Making Memories
On this Memorial Day weekend, it’s appropriate that we’re talking about how to make memories.
Tender Memories
I have a memory of something that happened when we lived in Mexico. Beth was gone so the girls and I decided to have pizza. I called Domino’s and tried to place my order in Spanish. Emily and Lydia listened and tried to encourage me as I stumbled through the phone call (I think they were holding their breath, wondering what was going to come out of my mouth).
I told the pizza guy that we wanted sausage on our pizza, but instead of saying “sausage” I said “hot dogs”. The girls tried to correct me while I was on the phone but I didn’t listen to them. When our pizza finally arrived, we just laughed when we saw it covered with greasy hot dogs! The pizza place probably had to run out to the store to find some hot dogs since I’m sure it wasn’t a very popular request. We had to throw the pizza away because it was so gross. We laugh about it…now.
This is what I call a tender memory. We love telling the story and remembering the details. I have many tender memories about growing up. Like the time I put my sister’s cat in the dryer (though I’m sure that wasn’t a tender memory for her!). Or the times we’d walk across our back yard in the summer to buy a gallon of root beer from the A&W. I also have fond memories of the time I spent with my grandpa before he died.
Parents, what are you doing to build some tender memories into the life of your family? Sometimes these good memories just happen but most of the time they need to be purposely planned.
Tough Memories
I suspect that some of you have memories that are anything but tender. Many of your memories are tough ones. Some of you remember a parent who never took the time to listen to you, to play with you, or to just be with you.
God wants us to know that we don’t have to be paralyzed by our tough memories. He can help us move on from them, and even lead us to healing -- if we’ll ask him to. Psalm 102:17 says: “God will respond to the prayer of the destitute; he will not despise their plea.” God can be the healer of your damaged memories. Don’t let what happened in the past control your present. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Philippians 3:13: “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.”
Sometimes we can’t prevent tough memories because life is often very difficult. Maybe your family has been rocked by illness, by the loss of a job, or by some other significant stressors. And sometimes, what is tough for one family member might be more tender for another. While Beth loved Mexico and flourished with her Spanish, I went through one of the toughest times in my life.
Our family will never forget an experience that could have made for a very tough memory. One day, while we were driving back from a border trip to Texas to renew our visas, we were stopped by a group of soldiers who were inspecting cars for drugs and guns. When I pulled over, a young soldier with a machine gun started asking me some questions. This was a stressful situation but I thought I was on top of it. He kept asking me the same question and when I finally figured it out, I turned to him and said, “No.”
He walked closer to the car, pulled the machine gun off his shoulder, and asked me the question again. I smiled and said, “No.” Beth then leaned over, and with a frightened look on her face, said, “Brian, don’t say no. He’s telling you to get out of the car and open the back so he can inspect it for drugs and guns!” I thought he was asking me if we had any drugs or guns in the car! We came very close to being one of the “war dead” who are remembered this weekend!
Parents, what kind of memories are you creating for your children? Are you leaving a legacy of tender memories or tough ones? You see, every day we’re making memories for our children. The stakes are high. That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect because none of us are. But, we need to do all we can to give our children more tender memories than tough ones.
If you feel like you’ve already blown it in this area, don’t give up. God has given children an amazing degree of forgiveness. Don’t kick yourself for the past. Instead, determine now to make each day count. Don’t unintentionally let negative memories form just because you’re too busy to take time for your kids. As we purposely plan for some tender times with our children, they will grow up treasuring those moments.
Trust Memories
We’ve talked a little about tender memories and tough memories. I want to spend the rest of our time discussing what I call trust memories.
God knows that we have minds that forget, that we have the tendency to trivialize the important. That’s why as a country we celebrate Memorial Day so that we don’t forget the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform. And that’s why as a church we celebrate the Lord’s Supper on a monthly basis so we don’t forget the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf.
The Bible continually emphasizes the importance of our memory when it comes to our spiritual lives. God knows that we have an uncanny ability to forget Him.
This week I looked up the word “remember” in the Bible and found 165 references. Here’s just a sampling:
Remember all the commandments of the Lord (Numbers 15:39)
Remember the Lord, your God (Deuteronomy 8:18)
Remember what you used to be (Deuteronomy 15:15)
They failed to remember and became stiff-necked and rebellious (Nehemiah 9:17)
Remember your creator while you’re young (Ecclesiastes 12:1)
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead (2 Timothy 2:8)
Obviously, God wants us to invoke our trust memories. He knows what will happen when we don’t remember Him. And, when we don’t remember Him, not only will we lose out, but so will our children. This is serious business. God challenges us to make each day count in the trust memory department. Listen to what he says in Deuteronomy 4:9:
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
I know that it’s easy for me to disregard those things that God has done for me. We all seem to have a built-in capacity to forget. That’s why God appeals to each of us to recall, by drawing upon our trust memories. He knows that they’ll slip our minds unless we do something about it.
Now, turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy 6. We’re going to see in this passage that as parents, we have four main responsibilities in developing family memories of trust. Much like a chair that requires 4 legs in order to properly support someone; God has created 4 pillars for parents. We need to:
1. Learn it (6:1-2).
2. Live it (6:3-6)
3. Teach it (6:7-9)
4. Protect it (6:10-12)
Learn It
The first thing we need to do related to trust is to learn it. We see this in verses 1-2: “These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land you are crossing the Lord to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all His decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.”
If we want to pass along memories of trust to our kids, and our grandkids, then we first have to learn how to trust God for ourselves. Part of trusting Him is by taking Him seriously and knowing what He says in His Word. It’s important for us to know as much of the Bible as we can.
If you’re just starting out as a Christ-follower, can I recommend that you consider joining our Discovery Group that will begin next Sunday morning at 10:30? If you would like to grow deeper in your Christian life, there’s also a new Growth Group beginning in early June that is designed to help you learn and trust God so that you can be a difference-maker in your home, your workplace, and in your neighborhood.
Live It
The second pillar is to live it. We see this in verses 3-6:
Notice verse 3: “Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers promised you.” It’s one thing to learn something, it’s another thing all together to live it out. We are to be careful to obey. It’s not enough to just know information it must lead to personal transformation.
Verse 4 is the Jewish Shema, which literally means, “Hear.” It is the defining relationship that God’s people are to have with Him: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” God is the only God, there is no other. He is totally unique. Notice that He is “our” God He is personal and relational and His people can enjoy intimacy with Him.
Verse 5 continues with a challenge to love God with everything we’ve got: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Our obedience is not to be based on necessity and duty, but on love. Our love is to be wholehearted and is to pervade every aspect of our life. As we determine to love God, we will want to obey Him as Jesus said in John 14:23: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.”
Verse 6 reminds us that God’s Word is not to just be in our heads, but to also be in our hearts. The Bible is to be lived out, it’s not just something we give mental assent to: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.” The people knew that God’s commands were engraved on tablets of stone, which were in the Ark of the Covenant. God wanted them to be resident in their hearts and fleshed out in their lives. God has always been more interested in internal submission and devotion than in external compliance to standards of righteousness.
Parents, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, our kids have a radar for hypocrisy and empty religion. They can spot it in us immediately. If you’re interested in passing along a legacy of trust memories, then you need to live your faith authentically. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “Who you are speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
According a recent youth survey, the surest way to lose your kids spiritually is to be uncommitted yourself:
If both parents are faithful and active 93% of kids have an authentic faith
If one parent is faithful and active 73% have an authentic faith
If both parents are semi-active 53% have an authentic faith
If both parents attend infrequently only 6% have an authentic faith
And so, first, we’re to learn it. Second, we’re to live it. Now, we come to the third leg of the stool: we’re to teach it.
Teach It
Drop down to verse 7: “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.”
As we love God with everything we have, then we can be in a position to impress these truths upon our children. We are to show our kids that we have a love-relationship with God, not just that we’re religious. As we trust God we will then be able to help our children trust Him. Notice that this should be more than just getting them up for church once a week. We are to make an impression upon them by talking about God at home, in the car, at bedtime, and when they wake up. Developing trust memories should be pervasive, affecting every area of our lives. As we do, our kids will develop their own trust in God.
The word “impress” literally means to “be sharp, precise, and to the point.” We are not to just throw our faith out as an option for our kids. Rather, we are to take it so seriously that we look for ways to precisely pass along what we are learning and what we are living. We are to talk about God’s Word 24-7. The task of teaching is a never-ending, full-time assignment.
Thursday night, when I was mowing the lawn, I noticed something moving in our front yard. As I bent down, I saw a bunch of baby rabbits nestled in a hole in the ground. As I was watching, one of the babies crawled out of the hole and started stumbling around in the grass. I called my daughters to come and look. They were pretty excited and urged me to pick the little bunny up and put it back. I grabbed some gloves and gently put her back with her brothers and sisters.
Our girls then started to worry about the babies because they hadn’t seen the mother for a couple days. One of our neighbors had trapped a rabbit last week and took it out into the country and let it go. I told them they’d be fine. The girls kept asking questions about the babies all night. I tried my best to tell them not to worry. That night, when I was sleeping, I was the one who dreamt of the orphaned baby bunnies!
Well, early on Friday morning, I looked outside and saw the mommy bunny feeding her little babies. I woke up the girls to show them how God took care of the bunnies I think I was more excited and relieved than they were! I then found my Bible and read a verse to the girls that described a mother’s love for her little children. It was a teachable moment to help them understand how much God cares for them. Later, as we sat down for breakfast, Beth prayed and thanked God for His care of the little bunnies.
We are to show our kids who God is, not just in formal spiritual settings, but also in the casual classroom of everyday life. Look for those teachable moments. Those spontaneous, unplanned opportunities to teach and impress. When those times happen, gently introduce God’s perspective by sharing a verse or principle from Scripture.
Verses 8-9 show us that the Israelites had visual reminders everywhere about their God. They were on their hands, their foreheads, and on their doors. This is not unlike the W.W.J.D. bracelets today. The principle here is this: whatever we need to do to remind us of God, we should do it.
Fellow parents, let’s have our homes so full of the Word of God that our children can’t help but see and hear it wherever they go and whatever they do. The bottom line is this: We are to make God real to our kids.
The Puritans were right when they referred to the home as a little church. They were so serious about this that if a father neglected the spiritual training of his family, he could be brought before the elders for church discipline, and if he refused to take his leadership role seriously, he could be disbarred from taking communion. Such an idea seems strange to us, which perhaps says more about our own laxness than it does about the strictness of the Puritans.
Over the years, Beth and I have made an effort to have family devotions together. Honestly, this has been a challenge. Even with good intentions, it often doesn’t happen. There have been times when we’ve gone for a week or two and then stopped for a while. Other times we’ve had devotions for several months straight. I am committed as a dad to do what I can, in spite of my weaknesses and inconsistency, to lead our family in a time of regular Bible reading and prayer.
Since our homes are to be greenhouses for spiritual vitality, I want to call every family in our church to a time of regular devotions.
Let me share just 4 principles that may be of help to you as you strive to have “church” as a family:
Keep it short. Aim for 5 minutes.
Find a time that works best for you. Our family now does it right after dinner.
Involve everyone. I asked our girls to remind us to do them one day.
Vary the format. Keep it interesting.
Protect It
We come now to the fourth leg. Once we learn it, live it, and teach it, we then need to do all we can to protect it. God knows that once we experience Him and see Him work, we not only have the propensity to forget, we can also think that we’re self-sufficient.
In verses 10-11, God looks ahead to the time when His people will finally arrive in the Promised Land. They will have things like flourishing cities, furnished houses, and an abundance of food and refreshments. God knows that these “things” may zap their spiritual vitality and that they will lose their sense of trust as a people. God doesn’t want them to just relegate their faith to the realm of a distant memory.
Look at verse 12: “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” God wants us to be “careful” to not forget. We need to be vigilant or the “things” of life will crowd out the Giver of our things. Did you notice that God wants them to remember what they used to be? They were slaves in the land of Egypt and God brought them out. We need to remember that we were at one time slaves to sin, lost and separated from God. It is only by His grace that we’ve been set free.
In the book of 2 Peter, Peter reminds us how much God has given us. Then, he writes this in chapter 1: “So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them...I think it is right to refresh your memory...and I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.” (2 Peter 1:12-14)
Do you get the point? Memories of trust are extremely important. But, they’re not to remain as something that’s filed away in the deep recesses of our memory. God wants Himself to be in the forefront of our minds at all times. When we start to forget, we’re in danger of losing our edge spiritually.
We need to keep sharing the stories of God’s work. Our two older girls will never forget how God answered our prayers several years ago when we lived in Rockford. The house next to us was for sale and so we started to pray as a family for the new family who would buy it. We prayed specifically that they would have children, even being so bold as to request that they would have two girls, the same age as ours.
About a month after we started praying, Marty and Jane and their two girls, Lauren and Sarah, who were the exact ages of Emily and Lydia moved in. They visited us last Sunday and were here at PBC and are now small group leaders in our former church! This trust memory has already been passed along to Becky, who was too young to remember any of this.
First You, Then Others
In order to turn our houses into homes, we need to develop a family portfolio of tender memories and trust memories, and in the process, when it’s possible, to do all we can to minimize the tough ones. In particular, before you can pass along your faith to your kids, and to your grandkids, you have to have faith yourself. If you want your children to be truth tellers, then you need to practice telling the truth. If you want your kids to be kind with their words, then you need to make sure you tame your own tongue.
Let me ask you a question. Have you trusted Christ yourself? Have you engaged your will and received the greatest gift of all time by asking Jesus to save you from your sins? You can’t give your kids what you don’t have. You can only pass along what has first entered your own life. Most Americans want their kids to learn about God and to have faith in Him. But, if that’s truly what we value, then we’ll make sure we develop this in our own lives. Kids need to see it lived out in us!
Let’s learn it, let’s live it, let’s teach it, and let’s protect it.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a dinner guest one time who was an atheist. During the meal his guest expounded the virtues of freedom of choice and how religion prevented people from being truly free. He was especially upset with how parents train their children in the faith, claiming that kids should be free to believe what they want without any outside influence from their parents.
After dinner, Coleridge got up and asked his friend to come outside with him to take a look at his garden. Coleridge was known as an expert gardener so his guest was expecting to see beautiful flowers, sculpted shrubbery and flowering plants. Instead, he saw weeds everywhere and out-of-control vines and general disorder. Everything was overgrown. The atheist look puzzled and said, “This is your garden? What happened?” Coleridge responded, “Well, I just took your advice. I wouldn’t want to impose myself upon these young vines I just let them grow like they wanted to.”
Parents, what kind of garden are you growing in your home?
