What does Deuteronomy 6:4-9 have in common with flying?  Glad you asked!  

“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.” 

I’m not a frequent flier by any stretch of the imagination, but I have flown enough times to note that flight attendants always suggest that, in the case of an emergency, adults traveling with children should securely affix their own oxygen masks before addressing the needs of their children.  Well, that came to mind as I began to dig into Deuteronomy 6:4-9.  

STEP 1 — ALIGN YOURSELF (6:4-6) — “put on your own oxygen mask”

• Only one God (vs 4).  Many things around us will vie for first place in our hearts and minds—a spouse, families, a job, friendships, a hobby, sports, even ourselves. But we must resist allowing anything/anyone to be more important, more of a priority in our hearts, minds, and lives than God is. How many times God slips to second (or third…or fourth) place in my heart and life and I don’t even realize it.  Oh Spirit of God, please nudge my spirit when this has begun to happen so I can adjust my priorities, and place you back in Your rightful place as #1.

   

• Love Him (with all your heart, soul, and might, v 5). Think about “love”. When we were dating our spouses, they consumed our every thought. Their names found the way into every conversation we had with people. We talked about them all the time. We thought about them all the time. Everything reminded us of them. Why?  Because we really loved them and that love placed them pretty high on our priority list. If that was how we were with being in love with a human being, how much more fervent should be our love for God. What comes to mind, when I ponder the comparison between “my love for my spouse” and “my love for God”, is how Jesus said that our love for Him should be so great and so overpowering that it trumps all other loves.  Even the strongest and most compelling of natural human love ought to look like “hate” when compared to our love for Christ. (Luke 14:26).

   

• God’s commands are to be on your heart. What exactly does “on your heart” mean?  Well on a website for those trying to learn the phraseology of the English language (hinative.com), the common expression “on my heart” means the feelings you have for someone cannot be removed easily. For example, “I’m in love with him, he has a grip on my heart” means I love him so much he cannot be easily forgotten or gotten rid of.”  Wow, huh?  So if God’s commands are to be “on my heart”, I’ve got to make sure my love for God and for His word makes it past my eyes and into my mind and heart.  God’s word says in   Luke 6:45, “…the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”  If what the heart loves affects the speech, then we must be nurturing our love for God until that love is our driving force.  If I don’t, Step 2 will never happen.  

STEP 2 — HELP THE NEXT GENERATION (6:7-9) — “affix your child’s oxygen mask” 

• IMPRESS the commands of God upon your children: impress <shanan> means: to teach diligently, to point, to sharpen, to prick, to whet, to inculcate.  God never tells us to do something that He doesn’t give recommendations for how to accomplish the task. Below are God’s tips on teaching:  
  • Diligently — teaching that is characterized by steady, earnest, and energetic effort
  • Point — to direct someone’s attention to something or to give added force, emphasis to something.  
  • Sharpen — this brings to mind, sharpening a dull knife so it will accomplish its purpose suitably and with little effort.  So to provide teaching that will “sharpen” your children would be helping them discover God’s purpose for how He created them, with their abilities and gifts, and then to guide them in how to live them out so as to further the Kingdom of God.
  • Prick — Webster defined this as: to feel discomfort as if from being pricked : to urge a horse with the spur : to become directed upward.  I guess this is the type of teaching that may be unpleasant as we more forcibly spur our children to making wise choices; just as a spur in the hind quarters of a stubborn horse is not pleasant  yet effective.  And I love the part of the definition that says “to become directed upward”.  Isn’t that what we are attempting to train our children to do anyway?…to ”set (their) minds on things above, not on earthly things”? (Colossians 3:2)
  • Whet — What comes to my mind with this word is “to whet my appetite” (my inner fat girl always finds a way to think about food…oy), or to make my curiosity in something strong/stronger.  
  • Inculcate — to cause to be learned by repeating again and again.  In an article I read called “Making It Stick: Memorable Strategies to Enhance Learning” it states “Information that is important and is rehearsed moves from one part of the brain where it is coded and then eventually is stored in the long-term memory.”  It also goes on to say that “there is a RIP toolbox for memory, which includes Repetition, Imagery, and Patterns. Often just hearing things or reading things is not sufficient.  We remember something best when it is organized and rehearsed (repeated).” (readingrockets.org). I will refer to this again later in the next section.

• TALK 
  • “About what?” — Talk about your love for God and what His word teaches. 
  • “How?” — In the Hebrew language, the word talk <dabar> means: to arrange your words, converse, declare, warn, sing, threaten.  Now pause and think about the word “arrange” – if you arrange a bouquet of flowers, you take time and effort to place them in a manner that they would be most appealing to the eye. So if we arrange our words, we are taking the time and effort to use our words in a manner that will appeal most to our kids/grandkids.
  • “When?” —  When you “sit at home”: down time, just hanging out. When you “walk along the road”: driving to and from school, appointments, outside in nature, etc.  When you “lie down”: bedtime is a great time when the busyness of the day has passed and hearts/minds have quieted somewhat.  When you “get up”: before the chaos of life begins for the day, ask God to show you ways to incorporate something about Him into your conversation with the kids.

• TIE — (no, not the kids…don’t tie up the kids, that’s frowned upon–haha). 

• • “In mind and purpose“ — Tie <quashar>: to tie physically, to gird; to tie mentally, in love/in league. (To be in “league” means: to be associated with a person/group united by common interests/goals).  So to “tie” means to love something/someone so much that your love unites you with them, going the same direction, having the same goals.

• • “In physical reminders” — Tie God’s word, His principles, how He has worked in your life as symbols <’owth> means: a sign of something passed which serves to keep it in memory.  This made me remember this story found in Joshua 4:4-7. Check it out!  

“So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites,
one from each tribe, and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the LORD your God
into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder,
according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you.
In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them
that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD.
When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones
are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

• BIND — God’s Word/principles “on your foreheads”. The word bind <towphaphah> means: bands, fillets. A “fillet” is: a ribbon or narrow strip of material used especially as a headband, a thin narrow strip of material. This brings to mind how people used to tie a string around their finger to remember something.  Also, in that culture, the people of Israel would wear phylacteries (a leather box or amulet) on their wrists that contained verses of Scripture or written prayers they used to keep their focus. 

• WRITE — God’s Word/His principles “on your door frames and gates”.  To “write” <kathab> means to grave (to carve or cut into a hard surface), to inscribe (to write, engrave, or print as a lasting record, to enter on a list), prescribe (to officially tell someone to use –medicine, therapy, diet, etc.– as a remedy or treatment; to make (something) an official rule), subscribe (to attest by signing; to pledge by writing one’s name; to assent to; to choose to support). 

• • This brings to mind how I will write verses down on note cards and put them in prominent places so I will remember how to focus on fighting the real enemy of my soul with the truth of God’s Word.
  • Another thing that came to mind is how I am a list maker.  I love my lists!  I love the sense of accomplishment I get by crossing something off of them.  (And if I do something not on my list, I will write it on the list just so I can cross it off). 
  • Think of the different ways people make their grocery lists. Some people will plan out meals for the week, and based on the ingredients needed, they make their shopping list. (Know what you want to teach your kids, plan ahead for the desired outcome).  Some people, as they run out of things, they write them down on a list and then that list goes with them to the grocery store. (Know what you personally are “out of”—patience, mercy, grace, love—and when you open the Bible, zero in on those passages.  Also, know what your kids are “out of”—love for parents/siblings, obedience, truth telling, kindness—and open the Bible, zeroing in on passages that address those things.  Then when you go to prepare a spiritual “meal” for your family, you have shopped ahead for the right ingredients.)  

Have I mentioned I LOVE word studies??!!!!!  And I love the Spirit of God who is able to teach me the Word of God in a way that I will learn!  He’s the BEST!!!