Mother Culture: Nurture

Can it really be only a few days until our next Charlotte Mason gathering in Bradford?  I am very much looking forward to it but sad that I can’t squish everyone in my little living room anymore…  Sigh!  Regardless, I love getting together with all of you in person or in spirit through our virtual wanderings.  If you are reading this to brush up on what we chatted about at our last meeting then forgive me for missing so much.  I was too distracted and self-absorbed that night (and have been quite a bit since then, too.)  If you missed the meeting or are just too far away to join us then I beg your patience since I must skip over so much good stuff that we chatted about in order to actually get this little note out to you.

Thank you all for your grace in my silence when I promised to share some notes from our gatherings.  Here’s my little bit…

We discussed chapters 3 and 4 from Educating the WholeHearted Child: “Home Nurture: Shepherding Your Child’s Spirit to Long for God” and “Home Discipleship: Shaping Your Child’s Heart to Love for God”.  Practically, we also looked at the first part of chapter 11 on Language Arts which I will try to summarize that in a later posting.

Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up [nurture them] in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

Nurture is more than just checking off your spiritual teaching from a daily checklist of “educational things to do”, more than filling your day with praiseworthy things and activities.  When we make the decision to homeschool, I think that we all struggle with wanting to help our kids to have a proper Christian education and yet we don’t want to minimize faith to a subject in school.  What are some ways that you, Friends, help to take spiritual development beyond being a simple subject to learn?

We talked about making sure that Bible reading time wasn’t just done during school hours, that we needed to model for our kids both our devotional time and that we serve others as a manifestation of our faith.  But biblical nurturing is more than that.  Biblical nurturance of our children must be a constant and ongoing investment in the growth of and caring for the faith of the children that we have been entrusted to raise!

The Clarksons write (on page 47), “If the purpose of biblical nurture is to feed your children with God’s life, then it must involve more than just doing Christian things at home.  Biblical nurture opens windows for God’s life-giving grace to enter your children’s hearts.”  God does this by way of His Word (“Scripture is grace in print”), prayer (“Prayer is grace in words”), and Fellowship (“Fellowship is grace in person”).

Then they went on to give a model of home nurture.  (Good, I needed some concrete instruction!)  Their model follows the acronym GIFTS and show five key areas that we should work to develop as we nurture our children in the training and instruction of the Lord.  Note that the different areas span the spectrum of desire at one end to ability at the other.  In other words, to nurture desire for God we focus on heart issues through Grace and Inspiration, whereas we use our abilities in Training and Service to develop the hands that do.  All of this is anchored together in the centre at the heart with faith:

Grace: “The gift of grace is the desire and ability to relate personally and purposefully to God and people.  The gift of grace prepares your children to become channels of God’s grace and love to other people.”

Inspiration; “The gift of inspiration is the desire and ability to view all of life in the light of God’s sovereignty and purpose.”  Inspiration helps your children to live with hope in a fallen world.

Faith; “The gift of faith is the desire and ability to study God’s word and apply its truths to every area of life.”  Faith is the heart of these gifts.

Training; “The gift of training is the desire and ability to grow in Christian maturity in the power of the Holy Spirit.”  This is more than just training in right conduct or knowledge but also in choosing what is right to do and doing it.

Service; “The gift of service is the desire and ability to minister God’s grace and truth to the needs of others.”

Some action points (A muddle of ideas that we chatted about and suggestions from the reading):
*Visit elderly neighbours, family members or church family to help and encourage them.
*Practice hospitality.
*Make meals for families with new babies or who are struggling with illness.
*Shovel the neighbours driveway or plant some flowers in their garden.
*Have a weekly family games night in which you practice good sportsmanship.
*Have regular personal and family devotions.
*Read the biographies of Christian heroes.
*Share answers to prayer with one another.
*Discuss questions of faith and belief.
*Learn together about biblical truths, history and wisdom.
*Allow kids to hear the scriptures and to understand them themselves without having to “dumb down” the language or to be given the moral of the story.
*Practice godly disciplines like tithing, good stewardship, submission to authority.
*Develop your own list of family values.
*Get involved in service projects.
*Keep a garden of blessings (the produce of which goes to a food bank or other food distribution agency).

Please, Friends, share some of the ways that you keep the faith alive in your home…

Talk soon,

Cori