How should we remember our spiritual heritage?

4. How should we remember our spiritual heritage?

5. Inclusively

6. Joshua 4:1-2 When all the people had crossed the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, “Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe….”

7. Vividly

8. Joshua 4:3 Tell them, ‘Take twelve stones from the very place where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan. Carry them out and pile them up at the place where you will camp tonight.’”

9. Joshua 4:23 For the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over.

10. Conspicuously

11. Joshua 4:19-20 The people crossed the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month. Then they camped at Gilgal, just east of Jericho. It was there at Gilgal that Joshua piled up the twelve stones taken from the Jordan River.

12. Why should we remember our spiritual heritage?

13. For the faith of our children.

14. Joshua 4:6 We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’

15. Joshua 4:21-22 Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’

16. National Study on Youth and Religion Findings: • Parents practiced the faith in the home and in daily life, not just in public-church settings. • Young person had at least one significant non-family mentor who practiced faith seriously. • At least one significant spiritual experience before the age of 17.

17. “Leaving children to discover their own values is a little like putting them in a chemistry lab full of volatile substances and saying, ‘Discover your own compound, kids.’” --Christina Summers

18. For the sake of our nation.

19. Joshua 4:7 Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.”

20. Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

22. For the faith of our world.

23. Joshua 4:24 He did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the Lord’s hand is powerful, and so you might fear the Lord your God forever.”

24. O my people, listen to my instructions. Open your ears to what I am saying, for I will speak to you in a parable. I will teach you hidden lessons from our past—stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders.

25. For he issued his laws to Jacob; he gave his instructions to Israel. He commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children, so the next generation might know them—even the children not yet born—and they in turn will teach their own children. So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands.