Scripture on the Wall

The Word of God is living and active!  I've been reading the Bible for 30+ years now, and I still learn new things often.

We try to talk about the Bible, read the Bible, and think about the Bible in our daily lives.  Now let me be totally clear ... we are not 100% successful in having the Bible a part of every day.  I wish I was totally organized and that we had a daily devotional every day at the same time and that we memorized Scripture every single day and all like that.  But I fail.  We remember some days, forget others. Life gets really busy and we don't read our devotional one day, but I usually remember the next.

  The older kids are pretty good about reading the Bible every day, partly because we bribe them :-).  If they memorize a verse, and read the Bible, they get to pick a strip of paper out of a box.  The paper has some kind of prize on it...it might be a piece of candy, some money, some extra game time, etc.

  I thought of another way to get more Scripture in our lives, and you can see what I mean from the picture above.  I've started posting a Bible passage on the wall of our dining room.  I talk about what it means, and the children get a reward for memorizing the whole thing. I'm liking it.  I change to a new passage when I feel like we're ready to move on.

  I'm an organized person and its attractive to think of sitting down with the children every day and studying the Bible.  But...what we are doing has tremendous value.  Given the age ranges of our children, it isn't easy to find something that meets the intellectual and spiritual needs of everyone at once.  So we have kind of a piecemeal approach...we read the Bible individually, we memorize with the help of siblings or parents, we talk about a host of things, including the things of God. 

 My deepest, heartfelt prayer for our children is that they go through life loving Jesus and serving Him.  I don't have a deep desire for them to be doctors or lawyers or scientists or engineers. I don't ardently desire that each one gets married.  I don't ardently desire that they stay single. I don't feel like they all need to go to college. There are so many GOOD options in life and I don't know the best path for each child. But I DO know this. They need Jesus.  They need to know how much He loves them and how much He sacrificed for them on the cross. They need to know their sins are forgiven by Him. They need to submit themselves to His authority. 

I can't make them follow Him.  God gave each of our precious children a free will and each child will decide whether to follow Him or not. But here in our home, we want the Lord to be at the center of our lives. We don't always succeed, but that's our goal.