PRAISE & PRAYER PROMPT ••• The beginning of Exodus 15 starts with a song of Moses.
Verse 2 says, “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”
One of the things I’ve always found so fascinating about Moses is that he grew up living a life of privilege in an Egyptian palace as the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter.
I’m not 100% on all the cultural history of that day, but I just can’t imagine he was taught of the God of his Jewish heritage — the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — while in an Egyptian palace.
Of course, the Pharaoh’s daughter recruited Moses’ own mother to nurse him (Exodus 2:7-10).
The Bible does not say how old Moses was when he was returned to the Pharaoh’s daughter (v. 10).
Yet, Moses found a relationship with the one true and living God.
And in his song, he said, “this is my God,” and he referred to God as “my father’s God.”
Flash forward many centuries, I have a friend who grew up without any experience with church.
She didn’t go to Sunday School or Vacation Bible School, yet as an adult, she took it upon herself to seek out God.
She found faith in Him that she was never exposed to as a child.
I admire that.
I feel sad that she never got to enjoy church as a child (because those are some of my best memories), but I think it’s a great strength of character to purposefully seek Him out, especially when you have no frame of reference for doing so.
There are those who have discovered God and they willfully choose to seek Him and make Him their God.
But if you were raised in the church as I was, is your faith-heritage something you fully appreciate and embrace?
When I reflect on it, I’m incredibly thankful that I can say that my God is the God of my father and mother; of my grandparents and great-grandparents.
It is a lineage of faith that I may have taken for granted in the past, but for which I am eternally grateful now.
If you are a believer, the best heritage you can pass to your children is the example of your faith.
While there are those (like me), who may wander away for a time, the Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
You know my story (if you read regularly or have visited my website).
As for my friend, she has passed her faith on to her daughter who is grown, married, active in church, and who will no doubt, someday raise her own children in the faith.
While we can’t depend on our family’s faith to guarantee our salvation—it’s still a personal choice… the family ties to faith make a world of difference and cannot be taken for granted.
Today, as you pray, thank God for those who have passed on the legacy of faith from generation to generation.
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you as you lead by example.
Or, if it’s not in your family lineage, ask Him to use you as the first to show your children and their children the joy that comes from a relationship with God.
One Response
Beautiful post, I am like your friend, except as a child, I did visit churches on a bus, sent to my neighborhood.