My Daily Devotional

The Responsibility of Parents

“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-9

This scripture tells you how important God’s commandments should become in your life and your families lives. You should have them wherever you go, and in whatever you do. They must remain with you at all times, and you must not forget them. You must teach them to your children throughout the time your children are with you. This is God’s commands to you as parents, and to be successful parents you must obey and follow His commands. You must spend time in God’s word and find out His wisdom. The Bible is full of wisdom and knowledge that you can use in order to train your children in the way they should go. This step is not difficult, and if you want to be successful as parents, spend time each day seeking this wisdom and knowledge, and put it into practice in your everyday life. Just reading and discerning this wisdom is not enough. You need to model this wisdom daily in your actions, your attitude and your behavior to your children in order for it to be effective. You cannot do it some days, and not do it other days; it needs to be consistently and constantly demonstrated to your children throughout your life. Your whole life needs to be devoted to being the model for your children. This is what God expects from you, and is what you need to give your children; an example for them to follow. We see pictures in our children’s room of people they admire; many times these are pictures of sports heroes, rock stars, movie stars or other famous people. Our children should have their parent’s picture over their beds as the ones they admire most. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had your picture over their beds, and told visitors that you were the ones that they would be like when they grow up? During our after school program, which is part of my ministry, I had the opportunity to ask many of the children about their parents. There were over 69% of the children in the program that had come from broken homes. Most of the children I would ask, hardly knew one of their parents, and if they did, knew very little about them. They would say that they worked all the time, or that they were not home much. The role models that these parents were making on their children, was not one that many of them wanted to imitate in their own lives. This is so sad that so many children today do not want to be like their parents. When we go back home to Kentucky to visit some of our families, they are constantly talking about their parents, and the good times they had as they were growing up. We seldom find many of our children today talking about their parents in this fashion. The people, who remember their parents and were talking about them, can remember their parents spending time with them, doing things together and having fun together. They can remember when they went fishing together, or to the ball game, or the time when their parents took them on vacation. When parents do not take the time to spend with their children, there are no memories such as these that the children can remember. All parents need to be building up hundreds and thousands of memories that their children will remember of them. These are the treasures that they will keep forever in their minds and thoughts. When we spend only five minutes a day with our children, there are not many memories we are giving them. Time goes by too fast in the lives of our children. We only have them for a season, and the time we spend with them is too precious to not be storing up memories of good times. I would encourage all parents to spend time with your children, as they are God’s gift to you, but most of all teach them about God.

(Many of my readers have asked if my Daily Devotionals have been published and if they could purchase them. The Devotionals I am posting are from My Daily Devotional Volume III which was published in 2009 and can be purchased at amazon.com or from me at robbrock@comcast.net)