Child Training and the Word of God

I am currently reading a book that I wish I had found years ago, when my boys were itty, bitty...  It is packed full of excellent yet practical ways and reasons to teach your children the Scriptures.  Not just drill them by memory into their heads, but teach them into their hearts...  Teaching God's Word into their hearts takes more time and effort than memorizing, it helps them to understand God's Word, and it helps them to apply it in their lives, even as a young child.  It often requires stopping in the midst of life, many times when it is inconvenient and when it interferes with your schedule... and it requires taking that real life opportunity to teach and apply scripture at the moment when it is needed.  And by teaching His Word into their little heart in this way, they will memorize it and know it because of the time you will spend together reading it and talking about it.  The book is Teach Them Diligently, How to Use the Scriptures in Child Training by Lou Priolo. 

From the title you can probably surmise that the book is based on the scripture from Deuteronomy 6:6-9.

And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up.  And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.  And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

I am not even halfway through the book yet, as I am taking my time, trying to glean all there is to be gleaned from this little treasure I just happened to find at a 2nd hand bookstore!  However, I have already put many of its principles and suggestions to use and am very much pleased!  I feel that what I am learning is helping me to be more effective as a parent in fulfilling the command quoted above in Deut. 6.

The following 2 quotes have really struck me, and I have gone back to re-read them numerous times.  They apply to my relationship with my kids, my husband, and my friends...  I am to be truthful, yet loving, as they are with me, in regards to sin.  I am to confront it lovingly, using God's Word, and the power of God's Spirit, in order to bring conviction, to correct, and to train my children in righteousness. 

You would count him unworthy the name of a friend who, knowing a thief or an incendiary to lurk in your family with a design to kill, or rob, or burn your house, would conceal it from you, and not acquaint you with it in his own accord.  There is no such thief, murderer, incendiary, as sin.  Silence or concealment in this case is treachery.  He is the most faithful friend, and worthy of most esteem and affection, that deals most plainly with us in reference to the discovery of our sin.  He that is reserved in this case is but a false friend, a mere pretender to love, whereas, indeed, he hates his brother in his heart.  David Clarkson

A foolish physician he is, and a most unfaithful friend, that will let a sick man die for fear of troubling him; and cruel wretches are we to our friends, that will rather suffer them to go quietly to hell, than we will anger them, or hazard our reputation with them.  Richard Baxter  

(he notes that both of these quotations are taken from The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations)

I want to be a faithful friend... a faithful wife... a faithful mom...

I want to be faithful to my Lord and Savior...

May my Lord continue to be faithful to me as I humbly attempt to train my 2 little warriors for Him and for His glory, using the marvelous Sword He has provided for me, the Sword of the Spirit, the very Word of God.