Tuesday #4 Devotion

Psalm 23:6 (NIV)--Surely goodness and love will follow me all the
days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Do you remember being a young child up late on a summer evening with a
flashlight shining at your bedroom wall? When you contorted your fingers in
front of that beam of light to make shadow images appear, were you amazed at
what they produced? Can you recall the time in your life when you finally made the
connection that your shadow was attached to your physical body and would follow
you everywhere you went? Discoveries of this nature define parts of our journey
in life. We finally "get it." Once that discovery of truth is made, we would be hard-
pressed to be argued out its reality.

When my middle child learned to distinguish the color "blue," her Daddy jokingly tried
to talk her out it it. He kept saying, "My, my, will you look at that pretty pink _________?"
This girl, so grounded in the reality of truth she had discovered, would turn to her
Daddy and boldly say, "No, no, Daddy, you wrong. That be a blue ________." We
couldn't change her mind, nor did we really want to.

It is our job as parents to teach our children the reality of the truth based upon God's
Word and His Will. We should be ever questing to help them perceive for surety the
fact that God loves them so much that He gave them a Savior in Jesus Christ. It is
our responsibility to teach them beyond doubt that God's guiding hand and
instruction in righteousness will produce a residue of "goodness and love" to
follow them the days of their lives.

That's just what's leftover from their encounter with God's great goodness in their
lives. What comes along up the rear is goodness and love. Wow! What a great
weapon against a world that will try to tell them that nobody truly loves them and
without the vices of the world they can never be really happy. A child brought up in
a home that revealed the truth of the effect of the love of God in their lives will not be
fooled into believing that farce. They have seen goodness and love demonstrated in their
lives and have seen the mark of goodness and love left by the righteousness that they have
encountered. Their parents have proven to them with all surety, that there is no temptation,
no pull of sin, and no pause of sound judgment that equals the effect of God's presence in their
lives. The shadow of the goodness and love of their Heavenly Father will be forever attached.

Confession: It is my job to help my children see the truth of God's love and

goodness in their lives. I depend upon God's influence in my life today to be

an example that will help my children fully perceive this truth.