Think ahead 10-15 years to where your family will be, not physically or careerwise but spiritually. Our children are the future of this church and we are the immediate future.  As you know things die down and get worse so what you are doing now spiritually subtract from that.  Sin is erosion.  If you pray with your family during meals and that’s all, then plan that your children will not pray.  If  you attend church once a week, then plan that your children may attend once a month or once a year.

Moderate Christians do not beget spiritual Christians. The prophets and apostles were all persecuted for their faith and most were martyrs.  Revivals followed persecutions, but lukewarm Christianity is a recipe for unsaved children.  Remember you’re laying a foundation for the Lord to work on.

God’s Priority is the Family Altar

• What is the family altar? Prayer and Bible reading as a family where you seek God as a family.
• Matthew 22:34-38 – Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:46.
  • Loving God begins with knowing God.
  • Clean home does not begin with Clorox, but the words of God. (Psalms 19:9, Psalms 119:9, Matthew 23:2527, John 15:3, John 17:17, Ephesians 5:26)
• Where are the words of God in your home? On the shelf, on the coffee table when the pastor shows up?
• Where are the words of God on your schedule?

Make God’s Priority Your Priority

• 2 Chronicles 34
• Jehoshaphat did the following things.  Seek the Lord, Purge out the clutter, Prepare to receive the scriptures
• Hilkiah finds the scriptures and ends up leaving his son Jeremiah with a Godly heritage.  He may not have started well, but he sure ended well.

Teach God’s word in the family

• Proverbs are truths made simple – simplicity in Christ
• Music God’s method of memory Colossians 3:16. We all know how hard it is to get worldly music out of our mind. Music makes you memorize even if you don’t want to.
• Just read the Bible.
• Teach by comparisons
  • Comparing spiritual with spiritual things
  • Creation teaching spiritual truths
  • Similitudes

It starts with you

• Deuteronomy 6:6 starts with thine heart
• God’s priority is that you lay up for your children a Godly heritage through a Family Altar.  Timothy benefitted from this, 2 Timothy 1:56.
• 2 Timothy 3:14- 17 says Timothy had a foundation to draw from, a foundation the Holy Spirit of God could use.
• Remember that a foundation to build on is a foundation children can come back to if they go astray.