Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 334 | Reciting Your Family Story
Transcript
- 0:00For every father to recite this before the Lord, what an incredible rhythm.
- 0:08What's up, guys? Welcome back to 5-Minute Fatherhood. So I've been reading through, just finished reading through the Torah, and at the end of Deuteronomy, I got to a chapter, and Jeff, I'm curious. I'd never seen this, you know, one of those things, different things jump out at you every time you read through the Scripture. And, man, I was so—I have not been able to get this out of my head. So this is a festival. This is in Deuteronomy 26 at the Festival of Firstfruits.
- 0:31God gave everyone in Israel, all the fathers who were coming before the Lord to give their first fruits, a speech, like a memorized speech that they were supposed to tell, that they were supposed to recite as they handed over that offering. And I've just been reading this speech over and over again and just thinking about what God was trying to form today.
- 0:56I'll just read the first couple of lines of this speech. So imagine, Father, you're traveling all the way to Jerusalem. You got your firstfruits offering. You come to the priest, and you give them. And as you're handing it over, you have to say these words. And he says, and this is Deuteronomy 24, verse 5, And you shall make a response before the Lord your God, quote,
- 1:16Verse 1.
- 1:37And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an abstract arm and great deeds of terror with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing of milk and honey. It goes on from there. Okay. I love this speech so much. This is the family story of redemption and that every father had to have it memorized. And every year he had to recite it. And the first line, a wandering Arameen was my father.
- 2:06For some reason, every time I read that, it cracks me up because he's looking back at Abraham, who had no house, who had nothing before the Lord literally plucked him out of this idol-worshiping family. And so can you imagine how this roots this father's heart in his multigenerational family? Where his father came from, how much the Lord was responsible for every single thing good that happened to this family—
- 2:33And for them to experience it, and for every father to recite this before the Lord, what an incredible rhythm. Anyway, I get excited thinking about it. I'm going to design and write something like this for First Fruits this spring coming up, because we've never really figured out how to celebrate that holiday. But yeah, Jeff, what does that start for you?
- 2:50I love it. And the exact same reasons I was just going to say, you know, yeah, it'd be interesting if a family almost kind of comes up with their own. That's like a, a chant or a slogan or a thing that like they recite either once a week or once a year or like a family summit type context. I think it's a really powerful thing to kind of just remind and renew and kind of focus the story, you know, and I think that's really, really powerful. And I love that, that there was actually a command of memorization. That's, that's incredible.
- 3:14Yeah. So yeah, I think I said Deuteronomy 24. It's actually Deuteronomy 26. But yeah, you guys, if you look at, it's only about maybe seven or eight verses long. And yeah, think about what it would look like to write your family story. Who was the first person who believed in the gospel in your family? Was it you? Was it your father? Was it 10 generations ago?
- 3:37And begin to piece that story together and begin to tell it in this very condensed form about what the Lord has done for your family. And man, I just think that will root your family in the story. Really connect the story of God with the story of your family. Weave them together and give your children a deep breath.
- 3:59root structure, a sense of identity in who they are in God's kingdom and as a family. So yeah, check this out, Deuteronomy 26, such an incredible annual rhythm.