All Your Mind

One of the most important armaments you must give your children as you send them out the door to the public school is a relationship with God that fills all their minds. If the foundation of their faith rests on the good feelings they have while standing next to you in church, they are in trouble. If they don't know in their mind why they love God, if they are not "prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks [them] to give the reason for the hope that [they] have," and to "do this with gentleness and respect" (1 Pet. 3:15-16), they will be sitting ducks for any antagonistic teacher. When teachers and classmates ridicule anyone who has the audacity to believe in a sovereign, loving God, your kids won't know what to do or say.

What chance does a kid have against an "expert" unless that kid knows in his mind what he believes and why he believes it? It is not enough to counter with "My mom and dad said so."

The older your child gets in the public-school system, the more important this becomes. Certainly by middle school, the challenges to your child's faith will begin to come fast and furious, and will only intensify in high school. Then some evening you'll be sitting at the kitchen table with your son or daughter, looking over the slate of possible courses at university the next year—courses with titles like "The Problem of God" or "Perspectives on Science, Faith and Reality." You will sense by the way the course descriptions are written that some of these professors are just licking their chops in anticipation of exploding the "foolish myths" the next class of naïve freshmen will bring along from home.

Only the son or daughter whose mind has been stocked with what God thinks—and who has come to love those reliable, unshakable truths—will be prepared "so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand . . . with the belt of truth buckled around your waist" (Eph. 6:13-14). The love of God will be not only emotional and relational but also logical and intellectual.

Love is not merely a warm, fuzzy feeling associated mainly with Valentine's Day. Think about it: Our love for our spouse encompasses far more than that. We love the person we married for reasons of the mind as well as the heart. We are convinced that this person is the right partner for us—in fact, we made a conscious, well-considered, "left-brain" decision to live the rest of our earthly life with our spouse. So, to "love with all the mind" is not a contradiction in terms; rather, the mind enhances love, making it real, something of substance.

All Your Strength

What does it mean to love God with all our strength? If the first image that pops into your brain is Hercules with bulging muscles, put that aside. Instead, think about a high-school football game under the lights on a Friday night. Three quarters have been played—the fourth and final is about to start. If you're watching the Clover Park Warriors (the team I help coach), you'll see my players holding up four fingers as they stride toward the scrimmage line. By this, they're not trying to advise the clock operator. They are instead signaling to themselves and their teammates—This is it! Fourth quarter! Here we go—give it everything you've got. Even though they're tired, even though they might be a little dinged up, now is the time to dig down deep and fight with every remaining ounce of strength.