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Educating the Wholehearted Child: Chapter 1 (Part 1)
The Christian Home: Learning to Be at Home with Christ
This chapter is full of so many wonderful scriptures that we're spreading it out over two weeks. We're reading page 19-21 this week and 22 through the end of the chapter next week.
Every child bears the image of God, their Creator, in their soul.
We know from Genesis that God created humans in His image. This includes our children. God has also created the home as the primary place for children to learn about and discover Him. We as parents are responsible to point them to God by nurturing, discipling, and educating these little ones.
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
In this scripture passage, Moses is telling the people of Israel that they are to constantly be teaching their children. The people are about to enter into the promised land and those who do not wholeheartedly love and follow God are destined to rebel and fall away. Joshua reminds the people later of this again as recorded in Joshua 24:15:
“…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Even with these leadership examples, it didn't take long for the next generations to stray from God. The people didn't wholehearted love God and teach their children to do the same. We cannot rely on those we see as “leaders” to reveal God to our children. It is our responsibility to do so in a Christian home.
What is a Christian home? Well, it isn't about what the children are doing; it's about the parents. A Christian home is a family where the parents keep Jesus at the center of everything that they do. This involves nurture, discipleship, education. The Clarksons define those as follows:
- Nurture: Causing your children to desire and long for Jesus. Through the Holy Spirit, bringing Jesus into everything you do.
- Discipleship: Walking with your children until they make the decision to follow Christ and are able to walk the path of a Christ-follow on their own.
- Education: Fostering the desire to learn and giving the tools for continued learning.
“Your goal in home education should be to raise well-rounded, spiritually grounded, truth-founded Christian children whose goal in life is to make a difference for the kingdom of God whatever life path they choose.” – page 21
Next week, we'll look at the second half of this chapter and dig into some of the scriptures presented that support homeschooling.
Questions for discussion:
Please share your favorite parts of the reading, any comments, or any questions that you have. Here are some additional questions to get you thinking about what you've read. You can write a post on your own blog and share the link below or use the comments to join the discussion.
- What made you decide to homeschool?
- How do you take care of yourself spiritually?
- How do you keep Jesus at the center of everything your family?
I shared last summer how we came to choose to homeschool our children. I want my boys to see Jesus in me and be drawn to him. Jonathan, my oldest, has already made a decision to follow Christ, but this is still the beginning of his journey. I feel like I'm still in transition from being a full-time work out side the home mom to being a stay-at-home-mom. So many changes have happened for us in the last year: me leaving my job, starting to homeschool Jonathan, Jacob's birth, and Josh moving to a new employer. And that all happened in a span of three months! It's been a whirlwind year! Now that Jacob sleeps through the night and nurses less frequently, I'm working to make a better schedule for us at home. I'm working to get up earlier in the mornings and spend time with God then rather than trying to squeeze moments out of a packed day or giving God the leftovers at the end of the day. I'm thinking about joining Hello Mornings during when the next session opens in August.
