Because God Said So

On the surface you’d think it would be obvious why we should read the Bible with our children. It sounds like it’s the right thing to do. Something “they” would say every good, loving Christian parent should do. But “they” is a rather ambiguous term for launching a new practice, especially if you hope to stay motivated in carrying it out.

Isn’t there a better way to define our motivation for starting a tradition of reading the Bible with our children, a way that pretty much seals it for us, eliminating any excuse we could come up with for not doing it?

How about this one. God tells us to.

We are called to obedience as followers of Christ, and as such it does us no good to make it up as we go along. A saving relationship with Jesus is an intimate, personal association requiring us getting to know Him. Spending little or no time in the Bible, or relying on the interpretation of others, doesn’t feed the relationship. It’s like watching someone else eat and expecting it to do us some good.

One of the expectations our Creator has is obedience to Him, yet obedience does not come naturally to us. It is a learned behavior. It is incumbent that we understand just how strongly God expects us to obey His commandments. Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, is replete with verse after verse of God telling us to keep His commandments. Leviticus 22:31 says, “Keep my commands and follow them. I am the Lord.”

Ecclesiastes 12:13, 14 spells it out quite clearly, also. “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” Solomon wasn’t pulling any punches when he wrote this. Fear God. Keep His commandments. You’ll be held accountable for it one day. Period.

John, the writer of the fourth Gospel, spelled it out several times, quoting Jesus when he said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). Finally, Paul admonishes the Corinthians to forget about the significance of rituals to worship. “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts” (1Corinthians 7:19).

If God feels this strongly about obedience and we’re expected to have a personal relationship with the Lord, this means reading the Bible so we can get to know the God who created us. Any feelings of guilt you’re experiencing at the moment should be read as conviction by the Holy Spirit!

The first step toward teaching our children about God? We must be reading Scripture regularly (preferably daily) for ourselves.