This week's Scripture focus is Deuteronomy 6:4-9:  ⁴“Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.  ⁵And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. ⁶And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. ⁷Repeat 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. ⁸Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. ⁹Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. 

Through the week we're going to break that passage down, but when we look at it as a unit we see that God wanted Israel to understand a few basic truths--He was God, and only Him!  The Israelites were called to love Him with all they had!  The Israelites were called to teach this faith to their children.  At the very least that's God's plan for our lives.  God calls us to acknowledge Him, to love Him and to share Him with our children.  Jesus put it this way, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you."  (See Matthew 6:33)  When Jesus was asked what He saw as the greatest commandment in the Law (of Moses), He offered Deuteronomy 6:5­--absolute love for God.  He added love for neighbors as being next most important.  So, we're going to be studying the verse Jesus saw as summarizing the whole Old Testament in our focus this week.

Just one question from the text this morning:  Is God FIRST in your life? (In mine) That's really the only question that matters.  If the answer's yes, then you (I) will be loving Him, and sharing Him with your (my) children and everyone else's children.  If the answer's no, then you (I) must do whatever it takes to make the answer yes!  This is the matter of most importance.  If our faith is going to have children--in other words if our children and their children, and all the children who ever come after us are going to have faith in the one true and living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then we must.  Our children won't always believe what we say, but they'll always believe what we do.  The best thing we can do for our children, if we want them to love, trust and serve Jesus is to love, trust and serve Jesus ourselves!

(If you're an early reader of the blog, I hope you'll join us at 8:45 or 10:15 a.m. at the South Butler Primary School for worship.  If you can't join us, I hope you'll go to www.newlifexn.org later in the week to watch or listen to this morning's message!)

 Let's pray:  Heavenly Father, Thank You for being worthy of our worship and praise!  Fill us with Your Holy Spirit that we may worship You will all our hearts, souls, and strength. Give us urgency and passion for sharing our faith in You in actions and words with our children--biological and spiritual.  This we pray in Jesus' name.  Amen.