2016 a year of decision that will shape our future [5] Telling the Story.
Filed on 14 May 2016 in Food For Thought category. 
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2016 a year of decision that will shape our future [5] Telling the Story.
For Christian eyes.
What is at stake? Our liberty to believe, to speak what we believe, and to teach it to our children.
We are facing in the coming election the most critical choices between good and evil that we have faced since Federation.
The freedom to tell the story – the Greatest Story Ever Told – is what is at risk. We must tell it now while we can.
Teaching our children God-honouring values is a wonderful responsibility and privilege and in this to praise God for all He has done through history.
This is magnificently illustrated in Psalm78 and The Shema in Deuteronomy.
Psalm 78 A psalm of Asaph. V1-6
O my people, listen to my instructions.
Open your ears to what I am saying,
for I will speak to you in a parable.
I will teach you hidden lessons from our past—
stories we have heard and known,
stories our ancestors handed down to us.
We will not hide these truths from our children;
we will tell the next generation
about the glorious deeds of the Lord,
about his power and his mighty wonders.
For he issued his laws to Jacob;
he gave his instructions to Israel.
He commanded our ancestors
to teach them to their children,
so the next generation might know them—
even the children not yet born—
and they in turn will teach their own children. NLT.
The passage of scripture in Deuteronomy 6 known as The Shema, is often the first passage that a Jewish child learns v4-9, 20-21 (NIV):
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 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. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?” tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt.
Each time The Story is told the recurring truths become more real, both to young and old: the essential and eternal reality of God – ‘there is a God; He loves me; He wants me to come to Him.’ And we only have to accept the fact that the Son of God died for our sin for us to be restored to God and know Him as Father.
And it is in the telling of all the little stories that make up the big story, that the Word of God becomes real and is a light to our path.
Don’t stop. Learn and recite scripture. Let us teach our children as we walk along the road, as they go to bed and as they get up; teach our grandchildren. What they learn now will stand them in good stead as they face these battles in the times to come.
This freedom to tell the story – the Greatest Story Ever Told – is what is at risk.
We must tell it now while we can.
And if we lose this battle against a temporary triumph of evil at this small moment of eternity, we must continue to tell The Story into the future whatever comes our way.
The Story – know it, learn it, recite it, teach it – today.
Also see http://www.chooselifeaustralia.org.au/life/a-safe-place-for-our-children-2013/
