Generational Faithfulness

Asaph’s life is a testimony to generational faithfulness.  His son’s sons were still walking with the Lord long after he had died.

I believe the key to this faithfulness was their immersion in God’s word as they learned, wrote, taught and sang it.  They were constantly praising His works to another, and declaring His mighty acts (Psalm 145:4). 

God’s word is our life.  We need it even more than we need food (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3).  Would any of us dream of eating only once a day, or of not eating at all?  Of course not!  In the same way, we should feast continually on God’s word through reading and study, thinking about it, praying it, singing it and living it out.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.  And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” Colossians 3:16-17.

If you have children in your life (sons, daughters, grandchildren, neices and nephews) please include them in your study of Scripture.  Our family has decided to make Scripture the central subject of our homeschool.  Some things we are doing to accomplish this are: reading through the Bible chronologically in the mornings, alternating between Old Testament and New Testament books at night, memorizing the Psalms and reading Proverbs repeatedly, listening to Scripture memory CDs, using Scripture for copywork and reading practice, writing on a chalkboard a scripture that applies to a situation we are facing for us to repeat together often and memorize, singing biblical songs and hymns together, praying together, applying scripture to heart attitudes.   We didn’t start out doing so much, but have built up to it, because the more we do it the more we realize how much we NEED God’s word.  Start small, but keep adding more.  Our children have come to love it, and are now able to take part in the reading of it.  We sometimes do what we call read-arounds: we read through a NT letter as a family by each reading a few verses at a time.  Our boys beg to do it. 

We do need to teach our children math, science, history, language, music, art, and so on, but those things will not enable our children to remain faithful to the Lord for generation after generation.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” Proverbs 9:10.  “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” Romans 10:17.

Don’t worry about whether they like it–it is their life!  We feed them vegetables because they are good for them, even if they don’t like them.  We shouldn’t do less with God’s word.