truth is a treasure

It's been quite a while since our last Family Night (not to be confused with Movie Night or Pizza Night or Game Night). The concept behind family nights is rooted in Deuteronomy 6:5-9:

Love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 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.

Routine family nights are a powerful tool for creating intentional impression points with our children. They provide an opportunity to teach biblical truths at a level they can understand and in turn apply to their lives. (A sample lesson is HERE.)

It is absolutely AMAZING to see the impact these lessons have had on our children. Not only have they helped bring understanding to difficult concepts, they've opened the door to some very deep conversations with the boys... initiated by the boys.

Take tonight, for example. We were talking about the hole that people sometimes try to fill with food, money, activities, causes, drugs, or alcohol. I'd removed the batteries from a doll to demonstrate that no matter how much I tried to stuff into the hole (nor how impressive the objects were), the doll needed batteries to do what it was meant to do. Likewise, we were created with a God-shaped hole and no matter how much we stuff (nor how impressive the objects are), we will never feel fully satisfied until God fills that spot.

It led to a very tender bedtime conversation with my 11-year old. A precious evening. (And to top things off, they love Family Night. LOVE IT.)

As parents we have an awesome responsibility. Like it or not, we are teachers; they are watching and learning from us every day. Young children spend more time with us than anyone else in their lives. We have the privilege of guiding, shaping, and preparing them for the road ahead. I don't know about you, but I need a whole lot of intentional to make up for all of the unintentional.

It's late and my brain is shutting down. I'm afraid I'll come back to this tomorrow and find it riddled with typos and incomplete sentences. (If I'm lucky, you're having the same brain issue and won't even notice!)

Have a good night :-)