Parents, when you imagine the person your child will become, who do you see?

 Do you ever think about your end goal?

Do you think about what are you trying to accomplish through your parenting?

In the day to day of parenting, it can be hard to see the end goal as more than survival.   If thinking about this end goal is not something you’ve put much time into—try it today.  Who is your child is becoming:

• 5 years from now
• When your child goes to college
• When you child is an adult
• When your child has his/her own family

I believe it is important for us to have an end in mind.  We get so bogged down in the day to day, that it is easy for us to forget that there is an end goal here.  It is easy for us to forget that how we live in the day to day has a significant influence on who our children are becoming.

Parents, if you do not decide what you are trying to accomplish as a parent, someone else will.  If you don’t imagine who your child is becoming . . . someone else will.  We are immersed in a culture of societal norms, traditions, and expectations for who our children will become.  If we put no effort into determining the end, we get swept away by this system.

Parenting should be proactive!

In the Old Testament we see a whole host of commands and instructions.  There is this text in the Deuteronomy where we see many of these commands and instructions culminating.

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6)

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul and strength.  It’s the most important thing.  Love the Lord wholeheartedly:

• With all your capacity
• With your whole self
• With all your resources
• This is the lens through which all decisions are made
• This is the lens through which all of our resources are handled.

So according to this text–not only are we to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength–but according to verse 7m we are to “Impress them on your children.”  Whether you have kids are not, this text pushes you to impress this devotion to God on the next generation.

We see Jesus many years later bring us back to this text.  At one point, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is:

 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  (Matthew 22)

What if when you imagine who your child will become, you imagine someone who:

• Loves the Lord their God will all of their heart and all of their soul and all of their strength. 

I believe having this end in mind helps us prioritize our time with our kids.  It informs how we make our decisions.  If our goal is to lead our kids toward a life that is honoring to God, then there are things we will do today with that end in mind.

I hope that my kids are brilliant.  I hope they do well in school.  I hope they are successful in their careers.  I hope they have families and hundreds of kids.  But if I had to pick one . . . if I had to pick just one thing . . . if I had to give one thing priority over the rest it would be that:

• My kids learn to love the Lord their God with all of their heart and all of their soul and all of their strength.

Our time, our money, and our resources are limited.  In the course of our child’s life, we’ll have to make decisions on how to use our limited time, money, and resources.  Having an end in mind guides how we make those decisions.