Teaching Biblical Character: It's Not the Church's Job!

I am thankful for the men and women in the Body of Christ!  I am especially thankful for the people that we worship with at our little fellowship of believers.  The brothers and sisters that we walk alongside are amazing disciples and we love them dearly.  They have each, in different ways, been instrumental in my life and in the growth of our family while walking with Christ and learning to be His hands and feet.

{Here are my girls hugging our "resident" grandfather and elder of the church.  He is where the kids go for candy and hugs . . . every church should have one.}

As a family, we have prayerfully chosen our home church.  We have chosen a congregation that reflects Christ's light and where I know that the followers of Christ are diligent in their efforts to walk their own faith out with fear and trembling.  We are blessed with such a congregation.  We are blessed in our marriage, in our friendships and our parenting, as we walk alongside these men and women of God.

{This is a picture of the Bug and the "First Lady" of our congregation.}

We worship weekly with our congregation.  We attend prayer service whenever possible.  We are involved, in attendance and submitted to the leadership at our church.  However; this is only a starting point for our family.  We rely on our brothers and sisters to edify us with God's Word, pray for us and help us when in need.  We need them to hold us accountable and guide us in God's Word.  That is the blessing of the Church.  God ordained and a sweet blessing, to be sure!  

We rely on our church family for many things.  However . . . 

We do not RELY on them to train our children up in the way they should go.  That is an area that the LORD has specifically charged us in as parents.

"Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.  Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ." Colossians 3:21-24

In this area, we feel strongly that the God has purposed us to train and will ultimately hold us, alone, accountable for our children's biblical training.  We take this responsibility seriously and pray over it daily!  We are NOT perfect parents and we rely heavily on the leading of the Holy Spirit and God's Word to help direct our path and shape our philosophy on parenting.  By virtue of trial and error, wisdom and seeing in the light of God's Word, we have continued daily with our children's biblical training and have discovered many creative ways to ensure that consistency is maintained in their spiritual development as disciples of Yeshua (Jesus Christ).  Some techniques we use are UNIQUE to our family, some to our faith, some new and some are old-fashioned, but for our family, they have served well in training our children.

I would like to dedicate the next week to a devoted series on teaching and instructing biblical character in the home.  Our family will share the methods (and, at times, seemingly madness to outsiders) of biblical training and share techniques, resources, curriculum and more in the hopes of helping my readers in their own family's journey.

Topics that we will be covering during this series will include:

• FAMILY WORSHIP
• BIBLICAL HOLIDAYS
• PERSONAL DEVOTION
• EMBRACING BIBLICAL GENDER ROLES
• BIBLE MEMORIZATION
• HYMN STUDY

I pray that this series will be a blessing to you, my readers, and that it may spark some interaction in this little homeschool blogging community.  Ultimately my goal for training biblical character and sharing it with you, is to ensure that we are building a temple where He can dwell for eternity . . . the sanctuary of our children's souls!  I hope you will come and join us on the journey of training biblical character at home.

"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4

The Joyful Socks Mom     

Visit these resources for more great resources:

• Bright Ideas Press - Chronilogical and Biblical History!  The Mystery of History will never  cease to amaze you!
• MOM ONLY! Boot Camp - Best little Homeschool Conference.  Having a Generational Heart in your homeschool.  Join Smockity Frocks and Joyful Socks Mom for a day of fellowship and fun for home educating moms!
• Vision Forum - Discipleship and Education for Christian Families.

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