"Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it." – Proverbs 22:6 (NLT)
I have worked with children for half of my life. Starting at the age of 15, tutoring a special needs child, I have worked with children from birth to the age of 18. Children are everything to me. I love the way they think, I love the things they say; they really are the greatest of us as humans. In particular, I have a soft spot for teens and I attribute this to my own struggles as a teenager. So today I am continuing our two-part series on all the things our children and teens should know that God says about them in the Psalms!
Psalm 89:1: "I will sing of the Lord's unfailing love forever! Young and old will hear of your faithfulness."
God loves you! The Bible says that his love for you is unfailing. What does that mean to you? In life, everyone lets us down. No matter how much they love us, or how much we love them, something will happen that will show that human love fails. But not God. God never fails us, God is always faithful, and His love is not measured by what we do and how we fall short on loving Him. His love last forever and never changes.
Psalm 103:12-14: "He has removed our sins as far from us as the East is from the West. The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear Him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust."
God understands that we are human. He understands that we will give into temptation at times, we will fail, we will sin. This verse says but that doesn't bother Him. We are not a surprise to God, and we shouldn't be surprised when He knows and tells us that we've messed up; but, because He knows this, He can and does forgive us readily.
Psalm 139:16: "You saw me before I was born. Everyday of my life is recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed."
God knows you intimately. He knows everything you will do, and say, and he's known it forever. Does that scare you a little bit? Does it make you feel like you have to live up to an unrealistic expectation in your humanity? If it does, I want you to pay attention to the very last passage that I'm going to share.
Psalm 139:17-18: "How precious are your thoughts about me, o God. They cannot be numbered! I cannot even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up you are still with me!"
I want to end with this Psalm because it really says everything the we've been talking about in these last two articles this week. God thinks about us constantly! The thing about this is, it can sound scary at first Until you realize that it says that every single one of his thoughts is good! He doesn't think poorly of you even though he can see everything that you're going to do or that you have done, or that he knows that you're human and that you sin. His thoughts are always good about us and through everything, no matter how many people have left you or how you feel about yourself, you can wake up and be assured that God has never run away from you and will never leave you because he loves you so much!
Teens and children are so precious; but the world is not. That's why it's so important to share what God says about them with them so that they can see that they are so much more than this world. When we show God's love to our children and especially our teens we can equip them for those hard times in their lives that might start to pull them away from who they truly are. I hope you've enjoyed the series, I really enjoyed sharing it with you! Next week we should be back with something brand new!
