Concerning the Eternal Destination of Stuffies

A number of years ago I made my first attempt to explain heaven to my oldest son, Isaac.  Considering what was at stake it was really important to me to do a good job.  I did my best, but I’m afraid the attempt went downhill fast – it has been recorded in the history books as one of my great big parenting failures (ending with him crying desperately, begging NEVER to have to go there)!  

I confess that as a child heaven didn’t appeal to me either.  The idea of meeting God had me afraid that I would see him, be terrified, and pee my pants.  And just what were we going to do up there…FOREVER??  I loved singing, but that was a long time.   And what was the point if I had to leave behind everything I knew except for God?  A lot of how I knew God came through the people in my life and through my experiences.  Would I even remember those experiences?  Would I recognize the people that I love?  

  

Heaven seemed like a foreign place.   

Earth felt like home.

As a child, and still after the Isaac incident I remained confused about heaven.  I was puzzled by the mixed messages the Bible seemed to send about what exactly heaven was.  In one passage it would say “heaven and earth may pass away” and in another it would talk about a new heaven and a new earth.   

Where?  I wondered.    

When Jesus ascended he went “up” so was it somewhere in space?  Was it in another dimension?  

Other passages about new bodies left me confused, too.  Would they be spiritual bodies?  Would we become like the angels, who often look like humans in scripture, yet weren’t human?  Would I look at all like myself still?  Would the way we look freeze at the age we died?  If so, would some look like little children and others old?   

As a child I didn’t hear anyone attempting to answer these questions so I added them to the realm of “mystery.” But, since the Isaac incident I’ve been unsettled leaving it there.   

Why would God leave us with no answers to this question?  What appeal is there in a completely unknown future?

Second Chances

Now I find myself with another chance to improve on my past parental failure.  My middle child has been asking questions about heaven and hell.  He is really trying to understand.  I wish I had recordings of our conversations to remember his deeply thoughtful questions, his genuine searching and reflecting.  His probing questions found me pulling a book off my shelf by one of my former profs, Randal Rauser:  What on Earth Do We Know about Heaven?.

In this book Randal Rauser proposes a “heavenly equation” to herald the biblical vision of heaven.  I’m just beginning the book and I’m excited to embark on this journey into all the Bible says about heaven and consider how I can communicate God’s Word on the subject to my kids.  I just may do a better job this time!  I’m a little over a chapter in and I can already see that it’s a brilliant, clear, carefully written, and yet sometimes playful read.  Maybe you want to read it with me?

In the following excerpt from the book Randal Rauser illustrates the heavenly equation using one of my favorite childhood stories:  The Velveteen Rabbit.  

[This book] tells the story of a stuffed toy rabbit that longs to become Real.  In a conversation with his close friend the Skin horse, he discusses a question that is bursting with philosophical profundity:

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side-by-side near the nursery fender, before Nana came into the room.  “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the skin horse.  “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child really loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but REALLY loves you, then you become real.”

Rauser expounds, “According to the Skin Horse, when a child loves a toy – really loves it – that love can make that toy real.  And according to the heavenly equation, when God loves his creation – really loves it – that love transforms creation into perfection and thereby makes it real.  The thesis of this book may be an equation, but its heart is a love story, a story of becoming real.  It is the story of how God so loved the world that he sent his Son to make it, to make us all, real.”

I'd like to introduce to you...
 In our home we have one such REAL stuffy.  He’s a little organic stuffed monkey named Nounours (AKA:  Nunu).  The name’s a bit of a long story, but he came to life by the love of a young boy named Oliver.  His favorite since birth, Nunu has grown into a real part of our family.  He has a voice, preferences, a dynamic personality.  He loves.  He hurts (Band-Aids help).  He even misbehaves.  This little stuffy is so real that he can pretend with the best of them.  He has his favorite jokes.  He loves to play.  He says his prayers every evening and professes his love for the One True God.  I don’t know if stuffies go to heaven, but if being real is one of the criteria we just might enjoy eternity with him!

Maybe I should clarify that Rauser doesn’t intend to address the eternal destination of stuffies in his book (or maybe he does…  I’ll have to wait and see).  A quick perusal of the table of contents reveals his book is organized around a number of questions that we probably all find ourselves asking:  Where is heaven now?  What does it mean that heaven will be perfected?  How old will we be?  Will we get older?  Will we all be beautiful?  Will anyone be deaf?  Will we still get thirsty? Hungry? Sleepy?  Will there still be sweet melancholy?  Will we love everyone the same?  Will we have special friends?  Will we still have free will?  If my child goes to hell, will I know and will I care?  Should we hope that everyone will be saved?

Many of these are the same questions I asked as a child and my children ask now.  Kids are born curious.  They naturally seek out information to make sense of their environment.  ALL children want to learn.  As a parent it can be exhausting to answer the non-stop questions of a young child.  Sometimes I’m tempted to give a pat answer or tune out, BUT, when I’m careful to notice, their questions represent much more than I normally tend to pick up on.  I believe that how we go about answering (or not answering) their questions will impact the way they learn in the future, and specifically, the development of their faith.

Passin' the Faith Along

As a parent, I find comfort – a certain parental security – in knowing that my children attend Sunday School where they will learn about God through a carefully thought out curriculum that (ideally) sequentially teaches them everything they need to know about the Bible and spirituality.  It’s also a great idea to have a thought through plan for how we want to go about teaching our children at home.  When both community and home work together, even better. 

A scope and sequence is a great way to ensure that one has (at least at some point) dealt with the most important stuff.  That being said, dealing with a topic at an appointed time will never have the same impact as dealing with a question when it’s burning in a child’s mind.  A child’s question is an opportunity like no other!  Their attention is focused.  Their interest is piqued.  They’re downright ready to learn.

Something else that’s easy to miss is that when learning topics are always prescribed (and the children's questions are deferred because they're not on topic), their questions start to seem unnecessary.  Some eventually stop asking questions (especially if they are always immediately redirected back to the prescribed task).  Other kids become afraid to express their curiosity because it seems to annoy the teacher .  In a Sunday School setting indulging a rabbit trail for a few moments here and there (followed by gently redirecting them back to the task) can go a long way to encourage a continued state of "wonder." 

The Center for Spiritual Growth

Spiritual education through the community of faith is a comfort and provides a necessary foundation for spiritual development, but it’s not meant to be the primary place of learning for a child.  God designed FAMILIES to be the primary center for Spiritual Growth!  It’s no coincidence that this is the context where children typically ask their burning questions.  

In our house the questions come most frequently during our scripture reading as a family, when we reflect on the day together in the evening, and also when they're experienced a confusing event in their life and they're trying to make sense of it.  I might be crazy, but I’ve made it my goal to answer EVERY question that they ask me.  If I can, I attend to the question immediately.  Obviously, that’s not always possible, so I try to write them down and come back to them later.  For me this feels daunting because, let’s face it, I don’t have all the answers.  So much pressure!!  

With each child I've relaxed a little more.  Time has taught me that my kids don’t need me to give them all the answers!  What they need every bit as much as the answers is to develop the skills they need to study the scriptures and the ability think logically so they can continue to learn and grow throughout their life.  As I've studied how children learn I'VE learned that the best way to do this is to resist feeding them the "right answers."  

Here's why:  When the primary mode of teaching consists of feeding children spiritual principles and beliefs to memorize (ie. God loves you; God is good; You are special to God; Sin is bad; Do unto others) they eventually STOP thinking and asking intuitive questions, and ask for answers instead.  They start to think they can’t know/learn anything they haven’t been told.  Later in life they are less able to process opposition to what they have been taught, because they haven’t done the mental work themselves.  Often they begin to blindly accept what they are told as long as they trust the person doing the telling (be it a parent, a teacher, a friend, a commercial, a facebook post…).  It leaves them much more susceptible to the messages and peer pressures of the teenage years.

 

Even though it feels safer as a parent to make sure my kids have memorized all the right beliefs, and it feels like a risk to go about teaching them in a less direct way, in the long run it’s the more secure route to include this kind of education, too! I'll share more about this in a future post about "How Children Learn."

So, I've tried to change the way I approach passing on the faith to my kids.  There will always be a need for clear and direct teaching, but what I'm talking about here is a starting point for their questions.  Rather than always starting with the answers to their questions, I begin with exploration together.   They don't need to be right right away.  They just need to get there.

Depending on the topic and their level of understanding (which, as their mother, I have a pretty good sense of) I try to help them search for the answers in a variety of ways.  This may look like guiding them in searching the scriptures or recalling passages we’ve studied or a passage we've memorized in the past, or sharing a relevant Bible Story.  It might be allowing them to process something new through play.  As much as possible I try to ask them questions that don’t imply the answer, but encourage them to think it through for themselves.  Its takes more mental work on my part (and theirs), and goodness, it takes A LOT of patience.  Interestingly it hasn't taken much more time because the conversations extend over days, weeks, months.  We interact with the events going on in our lives, and it actually becomes a much more natural, organic task. 

I believe that as parents (grandparents, Sunday School teachers, the community of faith) we need to help our kids learn to ask questions, imagine, explore, find answers, problem solve, and be okay with making mistakes and now knowing everything yet.  Demonstrating the limits of our own understanding and sharing with them our never ending thirst for the scriptures and learning will be vital to successfully passing on a hungry and thirsty spirituality to our kids that is characterized by life-long growth.

Many of the questions addressed in What on Earth Do We Know About Heaven are the very same questions my kids have asked.  Typically kids begin asking these types of questions in what Piaget called the Preoperational stage of mental development (Ages 2-7).  While they don’t have the ability for complex logic yet, this stage sets the groundwork for developing it.  They deal with the world symbolically-representationally.  They experiment with real life using their imagination.  This is how they "get to know." Its how they process the real world.  It's how they learn!  Its a necessary stage to go through in order to develop more complex logic later in life.

What can we do to inspire our children to wonder?

So, where DO stuffies go when they die?

In Nunu’s life Oliver plays the role of daddy, and at 32 I already find myself a grandma (and have been one for some time now).  As Nunu explores behavior and misbehaviour he is corrected (and rightly so) by his dad. When he confesses his sin he realizes the gravity of what he’s done, and he feels sad.  Sometimes when he talks about heaven he gets things wrong, but dad’s there to help him understand.   Maybe we should reconsider the relevance of the eternal destination of stuffies!  Afterall, these playful explorations of theology are a natural child-like way to examine just such questions.  In Oliver’s life, we are not so different from Nunu.  We may have different “stuff” inside, but we are curious.  We are loved.  We are real.

YOUTUBE: A short interview with Oliver and Nunu

How Can I know if I Love God the Way HE Wants to be Loved? (Part 2)

The Greatest Commandment seems so simple. So familiar. So basic. I love God! Done! But is there more to it? Have you ever wondered if your life makes God feel loved? That's what I've been thinking about this year. It would be nice to be given a short checklist, or a simple how-to guide. Turns out there is one!! When he gave us the Greatest Commandment of all (the first time) he expressed four things that make him feel that heart, soul, mind, strength kind of love.  (Article Starts Here) The Second Instruction

Next, Moses says “talk about them when you walk along the road.”  God feels loved when we impress his commands on our children during the everyday moments of life - wherever we are.

This year I’m faced with a decision for my son:  how will he learn the French language.  I took French a few hours a week through grade 12, and I was alright at it.  I love languages, and it was something I really wanted.  

But, after school I didn’t have anywhere to speak it.  Its been about 15 years now, and I can ask “where is the bathroom” but I’m pretty much useless in a real conversation.   

I have some friends, though, who went to French immersion, and you know they can speak it as well today as they did back then?  And they don’t use it much more than I do in life today.  So what was the difference?  We learnt French for the same number of years.  We both had teachers that cared about our learning, and we both worked hard.  What I was missing was living the culture of the French Language.   

My Immersion friends lived it.  They lived with the people, the holidays, the culture, and they lived that language every day!  

What I’m learning is that Christianity is more than a collection of “grammatical rules” or “laws.”  Its more than behavior.  It’s a culture!  A way of life.  It’s the People of God – a nation that we have been adopted into.   

How do I want to pass down my faith?  Through Christianity moments, an hour here and there each week?  No!  I want to pass down my faith through immersion!  

As I’ve been trying to do this, I remember a day early this year, when the kids and I had big plans, lots of plans, and we were all really excited about the day, but then really early on things started to go wrong.  In a short time it looked like it was all going to flop.  

At that time, when I noticed things going south, I chose to pull over the van each time something was going wrong and one of us prayed.  And, you know, I don’t remember the details of that day, what the plans were, but I remember clearly that that each impossible situation resolved, and at the end of the day Isaac was able to say to me, “Mom, see?  God answered our prayers 5 times today.”  

Now, if I’d never stopped the car and turned them to God in those moments, look what we would have missed!  I wonder how many of those opportunities I have missed with them.

We love God with our whole self when we impress his commands on our children… during time together at home, and when we impress his commands on our children… during the everyday moments of life, wherever we are.  But Moses doesn`t stop there.  

The Third Instruction

He goes on to tell us that we love God with our whole selves when we impress his commands on our children when we wake and when we go to sleep. 

Moses is talking about being intentional about turning our kids to God at the beginning and end of each day.  For me, in the mornings I usually have a pretty bad case of the zombies.  And I don't turn human until the noonday sun shines through my window.  So… yeah… still working on that one. Not giving up.

I HAVE come to love those bedtime moments when we reflect on the day.  

Isaac has a sensitive spirit, and he wants so badly to do things right.  Yet there is this… almost visible battle within him when he wants something, and I say NO. 

His internal dialogue is written on his face.  No, don`t do it!  …  But I must!...  No!...  Then almost immediately…  Oh, why'd I do it?

There`s been many a night when he`s shared his struggle and asked why he does these things, and how he can stop.  It's opened conversations about Paul and his struggles, and of course, most importantly, the all surpassing power of Christ and sure victory in him!   

You probably have some sort of bedtime routine, too.  Maybe you read a Bible story, or pray together.  

God says we love him with our whole selves when we impress his commands at home, wherever we are, and as the day begins and ends.   

Moses has one more set of instructions for us about how to love God completely.

The Fourth Instruction.

The passage reads:

"Tie them as symbols on your hands, bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and your gates."

Whaaaa?  We're supposed to tie a bunch of stuff to our heads and hands?  This one doesn't translate nicely into the 21st Century.   

Matthew 23:5 tells us that some of the Pharisees did this to make it look like they were more holy than others, and that was certainly not the intention behind this instruction.  

When it says to keep the commands on your hands, it means they should affect what you do, and when it says to bind them on your forehead, it means they should affect our thought life.  And not only that, our home should be an environment that turns our kids to God.  That's what it means when it says to write the commandments on the doorframes of your houses and gates.  

So there we have it, God's instructions for how to love him with our whole selves!  By impressing his commands on our children...

1. As we enjoy time together at home

·  2. During the normal moments of life, wherever we are

·  3. At the bookends of the day, and

·  4. As we model our faith in our thought life, in our actions, and in the home environment that we create.

The Good News

 

If we do these things, the Bible gives us this promise:  Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.  (Proverbs 22:6)  And we can rest in our knowledge that we have made God feel loved completely, with every part of who we are.

How Can I know if I Love God the Way HE Wants to be Loved?

Most of us are probably familiar with the Greatest Commandment… 

Now, to be clear, I don’t mean the second greatest one…  about neighbors and such…  I mean the Greatest one.  

Jesus picked it out easily – not even a second thought.  “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind (Matthew 22:36-40).”

 

At first this seems like a no brainer…  just love God!   

Easy!  Right?

As I take a moment to think about it I wonder: what does that mean?  How do I make God feel loved?  How do I know I haven’t missed loving him with a little piece of my heart…  or soul… or mind? 

What expectations does God bring to that command?

Yikes, now I’m feeling some pressure!  What does he want me to do?  

I find myself wishing this commandment came with a detailed “How-to,” some sort of instruction manual.  Afterall, if its the greatest one I’d better get it right!

As I’ve gone about my ministry this year I’ve been reflecting on this "Greatest Command" text.  Its one that I've taken forgranted for most of my life.  I've assumed I just knew what it meant.  But what I've been learning is that its not enought to love God on my own terms.  It comes clear looking at the first time this command was ever given (in Deuteronomy 6), long before Jesus.  

What's so exciting is that right here, in its original context, we find that God went on to give us just what I've been looking for - an instruction manual for how he wants to be loved!  Take a moment and read it for yourself:  Deuteronomy 6. 

Command In Context

In my ministry this year we’ve been walking through a big chunk of Exodus.  We’ve seen the power of the One True God.  We’ve learned his name, YAHWEH, and enjoyed being on a first name basis with him (so when you hear me calling him YAHWEH that’s where it comes from).    We’ve witnessed him bring his people out of the land of slavery, take them through the hot, dry desert, provide for them, establish a covenant relationship with them at Sinai, and as we come to Deuteronomy 6 we find the Israelites are finally ready to enter the land that was promised to Abraham so, so long ago - 40 years long ago!  Pretty exciting stuff.   

They’re on the brink of the promised land.  They’ve lived the law for 40 years in the desert, and Moses is preparing them for their new life.  He recaps where they’ve been, how they got there, and as we come to our passage we find him helping them understand how the rules are going to apply in this new life context:  a great big family of people...  with a home of their own! 

The How-To Guide

This is where we find our how-to for fulfilling the Greatest Commandment.  A list of instructions that can help us gauge our love for God.  He starts by reminding them: 

“These are the commands, decrees, and laws that Yahweh YOUR God, directed me to teach you to observe.” (v.1)

Then he tells them WHY to observe them:

“So that:  you, your children, and their children after them may fear YAHWEH, YOUR God, as long as you live…” (v.2)

From here Moses goes on to explain what Jesus himself said is the Greatest commandment – the one that started our search for answers today:

Hear, O Isreal, YAHWEH…  OUR God,

YAHWEH is ONE!

Love YAHWEH your God with ALL your heart,

and with ALL your soul,

and with ALL your strength.” (v. 4-5)

There it is… the Greatest Commandment is to love the One True God with our whole selves.  Now thankfully it doesn’t stop there.  Moses goes on to give us a nicely laid-out “How-To” Instruction Guide.   These instructions give us a measuring stick to see if we truly love God the way he wants us to. 

Love his commands; Impress them…

Moses says that if we love God completely, then these commands should be ever upon our hearts, so much and in such a way that we impress them on our children! 

So, great!  Just be a great parent that passes on the faith successfully.  No pressure there, huh!

Perfect Parent?

I don’t know how you felt about the parenting role when you were a teen.  Maybe I was the only one who thought about it.  I figured I pretty much had it in the bag.

·        I babysat all the time...

·        Long hours...

·        All kinds of kids...

·        I had ALL the qualifications...

AND I’d put a lot of thought into how I’d raise my kids.  TOTALLY. QUALIFIED.

During what was supposed to be my last semester of Seminary I was given the greatest blessing – a baby boy.  Here was a tiny baby that God trusted ME to raise for HIM.  And while I had been expecting him God had been speaking to me of the plans that he had for my child.  

I named him Isaac to remind me that its my task as a parent to help him fulfill God’s calling on his life… whatever that would mean.  Even if God were to ask for his very life.

I was ready.  But what I didn’t expect was that when Isaac came I would become quite sick, and I did.  I wish I had time to tell you the whole story, because it’s a beautiful story of God’s healing power and incredible design for the human body.  

But at the time I didn’t know that would come.  When Isaac was one it got much worse, and being a mom wasn’t working out the way I imagined.   

Sometimes I’d have a bit of a stronger day and I’d get to play with him a little, but most days I was too weak and would need to lay down.  There were days when I couldn’t get meals to Isaac or get to him to change his diaper, and when Nathan came home he would get us dressed, feed us, take care of us.

During these days when it was just me and Isaac at home I’d try to lay down on the floor for the day so I so I could feel him, and he could come and lay on me and play on me.  I didn’t know if life would ever change.  In fact, I was told by my doctors that I should expect to be like that for the rest of my life.  

I remember big tears streaming down my face because I wanted so much to play with him and teach him things.  I remember looking into his big one year old eyes in a moment of clarity and saying “Mommy’s so sorry Isaac.  I really do want to play with you."  And I just remember feeling the weight of all those things I knew I was supposed to be doing as a mom – how could I be that for him?  

Really, at the core, I was wrestling with the question:  How am I going to impress my faith on his life?  

I didn’t know there was this “how to,” but I find a kind of retrospective encouragement in it.

In the passage Moses gives four ways that God expects us to impress our faith on our children – and by so-doing, prove our love for God.

The First Instruction

The first instruction Moses gives tells us:  We love God with our whole self when we impress his commands on our children during time together at home.

What the passage says literally is “talk about them when you sit at home,” but I think God would accept a different posture here.  The important thing is that we take that time where we’re at home just being together, enjoying each other’s company, to talk about life together and look at it through the lens of God’s action in our lives. 

Many of us probably feel like we don’t have a lot of time to just sit together at home.  I know since I’ve been healthy it’s taken a tremendous amount of effort to clear time for “sitting together.”  And we’ve even had to make some tough decisions to rearrange our lives to protect this time… and still, too often we fail! 

 

Inspiration in God’s Design

What Moses is telling us is that we were designed to develop faith in the context of relationship, in family.   

The Israelite concept of family was a little different than ours.  It extended far beyond the mom and dad.  Grandparents and extended family, and really the whole community were part of that.   

In a similar way, we are the family of God, and we really do need the whole family!  So while this might be speaking to parents, its also speaking to everyone in the family of God.

The bible tells us that relationship, sitting together, sharing our faith, is the place we were designed to grow our faith.  And I want to share something with you that has just opened my eyes so much.  If you've been reading my blog you've heard me talk these things before.  

My background is in psychology, and lately I’ve been just fascinated with God’s design of the brain, where the pleasure centers are.   

Maybe you don’t get as excited about a region of the brain as I do, but I’ve been just enamored with it, because it gives us insight into WHY this is God’s first instruction to us!  The Relational-Learning connection is literally built right into how God designed our minds to develop.

The septal region is one of the pleasure centers in this area of the brain, and its activated when:

·        Pleasant subjects are discussed...

·        We feel loved...

·        We see a picture of something beautiful...

When this area is activated it releases a type of euphoria experience.  In fact, when the pleasure centers are turned on, EVERYTHING we experience gives us pleasure!  It’s part of the brain’s build-in reward system.  And...  when the pleasure centers are turned on while LEARNING, learning happens more easily because it feels rewarding!

 

Maybe you’ve noticed how kids are motivated by fun… yes?  They want it.  And they tend to resist anything they don’t see as rewarding.  

We’ve seen how the entertainment industry, and what’s cool, draws them in – to the point that they’re fixated.  They’ll even fight for these things with great fervor.  And we think:  If only our kids felt that way about God!

And we reason:  If fun and entertainment can draw them in to those things, surely it can do the same thing for their faith!

There’s a problem with this reasoning, though.    

In these situations, while the attachments formed seem strong, it’s almost always short-lived.  It lasts only until the next shiny thing comes along.   

It’s not a good way to teach long-term commitment.  

What we find is that the attachment made is actually to the “flashiness” and not to the item or idea itself.  

Another problem is that the attachments formed are driven by a selfish desire for more – a lust for the things of the world, and the values of the world.  For Isaac it was Lego Star Wars last year.  This year, its Pokemon cards – it’s all about having more, more, more…  that one I don’t have yet…  that one with more life, or power.  My kids have a lot of fun with these things, and fun is great, but when I think of church I know that if it’s the reason they’re staying, they’ll leave when fun isn’t central anymore.  If our hope is to help our kids build a long-term committment to God, than fun and excitement is really not the best choice. 

I think Romans 12:2 is a great reminder.  “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be ABLE to test and approve what God’s will is!”

We’re called to train our kids, because kids aren’t DESIGNED to know what they need automatically.  Don’t kids tend to want the pattern of this world?  I know if I set a delicious, nutritious meal in front of my kids next to a dessert (even a dessert they don’t think they’re going to like) they’ll choose the dessert every time, for every meal if possible! 

Faith is meant to be intentionally modelled and taught the way the Bible describes it.  It takes work.  Sometimes its fun, but its not always fun.  And the context of a loving relationship is so, so important. 

In the Bible Paul reminds Timothy that “the goal of our instruction is love” (I Timothy 1:5), and he urges Timothy model a godly example… in “speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity (1 Timothy 4:12). 

1 John reminds us how we know if we love the children of God, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe his commandments!” 

This theme of loving relationships as the means to model and impress these commands on our children is found throughout scripture.  And going back to how God designed our brains, what’s been found is that LOVE is a more powerful trigger for the pleasure centers than fun is!  

 And what’s even more amazing is that the attachments formed are deep, strong, long-term.  When love triggers the euphoria experience it spreads – we enter into a more enthusiastic state, feeling more optimistic about literally everything.  If you’ve been in love before, you know this is true!   And because of this, it cultivates a heart that moves from loving self above all to a heart that feels compassion for the hurting, the poor, the sinner.  I wish I had more time to tell you about how it works up there!

But God knew we are designed to learn through relationship because he made us to be that way, and the most influential relationship in any child’s life is the one with his or her own parents.  So, lets show our love for God by impressing his commands on our children while we spend time together at home!!

(Continued here :) )