tradition? Deuteronomy 11:18: “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul . . .” and then after you’ve filled you own heart and mind with God’s words, “You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you’re sitting in your house, and when you’re walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (ESV).

Now, anything you do as often as sitting and walking and lying down and getting up might become a tradition, because repetition is part of what makes a tradition. If we do something just one time, we don’t call that a tradition. Tradition is something we’ve done enough times that we start to feel like that this might be what we will do regularly on this kind of occasion. It’s going to be something that has some significance. Nobody calls tooth brushing a tradition.

Some things are just habits, and they’re good habits. I would like you to brush your teeth, but this passage makes clear it’s talking about something important. Talk about God’s Words in all these most mundane, regular, repeated parts of your day—of your week. God’s Word—that’s pretty significant, and I see the heart of tradition for Christians right here in verse 18: “You shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul.”

Here’s the difference between tooth brushing and tradition. You might think of what I’m going to say now as sort of a definition of tradition. The things that we do regularly that cause us in our deepest being to know and love and want God, to have our lives infiltrated by God, those things are traditions. And then as there are other people in our lives, those things touch other people as well.

So the things that cause us to love and know and want to know God more, and the things that we do regularly. I would call the time you spend regularly in God’s Word an everyday tradition. Anything that’s putting God’s Word in you and in the people who are close to you—your children, your Sunday school kids, whomever—I call that a tradition. It's something that happens very regularly with great significance.

So tradition for a Christian is laying up God’s Word in our own hearts and passing His Words to the next generation. That would be another way of defining tradition.

A couple of questions that might help think through what you’re doing: “Am I focusing on God’s work so that my appreciation for Him grows?” Another would be, “Do others see why I’m celebrating?” Our big, "especially" kinds of celebrations can help us see God in our home and help us know our places in our families and in our communities because of the security traditions give and the love that traditions show.

Then there are the everyday traditions. Think again of Deuteronomy 11. Sitting and walking and lying down and getting up are just plain sitting and walking and lying down and getting up unless you plan to surround those times, somehow, with God’s Word—unless you’re thinking about it. Planning is important.

There are some everyday traditions that our family has done very often and very regularly. By the way, those are the two words I would use with everyday traditions. They’re not really necessarily literally every day, but they’re very often and very regular.

Just off the top of my head I was writing things down here: We attend church regularly; we used to set aside Bible time for our young ones in the morning so that they could learn to have devotional time for themselves. If they were readers, we’d have a Bible story book or a devotional book at their level of reading. If they were pre-readers, we’d try to find some recorded Bible stories that they could listen to, or songs that were Bible verses to memorize, something like that. We prayed before meals. We had family devotions daily.

Not everything is specifically what you might call “spiritual.” While the children were folding laundry, I would read aloud to them, because they liked to be read to, and I hated to fold laundry. (laughter) And the books were a whole range of things, but it’s going to be things that are helping us understand the world from God’s point of view, as best as we can. And we read books that are true, whether they are fantasy or not—if you know what I mean.

And then, in every book you read, you are going to come across things that maybe aren’t quite the way you think they should be, and then that gives you something to talk about, too. So reading aloud together. Then the children took turns having a Saturday lunch date with their daddy. 

My husband and I pray for each child by name each day, and each daughter-in-law and the grandchildren. As the Lord blesses, the list gets longer and longer. That usually happens when we’re praying together before bed. That happens most nights.

Now, those are things you can begin to take for granted after a while, like you do with most habits—you just do them. And that’s not a bad thing, to take these things for granted, because they are good things. They wouldn’t have happened, though, if at some point you hadn’t planned to do them. So, planning is important.

Now those things that I just listed, I just said you can sort of take them for granted. Are they habits or are they traditions? And I would say, “Yes, they are both.” Not every habit is a tradition, but especially the everyday traditions, you can pray, will become habits.

Repetition is another key piece of tradition. Here’s another way of defining what I would say a tradition is. “A tradition is a planned habit with significance.” So what you do over and over and over becomes a habit, and it becomes ingrained. That happens whether you mean for it to or not. If there are children watching, it can be pretty scary sometimes, the things that you’re teaching your children by doing them over and over again, and you don’t even realize what’s happening.

Repetition teaches, whether we’re intending it to or not, so that could be another whole session. But just what are you repeating in your life? You’re ingraining something in yourself that you may or may not intend to. You’re teaching the children around you that that’s something that always happens. That’s what our traditions do, too. We are teaching the young ones in our lives, either by default or by planning.

That’s what I’m asking you to do with your traditions—to be planning, to be expressing what’s most important to you. A Christian’s traditions and celebrations should be filled with God and should be pointing us to Jesus. That’s the heart of my message here. 

Dannah: So the right traditions are a helpful way to plant seeds of truth into children’s hearts and lives. That’s Noël Piper, speaking a while back to a group of women at a conference for women, sponsored by The Gospel Coalition. There’s more information about her book linked in the transcript of this program at ReviveOurHearts.com/Weekend.

You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. This week we’re considering what we can do to help the children God places in our lives be fruitful … to thrive. You're probably with me here because you have a son or daughter or grandchild who loves God and His Word as much as you do.

Well, let me say this plainly. Some things really are better caught than taught. Let me ask you this, "Do you love God's Word?" I kind of think that we often rush past the love and we get to the duty of reading our Bibles. Let's slow down.

Deuteronomy 6:6–7 does remind us of our duties to get our children to obey God's Word. You've heard these words twice today:

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children.

We cannot forget the context of this passage. Verse 5—the one that comes before it— reads:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

We're supposed to love God with all our might before and as we teach our children His commandments. All our might! (That’s so much love.)

If you do not start with your own love for God and His Word, I’m afraid you may raise a child whose head is full of the Bible but whose heart does not embrace truth! 

Let me ask you again, do you love God’s Word?

Psalm 119, which we know as a passage that encourages us to obey God's Word, is actually infused with love for it. Not just once, but over and over and over again! Just soak in these words.

I find my delight in your commandments [which I love!]. (Psalm 119:47)

As I was reading Psalm 119 recently, this verse stuck out to me.

Consider how I love Your precepts;
Revive me, O Lord, according to Your lovingkindness. (Psalm 119:159)

Revive me. I found that an interesting request for a psalmist who loved God’s Word so much. Is it possible that even those of us who love it, sometimes have need of being revived? Of course it is. So, if you're feeling a little dry in your prayer life or lacking the desire to read your Bible, you're not alone. I, for one, often need the Lord to revive me according to His lovingkindness. (And He’s been doing it lately, so sweetly.)

Recently, the Word has been so alive in me. I’m treasuring it. I'm delighting in it. I love it.

But you know, I begin the month of January by fasting and repositioning myself to love God's Word. Why? Because I'm often in need of having that passion revived. 

Now I know you may be hoping to get all the secrets and tips you need to ensure your child embraces God’s truth, but I think there’s no short cut. You can buy all the devo tools, journaling Bibles, and thin line pens you want, but until you display a love for God’s Word, you’re not in the right posture to give your children a desire to open their Bibles.

I invite you to push reset on your own patterns and preferences for digging into God’s Word this week. Find out what it takes for you to stir up that love in your own heart. Ask God to make the words of the Bible new and refreshing to you. Petition Him to do the work of planting the love. Pray those words from Psalm 119,  “Renew my desire, Lord.”

Thisis how you begin to build a passion in the heart of your children for their Bible.

-------

Here at Revive Our Hearts and True Girl, we want to do all we can to help girls, young women, and older women have fruitful lives. We talk a lot about our vision to call women to “freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.” And we need your help to do that. Would you take some time to pray for Revive Our Hearts? Ask God to give us His wisdom. Ask Him to provide for our needs.

Did you know that almost half of our annual income comes in the month of December? That’s crazy! But it’s true—43 percent . . . in December. So here we are, December is upon us, and we’d love to hear from you. If you appreciate what you hear week in and week out, consider making a donation to Revive Our Hearts. Some friends of this ministry are offering to match your gift, dollar for dollar, if you make a donation here in December. 

You can give a gift by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com, and click where you see the word “Donate,” or by calling 1-800-569-5959. Let us know you’d like to be a part of our goal to help others like you be fruitful in every season of life. That number again is 1-800-569-5959.

Next week we’ll talk about how a woman can be fruitful in her single years. I think that sometimes it's tempting to view that period as sort of an in-between time, like, “Once I’m married, then I can start living life and being fruitful.” But we’ll talk about ways you can live intentionally in that time of singleness. I hope you’ll join us for that.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. Go plant some seeds in the life of some little ones. And pray for God to make them fruitful!

We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.