Put On YOur own mask before helping others
Ready For Take-Off: Put on Your Own Mask Before Helping Others
September 29, 2019
Should there be a sudden change in pressure, oxygen masks will drop in front of you so you can have oxygen to breathe. The flight attendant warns you to put on your own mask first, and the then help your children put on theirs. Why? Because if you are not secure, you will not be able to help anyone else. There are two messages here, both of which we need to know in our spiritual lives. First: We must be prepared with the Word of God in our hearts and lives first. We cannot be ready to share the Word if we don’t have it first. Second: We must pass that Word on to our children and youth so that they, too, will be prepared to face the cares and pressures of life.
Deuteronomy 6:1-12
Love the Lord Your God
6 These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 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. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
10 When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.