These words shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
The classroom is the ordinary day.
Week 2 of 4
When you sit in your house
Family worship is a conversation on the way, not a performance on Sunday night.
You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house.
Deuteronomy 6:7
Moses does not hand fathers a curriculum brand. He hands them a life: sitting, walking, lying down, rising. The word is talked, not only lectured. A man can hide behind “I’m not a teacher” and still be teaching all day — by what he laughs at, what he fears, what he checks before he says goodnight. Spiritual leadership is the decision to make that constant teaching point at the Lord on purpose.
Scripture
Formal study reading, written for this series
Formal study reading, written for this series
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Fathers are addressed. The goal is the Lord’s training, not the father’s mood.
Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.
A harsh father can win compliance and lose the child.
NASB, the Amplified, and the ESV open on Bible Hub. The Legacy Standard Bible opens on its own reader. Close, Expanded, and Easy on this page are original study readings. WEB is the World English Bible, public domain.
Talk, don’t only host
Shanan is to whet, the way you sharpen a blade by repetition. Family worship dies when it is only an event that shames the father when he misses it. Deuteronomy expects talk in the seams of the day. A sentence at the table about what you read, a prayer that names a real fear, a question in the car: that is the pattern. A weekly gathering can serve it. It cannot replace it.
Ephesians and Colossians put a fence around fatherly zeal. The same man who must instruct is forbidden to provoke. Discipline of the Lord is not the father’s anger with a verse attached. Children discouraged by a father often leave the father’s God in order to escape the father’s voice. Nourish them. The word is the same family as the husband’s cherishing in Ephesians 5.
In the house
Start smaller than your guilt. Four nights a week, read a short passage and pray in four sentences. If they are little, keep it shorter than their patience. If they are grown and gone, the talk may be a text and a prayer with your wife, and a real conversation when the children call.
If you have provoked them — sarcasm, impossible standards, a God who only shows up when you are mad — confess it to them if they can hear it. Do not demand a tender moment in return.
Seven days
At the table
- 1Is your instruction mostly correction, or is there also delight?
- 2What have the children learned to hide because of your reaction?
- 3Where could the word enter an ordinary hour this week?
- 4Have you been trying to host an event instead of living a conversation?
Your note
Stays on this device. No account.
A prayer
Father, you spoke to us as sons, and you did not exasperate us into despair. Make me that kind of father. Put your words in the ordinary hours. Keep my temper off your name. Nourish these children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and do not let me confuse my mood with your will. Amen.