Stories of a heritage of faith.

I’ve been reading in 1 Chronicles lately and one of the things that God really placed on my heart was the power of telling His stories about His mighty deeds. My children all made a profession of faith when they were very young (3 or 4) and therefore didn’t have the more dramatic conversion testimony that I have (having come to Christ when I was 19). Their young spiritual lives have been more solid and stable than mine was, but it has also been less dramatic. I have been convicted about the absolute necessity of my passing down my stories of His mighty deeds for the strengthening of their faith.

God is always reminding the Israelites to pass down their stories from generation to generation.

He even arranged for 66 books to be written to do that very thing and they have been preserved for thousands of years. Those stories serve as reminders to us of His will and desires as well as His judgements and discipline. But they have always shown us His power and mighty majesty.

In my early Christian years God revealed Himself in miraculous ways on an almost daily basis.

• When we didn’t have money for rent it would appear as if out of the blue, when there was no food in the house bags would show up on our doorstep.
• There was money under our feet at isolated gas stations and money found in desk drawers immediately after praying to purchase a replacement bible when one had been given to a new believer.
• We’d get apartments by the Lord having the lot fall on us and we’d get little red houses by praying Psalm 34.

It was an expectation in our lives that the Lord intervened in the lives of His children who were beloved to Him. We lived with expectation and hope: of His continued blessing and of His imminent return. Any thunderstorm could be the signal of His coming for us and we were in a constant state of awe.

The everyday-ness of life

My children miss this and somewhere along the way my heart has fallen into mundaneness and I am now feeling the loss. My reading in 1 Chronicles (of all places) has challenged me to renew the message I am teaching to my children. I want their hearts to be filled with zeal and passion for His Name but how can they know that if they do not see it modeled in my life?

We have begun a daily time of testimony where we pray and share demonstrations of His mighty deeds. I pray that as I share His stories of wonder and might that my children’s hearts will quicken as they pray – developing a heart to expect to see Him, knowing His faithfulness through all of history.

How are YOU building a spiritual heritage of  God’s mighty deeds into your children’s lives? Share your stories and encourage us!

All Scripture quotations are taken from the NASB.
Unless otherwise indicated, photos from pixaby.com
(image courtesy of flickr.com/creative-commons)