Dear parents,
Just as the craftsman picks up his tools to make a fine piece of furniture, so the godly father picks up the Word of God to make and mold a young life into a servant of the living God. There is a sober, deep felt joy and satisfaction in the heart of the craftsman as he carefully works toward the finished product. He knows where he is going, and he knows how to get there. This kind of wisdom is available to the father who becomes a student of the Word, a student of teaching, and a student of his children.
When God commanded Moses to build the tabernacle in the wilderness, He also gave spiritual abilities to men so that the construction would be according to the pattern given to Moses in the mount. I see this as a principle that proves itself over and over in the Bible. The Spirit of God was brooding over these craftsmen to aid them in fulfilling the will of God.
Fathers, God is there with you, when you sit down before your children. Pick up the tools with your hands and open it, and begin to speak. He will help you mold the young lives, as you are doing it. Do not wait until you feel like you are ready and able—you will never start. The Lord hath ordained that we walk by faith and not by sight; step out and trust Him to help you. I was sitting around a family table not long ago listening to the family share the many ways God had provided for them financially. As I listened, it was evident that their faith had been tested and stretched, but God always came through, and glorified Himself. This is also the way God works with us fathers. If we step out in faith, we will be stretched, no doubt. But we will also find Him coming to our aid, again and again.
We submit these ideas to you fathers and mothers to encourage you to try, to encourage you to begin, and we know that you will find the Lord, the builder of the house, very faithful. The enemy has sown seeds of doubt and insecurity in our hearts, and we don’t think we can do it. This is a lie. God gives the grace to follow through with every command He orders. Let us rise up and teach, and He will make us craftsmen.
--The Editors
God bless you as you teach!
Self Control
There are several places in the Bible where God likens the soul of man to a city. Proverbs 25:28 says “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.” For this lesson, you can get one or two of your children to help you build a small fort or maybe a portion of a Lego city. They will be very happy to help with this project. You must build it with several places where the wall is broken down. Explain to the children that the wall of the city was a great protection against an enemy coming in and spoiling the city. After you have clearly made this point in their minds, turn the corner and make some applications to some of the needs in their lives. You can make the list as long as you want. Appetites that are out of control, losing your temper, being lazy in the morning, lying, and stealing, these are a few. Show the children how these character needs will open them up to the enemy to come in and destroy them when they are older. Since it takes a while to build the city, you could take one each day for a week. Follow each one out to its destructive end and give illustrations where this very thing has happened.
Understanding Father
Proverbs 25:3 says, “The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable.” For this lesson you can use the Lego city again, or find one of those children’s storybooks where there are pictures of the operations of a city. Here you have an opportunity to explain a deep truth to your children. Many times, fathers need to make decisions that the children don’t understand. It is important that they understand that this is normal, and that father is not being unreasonable. He is seeing a bigger picture than the child, and this affects his decisions. You can help them to see this by using the example of the King. The servants of the king see their own little world and desire things in light of their perspective. The king sees the whole of his kingdom and therefore his choices might be different because of this. Use the illustration of a city to show how different things look if you consider the whole city. After you have this concept clear in their minds, turn to your home, and give examples where your perspective and theirs would be very different.
A Wise Woman
You can use a little house that you have built with the children to illustrate Proverbs 14:1. “Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh down with her hands.” With this lesson, you are training way into the future, planting seeds of holy principles in their hearts long before they will need them. You can use the little house that you built to reference the building or tearing down of a household. As you have made the spiritual connection of the house, give examples of how a wife and mother could do this to her household. You can give the positive and the negative examples. You can be taking pieces of the house off, or adding them on depending on what you are talking about at the time. It would be normal if a house were being built in the neighborhood, to see different parts added each day. On the other hand, how odd it would be, if each day you went by the house next door, you saw parts of the house missing. This is what is happening when a foolish woman tears her house down with her hands.
Family Unity
This is a recurring theme in family devotions. The blessing and productivity of a home where there is unity cannot be measured. We all agree with this, and therefore we should pursue it with teaching continually. Use the scriptural teachings about the body of Christ found in I Corinthians 12 as a springboard for your teaching. Paul’s illustration of the human body is so very simple, yet profound. It is very easy for a child to understand how silly this would be if parts of our body refused to do their part. Paul provides ample examples, go over all of them, and then turn to the functions of the home. The different abilities of the children and their responsibilities can be applied to these points. The sky is the limit on this one, and you may want to take a few days on it to make many applications.
