A Divine Blueprint for Family Discipleship

Posted on April 27, 2022April 25, 2022 by SPED Homeschool

Our journey to homeschool our children began before we were married. In seminary I had a class on Christian education and another on Christian schools. One of the papers I wrote was entitled, The Millennial View of Education. If there was a millennium in the future, what would education look like? I was seeking a vision for education instead of trying to go back to the good ol’ days. I set out to be like Josiah, who was reading the Bible for the first time. With my old hardback concordance, I looked up every word that had something to do with educating children such as teach, teacher, instruct, instruction, instructor, etc.

After searching through these passages, I concluded, somewhat radical in the 1970s, that parents were to be the primary instructors of their children and the curriculum was to be based on the word of God. While there were verses throughout the scripture, Proverbs and Deuteronomy contributed to the lion’s share of the pertinent passages.

After graduation, my wife and I were married and God gave us children. A few years later, we attended our first homeschool conference and began meeting families who were home educating their children. We loved the fruit that we saw in the relationships between parents and teens and decided to home educate our sons.

One of the key portions of scripture that directly addresses teaching our children is found in Deuteronomy 6:7. I often read this passage and wondered how I was to apply this command, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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.”

Should I be leading regular family worship times? What did it look like to talk of God’s commands when I sit in my house, walk by the way, lie down, and rise? I wanted to follow God’s design for families and wondered how to apply this scripture.

After many years of trying and failing, family worship became a staple in our home. I taught workshops on how we made this a habit in our family and even wrote a book about it. I also taught about discipling our children and modeling our faith in front of them as we walk by the way and sit in our homes.

Then one day a parent approached me at a conference and asked me why I started with the 7th verse and skipped the 5th and 6th verses. I said I did not know and at my first opportunity read them. Deuteronomy 6:5-6, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”

A light bulb went off in my mind and I saw the order in which the Holy Spirit had orchestrated His divine blueprint for family discipleship. What we were doing as a family was right and profitable, but I missed the order in which the Holy Spirit has orchestrated His Word. There is a reason verse 5 and 6 precede verse 7. Before I can teach my children to love God and His word, I the teacher, must love God and His word.

Before I can expect to teach my children to know and have a relationship with God, I must be in a heart relationship with God myself. I began asking God to help me to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I didn’t know how He would answer this prayer, but since it is clearly according to His will, I knew He would. I expected that I would wake up one morning and experience some sort of quickening in my heart and find my affections being drawn heavenward.

But God surprised me by how he answered my heartfelt request. My love for God has increased, but not how I anticipated it. Over a period of several months, God began making me aware of His affection for me. Through a series of experiences and scriptures, His Spirit has been teaching, revealing, and conveying to my heart how much He cares for me. Through these providences, He has been communicating to me how much He loves and even likes me.

One day I remonstrated God and said, I know you love me, but I want to love you with all of my heart. Then it dawned on me, this is how our heavenly Father operates. We read in 1 John 4:19 that “we love because he first loved us.” As I have been shown how much God loves me, I am finding that I love God more than ever. My newfound appreciation for God is in direct proportion to the revelation of His love for me. God has taken the initiative and made me know that I am His and He is mine.

I never doubted that God loved me because this truth is taught plainly in Scripture. However the verse that the Holy Spirit used to make me realize how much He loved, and liked me, was John 15:9: “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved You. Abide in My love.” The Father and the Son have an incredibly close, intimate relationship. As I read the gospel of John, I see how much God the Father loves Jesus the Son. Then to think that Jesus loves me as much as His Father loves Him is incredible. I am believing as never before how much God loves me and find myself loving Him more than I ever have.

Deuteronomy 6:6 goes on to say, “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” I also need to ask God to enable me to love the Word of God and have it “on my heart.” The divine order of the whole passage in Deuteronomy 6:5-7 makes so much sense. When I love God with all my heart, and have His word on my heart, then I am equipped to teach my family to love God and His word.

When God and His Word are the desire of my heart, talking about God and His words will flow, when I rise up, walk by the way, lie down, and sit in my house. I see with new eyes that the best thing I can do for my family is to fall in love with God and His Word. A heart relationship with my heavenly Father is what prepares and equips me to teach my children.

In hindsight I see that my desire to teach my children is what led me to discover the pattern in Deuteronomy 6. Interestingly this is the same passage that Jesus quotes when asked what is the great commandment in Matthew 22:36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he, Jesus, said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.

I confess that I never gave much thought to whether I loved God with all my heart or not. But as I pondered on the wisdom and the beauty of this command and the order in which it is found, I discovered that I really wanted to love God with everything in me, and love His word, so that when I teach my children diligently they will know and sense that this message is from my heart and is the most important pursuit of my life.

Wanting to be a faithful diligent parent has led me to be a better Christian. Perhaps this is what happened with Enoch in Genesis 5:22 “Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah.” He is also mentioned in Hebrews 11:5 “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.”

May God help us to love Him with all our heart so that we may pass this love on to our children and grandchildren to the glory of God.

Originally published on Building Faith Families

About the author:

Steve and his wife Sandra have been married since 1979. They have been blessed with four sons, three lovely daughters-in-law, and five special grandchildren. Their fourth son has Downs Syndrome and lives with them in Lititz, PA.

Steve has served in full or part time pastoral ministry for many years after graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the creator of Math-U-See and the founder of Building Faith Families.

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The Greater Benefit of the Homeschooling Journey

Posted on June 26, 2019June 25, 2019 by Peggy Ployhar

Peggy Ployhar

Teaching a child how to hike parallels the larger tasks of homeschooling and parenting. Hiking, as well as homeschooling and parenting, may have many technical pieces of instruction, but never should we dismiss the greater benefit of the journey itself. There is a greater benefit of the homeschooling journey too, and it has more to do with walking the path with our children each day than how well any of us masters the hiking itself.

A Family that Hikes Together

Our family has been hiking since before we had kids. My husband and I both came from hiking families. Plus, within a few days after each of our children were born, as an initiation into the family, we introduced them to hiking.

As an infant, our child would ride in a front-pack when we would take off for a nearby trail. As each child grew bigger, the transition from facing towards one of us in the front-pack to facing out happened around the second or third month. Next, the child graduated from our front-pack to a more sturdy hiking backpack.

But we did not leave each child in the backpack stage. Instead, we observed that child’s walking acuity. We paid particular attention to how well the child mastered uneven terrain and how resilient the child was to the occasional fall. Our oldest was a natural pack mule on the trail and thankfully so because he was as solid as one too. He became rather difficult to carry early as a toddler, and we were all too happy to let him take that stocky frame and carry it on his own two feet. But his younger brother was completely different. Our second child had difficulty mastering uneven surfaces. He hated walking on grass and especially when he needed to transition from the grass to another type of surface. Thankfully he was extremely light, and we managed well in the need to carry him much longer than his older brother when we went out on our hiking adventures.

Each child’s readiness considered, we still did not transition right away to multi-mile hikes as soon as each started putting their feet to the trail. Instead, we had each walk part of the way and ride the other. At first we continued to carry an empty backpack and allowed the child to ride when walking became too difficult or was slowing down the rest of the party, but eventually, we transitioned making our shoulders available for the occasional rest.

Hiking Milestones

Not until each child had built up enough personal stamina did we remove the option to ride. But, getting our children walking on the path by themselves was only the first milestone in teaching them to hike. In the years to follow, as our family hiking continued, we continued to teach our children lessons on the trail.

Our children learned how to:

Plan wisely and pack enough supplies. Acknowledging your unique needs and properly preparing to address those needs dependent on the conditions of the trail and the length of the hike is extremely important if you are to get the most out of the trip. Ill-preparation can lead to uncomfortable situations and the potential need to make otherwise unnecessary changes.
Be considerate of others. No matter who is on the trail with you or who will follow your path consideration is appreciated. These lessons involved making room for others who are slower or faster than you are and making sure to “leave no trace” so the hike will be equally appreciated by those who follow.
Look out for dangerous conditions. Being observant or taking appropriate action when necessary is essential to hiking safety. From determining an animal and it’s probable proximity from droppings and prints to knowing when to make noises to warn animals of your approach, when to stand still to avoid getting attacked or trampled, and how to protect yourself if caught in a storm are all invaluable lessons to keeping safe on the trail.
Enjoy the journey. Taking time to look up from the trail to watch the wildlife, smell the flowers, take in a scene, or stand in awe of the magnificent beauty that God alone can create so flawlessly has to be cultivated and encouraged. Looking beyond the trail to be immersed in the experiences is the greatest reward a hiking experience has to offer.
Cultivate relationships. Talking on the trail or even sharing long periods of quiet pondering when walking side-by-side with others strengthens relationships. Hiking parties naturally bond on the trail and these bonds have strengthened relationships in our immediate family and with extended family and/or friends we have hiked with.
Never give up. Hiking can be very tiring especially in high-altitude, dry, and steep conditions. The determination to finish the trail before you start, unless conditions cause a necessary detour, helps for keeping the course when the trail gets the hardest.

Greatest Benefit of the Journey

Why do I share these things with you? Because over the years as our family has taken countless hiking trips from short half-mile hikes in quaint campgrounds to grueling hikes down into the Grand Canyon and up again, there is a wonderful parallel for how teaching our children to hike has mimicked our 17 years of homeschooling and 22 years of parenting. Little by little we have trained our children not only to hike but also how to hike well, and still at the ages of 22, 20, and 14 they continue to do a lot of “hiking” alongside us as we teach them how to best follow the trail God has set before our children in the way they should go. Thankfully they still desire that we keep hiking with them through the ups and downs of their daily lives which has been the greatest benefit of the homeschooling journey.

“Our children still desire that we keep hiking with them through the ups and downs of their daily lives which has been the greatest benefit of the homeschooling journey.“

Our children at the beginning needed us to help them with everything. But, teaching them the mechanics of life was only the beginning of teaching them all the knowledge that my husband and I had acquired over the years. In fact, we are still teaching our children as they actively navigate much of their trails now on their own. The same is true for homeschooling and parenting. We teach our children reading, writing, math, and other life skills, but if we stop walking alongside them once we have taught them these things then we miss out on the greatest benefit of the homeschooling journey – the deepening relationship.

Path Yet Ahead

My encouragement to you as you look back at your homeschooling and parenting journey so far, and then look forward towards what yet you have to teach, there will always be enough path and time for the lessons that need to be taught as long as you plan wisely and determine to never give up. The key is in teaching the technical lessons that build on mastery and allow time for integration: enjoy the journey, cultivate the relationships, build awareness of potential dangers, and teach your children the importance of the impact God desires to make through them on the world around them.

Thankfully, God provides the trail as well as a continuous stream of supplies. So, as long as we follow His directions every day, we will not get off track or lose our way and our relationships with our children will only grow more strong and beautiful as we walk alongside them on this journey we have the privilege to share.

We at SPED Homeschool are so glad you have allowed us to take this journey with you, and we would love for you to share snapshots of what your homeschooling journey looks like. Feel free to share a picture or story that makes your homeschool unique and beautiful, and let us know if you would allow us to share your story with the SPED Homeschool community. When we share our stories, we not only gain a greater understanding of one another’s path, but those outside our community will also gain a greater understanding of what homeschooling looks like when a family works to help their child succeed beyond their struggles.

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