Change….My Family

Sunday was week #2 of the Change series at Lifepoint.  This week Jeff talked about how to make changes in our family.  The main Scripture through this message was Deuteronomy 6:4-9

4 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.s5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders.9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Here are the main points:

1)  Imagine the End

How do you want your family to end up?  What does your family look like in 30 years?

• Imagining the end helps to clarify your role as a parent…my role right now is to be a parent, not a best friend, not the coolest thing…whatever.  My role is to love God with all I am, love Jeff and love and train up my kids to be world changers for Jesus.
• Imagining the end helps separate the good from the great.  In our family, this means every kids doesn’t play 2 different sports.  At this time in our family no kids play any sports.  This will change…but for now, it’s how it is.  It’s easy to want to give our kids everything we didn’t have growing up…let them do tons of sports/activities.  But instead of being experience rich and relationally poor…let’s raise kids that are relationally rich… emphasis on relationships…not experiences.  That doesn’t mean our kids will never play sports or do an activity, but these will be limited.

2)  Fight for the heart – Deut. 6:5 – Love the Lord with all your heart

3)  Make it personal – Deut 6:6 –

Make a commitment to your family

4)  Create a Rythym – Deut. 6:7-9 – Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders.9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

• At this point in the service I went on stage with Jeff and shared some things we do as a family to help get God’s Word into them.  You can watch/listen to it here.  I shared about this book:

There’s 52 verses, 1 for each week.  It goes through the alphabet 2 times…uppercase and lowercase.  Each verse has a song that goes with it.  Seriously, these songs get stuck in my head.  They’re simple and catchy and help the kids (and me too) learn the verses.  There is a story with each verse and a Bible story that explains the verse.

We usually do this Sunday nights before the kids go to bed.  Then I’ll write the verse on the back door window, I’ll write it on the car window next to each of their seats, and this week I’m going to start writing it on the bathroom mirror….so literally writing it on the doorpost, talk about it on the road, etc.  The kids are pretty good at rattling off the verses.

5) Be strategic about your kids relationships

So at this point you see my notes are pretty slim.  I’ll probably go back myself and listen to the message again.  There’s something about knowing you’ll be on stage that is slightly distracting.  I know my notes could be better…oops!

What is a change you’d like to see in your family this year?