To God be the Glory: Home Educating in 2024

New Year was God’s idea. We can be certain of this because he decreed that the earth revolve around the sun once every 365 days. Our calendar testifies to the movement of our planet. The movement of our planet testifies to the Creator of Heaven and Earth who set the universe in motion.

 

New beginnings thrill me somewhat. They are the fresh piece of paper, hopes unsullied and the chance to long for great things. I know that real life will kick in soon enough on January 1st 2024 but a few moments calling to mind the glorious work of the Lord warms my heart to the particular work that he has called me to do. Let’s begin the year by praising him because…

 

Christ’s saints grow in maturity as they tarry with him.

 

Consider Moses. He fled Egypt after killing a man in a fit of rage and returned forty years later to lead the Israelites out of slavery. His sin nature is apparent throughout his life and he eventually forfeits the right to enter the promised land with the people, yet he was recorded as being the meekest man on earth (Numbers 12:3).

 

Just as Moses grew in godliness and ability, could I suggest that perhaps God-fearing, home-educating mothers might also be growing in godliness and ability? I recognise that the pursuit of Christ leads to a growing awareness of our sinful natures. We reflect on Jesus and are horrified by our sin. In like manner, we learn alongside our children and quickly realise that we are playing with a few grains of sand on endless beaches of knowledge. We fail to see the progress made.

 

However, God’s word is not broken. If he says that our sanctification is his will (1 Thessalonians 4:3), then we are probably more Christlike than we were five years ago, if we are using the means of grace. If Proverbs says “The hand of the diligent will rule…” (Proverbs 12:24) then it follows that when we work hard at what we do, we will probably do a better job of raising and teaching our children in 2024 than we did in 2023. Sometimes, we just need to step back and reflect to realise that we do not lose our cool as often as we did at the beginning, or to note that we have grown in confidence as we teach another child how to spell.

 

God lays down general means for the propagation of his gospel. We pray, we teach his word and we are in fellowship with other believers at a local church. God saves those whom he has intended to save since the foundation of the earth (Ephesians 1:4-6) and generally he works with means that he has decreed, although he is free to work without them. We all know children from God-fearing families who for a time at least have gone astray. We also know those from Christless backgrounds who have been amazingly converted and serve God with their whole hearts. However, as a general rule, the diligent use of the means to raise our children in the Lord will result in adults who serve him.

 

I believe that home-educating families have a wonderful reason to expect to see the Lord work in the lives of their children. This is not an excuse for laziness nor a reason to rest on our laurels. Instead, we work in the expectation that if we are praying for our children and teaching them about the Lord, if we are in fellowship with other believers, if we are talking to our children about the Lord “when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise…” (Deuteronomy 6:7) then we have a reason to hope that God will draw our children to himself. If we disregard the means, if we refuse to teach our children the gospel, then we do not have that same reason to hope.

Our nation is full to the brim with utter foolishness. Yet, as the apostle Paul writes, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:21). One day the follies of transgenderism, environmentalism, socialism, feminism and evolutionism with be exposed and destroyed and God will be glorified. The captain of our host is Christ. He will overcome in the end.

 

As more and more families refuse the government school system, as home-educating parents insist that their children are taught the truth of God’s Word rather than the lies of the world, do we not have a reason to hope that God might use some of our children to expose lies and change history?

 

Was the work of William Wilberforce a fluke? Should we not be praying our child, watered by the gospel since childhood, might one day stand up in Parliament and work towards the abolition of abortion? Could our children found God-fearing universities as the Puritans once did? Might God raise up another George Whitfield from a home-educating family? Will our sons and daughters make scientific discoveries that sound the death knell for evolution? Or cancer? Or dementia? Might our daughters go down in history as Augustine’s mother did because of her fervent prayer? Could they be mothers of faithful preachers as was Susannah Wesley? I mean, should we not be hoping and praying for these things?

 

If God is at work among the nations, and if he uses men and women to proclaim truth then is it not right that we beg and expect him to use our children to accomplish his purposes? Why do we set our sights so low when we worship a God who uses the staff of a mere man to part the Red Sea? I don’t think this is prideful, it is simply asking mighty acts of God who uses men and women for his purposes.

 

I know that as the months go by, fears and troubles set in. When we are helping a tearful child with a difficult maths problem, reviewing the same spelling rule for the hundredth time with a child who struggles with dyslexia or when we are resolving our twenty-eighth dispute of the day it is easy to take our eyes off the big picture. But every once in a while, it pays to call to mind the reason for what we do: that Christ might ultimately be glorified through our children.