It’s January, 2024. A new year, another year to prioritize goals and what is truly important. With New Year’s resolutions having been made, the gym parking lots are fuller, and people everywhere have made their decisions of self-improvement for the New Year. My husband and I decided that we were going to take this year and read the whole Bible together; not only to strengthen our marriage, but help strengthen our family, and our children through searching deeper into God’s Word. Because the truth is, with the madness happening around the world, it is imperative to remember though we cannot control what is happening around us, we can control what we focus on. This year, our goal is to focus more on God; individually, as a couple, and as a family.

                Though I read my Bible most every day, for some strange reason, I have a hard time reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This is something as a Christian, as a wife, and as a mother, God has seriously convicted me to focus on in 2024. As the world seems to be spinning into chaos globally and nationally here in the United States, it is more important than ever for Christian parents to have a firm foundation in Jesus Christ and God’s Word to find God’s wisdom and guidance through these trying times to be a nurturing ground of God’s love to our children.

                So, I took to the task, opened to Genesis…honestly, I don’t know how many times I’ve read Genesis; but this year, it’s different. Right there on the page, the first sentence seemed to burst forth with a new revelation of God’s true power.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 EVS)

                In the beginning…the sheer power of God’s wonders. The voice of God calling forth creation from nothing. God spoke and creation came into existence in God’s perfect order; out of nothing came creation by the pure might of God’s Word.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2 EVS)

                Right there, The Spirit of God was over the face of the deep, when the earth was without form. Scientists have tried multiple tactics with theories of how the foundations of earth was formed as well as the basics of creation itself. Inevitability, ironically, even science points back to a spontaneous combustion of energy and matter from the power of God’s Word. Before modern science was even conceived, the truth of God’s Word holds true, even when the world continues to deny it.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Genesis 1:3 EVS)

Energy, matter, light itself burst into being.

And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis 1:4-5)

                As I kept rereading through Genesis and God’s Creation, my wonder at God’s sovereignty continues to bewilder me, yet again. Then, I got to Genesis 3; The Fall. Genesis 3 is the stark reality of how humanity became corrupted with sin entering the world through doubt and disobedience to the first commandment God gave to Adam and Eve. I have been reminded that Satan’s main tactic from the very beginning has been to undermine God’s Authority by creating doubt, deceiving and twisting God’s truth. God allowed Adam and Eve to eat from any tree of the Garden, except from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God loved them so much, He gave Adam and Eve free will. What was the serpent’s lie to Eve?

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’.” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

(Genesis 3:1-5 EVS)

This is the deadly lie that led Eve to fall into the temptation of not only disobeying God’s commandment, but ultimately the first sin was to doubt God’s Word. What I found incredibly impactful as a woman was Eve’s desire for knowledge that led her to doubt God’s goodness, love and trustworthiness. Is that not today the basis for every cultural lie that we, as Americans in particular, are sold? The social pressure to doubt God’s Word and His Authority over every aspect from our lives? It all stems back to the original sin the serpent in the Garden deceived Eve with; to doubt God’s Word and Authority.

                As Christian parents, it is vital for parents to teach our children about God through God’s Word as the only true and reliable source of life; for God’s Word is the foundation of life itself. Science surprisingly does support the Bible. Ken Ham, the CEO and Founder of the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter has excellent resources at https://answersingenesis.org/ not only for students, but for adults as well. Providing our children, the tools they need from biblical based education is critical in the age of technological and cultural fallacy. Ken Ham does an excellent job laying out the foundations of Genesis and the Bible, and the actual harmonious connection between God and how science, like creation, inevitably glorifies God.  

It is a Christian parent’s responsibility to truly search God’s Word daily and seek His wisdom in prayer and offering our children tools, biblically sound educational materials, and connection with fellow Christians in the body of Jesus Christ are all critical tools parents must utilize to raise children who know, continually seek, and love God.

Prayer for Spiritual Strength

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

(Ephesians 3:14-19 EVS)

  We must equip our children with the knowledge and truth of God considering they will be inheriting a culture that has devastatingly turned against God. American culture once knew God, but then walked away from God’s truth and has chosen the path of God’s judgment by denying God and mocking God. For God is clear about what happens to those that mock God and do not repent from their wickedness;

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that he will also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)

God’s Word and Truth remain, even when cultures fall from the glory of God in exchange for the serpent’s lies. Christians must sow the Word of God into our children’s heart to spare them from the deceit everywhere devastating our culture. God’s love, through Jesus Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit are the only true protection we can provide our children with for the hardships of life they will all surely encounter.

God gave His Commandments throughout the Bible out of love; God’s Commandments are the boundaries for humanity because we’re all like little children that go astray. When humanity is left to its own devices, we always choose wrong and lose our way. Those choices have devastating consequence, and ultimately, sin leads to death; without confession of sin, accepting and following Jesus Christ full-heartedly. God’s Commandments, the Ten Commandments, ALL of His commandments are established out of God’s love for us, like the Good Father He is. He did not leave us alone, but instead setup boundaries for those who love God and seek to follow Him. Since it seems that the Ten Commandments have been removed from the American public; it’s important to have the Ten Commandments visible and regularly in our hearts, in our homes, to remember them everywhere not just for our children, but for us adults as well.

   The Ten Commandments

1) “You shall have no other gods before me.”

2) “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

3) “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”

4)  “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

5) “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”

6) “You shall not murder.”

7) “You shall not commit adultery.”

8) “You shall not steal.”

9) “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

10) “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”  

(Exodus 20:2-11 EVS)

God’s boundaries are His love in action. Maintaining true to God’s Word and not compromising it to be accepted by the world are boundaries that are essential for Christians to actively follow in their daily lives. The Ten Commandments and God’s Word must serve as the absolute foundation for our life before they can become the foundation of our children’s lives. Again, we all fail, but repentance and turning from our sin is what God expects from those who truly love Him. By following God’s laws, it is an active desire and action on our part to do our best to live in accordance to God’s law is proof of the Holy Spirit actively moving within us to draw us closer to God and His love.

Loving God is a verb; it is in our actions and our daily choices that the Holy Spirit is dwelling within us. That is what our children see. That is what the world sees. Do Christians fail? Yes, absolutely, regularly…because we all fall short of the glory of God. When I fail, I repent, I do the best I can to correct my actions and I continue forward trying to do better. This is such an incredibly important lesson for children to see in their parents lives so they learn how to repent and turn from their sins. It is only by the Grace of God that any of us our able to do this. Our children watch what we do far more than they listen to what we say. Our daily choices and actions speak far louder than our mere words. When our children actively see us as parents longing, searching, and living in God’s love; they see the evidence of the Holy Spirit working within us.

                So, as Christian parents are inundated and bombarded with cultural lies seeming endlessly; we know where our foundation remains, in God’s Word and in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ addresses the difference between those who build their foundations in God’s Word verse those that follow the world in Matthew 7.

Build Your House on the Rock

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

(Matthew 7:24-27)

Eve’s desire to be wise and her decision to take the fruit was the reason Jesus Christ had to come and die for us. God is the Rock, God’s Word is the foundation of everything; of all creation. As Christians who follow Jesus Christ, our feet must be firmly planted on the Rock, which is God’s Word. It is our responsibility as parents to teach our children God’s Word, so that they may know Him, pray they choose to follow Jesus Christ, but also supply them with God’s Word to build their lives foundation upon.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

                So, my prayer for you reader, for my family, for my children, is that we all take 2024 and dig deeper into the one true source of the wealth of wisdom of the LORD Almighty. Dig into the Bible and challenge yourself to read it from Genesis to Revelation, praying along the way for God’s wisdom, guidance, and for Him to reveal Himself in new ways to you and your family.