The Most Important Life Lessons

We will . . . tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.
–Psalm 78:4

God wants your home to be a training ground to teach your children the lessons of God. What are the most important lessons we can communicate to our children and our grandchildren?

First of all, we need to teach the sovereignty of God. Every joy and every sorrow, every victory and every failure, is under God’s control–and that includes our hurts and disappointments. At some point in their lives, your children and grandchildren are going to experience a deep hurt. The best thing you can teach them is how to handle that hurt. They can either be consumed with bitterness, or they can learn forgiveness–a forgiveness that is based on the sovereignty of God. Teach them that God can use the worst things that happen to them for their good and for God’s ultimate glory. Nothing or no one is going to thwart God’s purpose for their lives.

Second, we need to teach our children the sufficiency of God. God can be trusted to provide for our needs. One way you can teach your children about God’s faithfulness is to keep a list of things you pray for as a family and then record how God answers those requests. My old mentor, Dr. Howard Hendricks, loved to tell the story of a family at Dallas Theological Seminary. They were struggling financially, but every night the parents would have a family prayer time with their four sons. One night, the youngest son, Timmy, said, “Could I ask for a new shirt?” So they wrote on their prayer list: New shirt for Timmy, size 7.

Later, the mom got a phone call from the owner of a local clothing store who knew the family. He said, “We just had a liquidation sale, and we have some leftover shirts for boys, size 7. I wondered if you could use some.”

“How many do you have?” the mom asked.

He replied, “Twelve.”

During prayer time that night, the parents said, “We are not going to pray for a shirt tonight, because God has answered that prayer.” On cue, one of the older boys brought out the shirts one by one and piled them up in front of Timmy, until he was sure God had gone into the clothing business. As Dr. Hendricks used to say, “Today there is a boy named Timmy who believes in a God who cares about his needs enough to provide a shirt for him.” The greatest lesson we can teach our children is to trust in the sovereignty and the sufficiency of God.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “A Legacy Of Faith” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2020.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org