Appreciating these aspects of homeschooling

<p>Appreciating these aspects of homeschooling</p>

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Restoration International

The Powerful Potentials of Homeschool

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

The Purpose, Privilege and Principles

Well, it's wonderful to see you here today.

And we're looking forward to our time together.

We're going to be talking about the powerful potentials of homeschool.

You think there's power in that potential?

We've seen it as we have watched our own children grow and we've had the unique privilege of watching many families grow up, if you will, over the last 16 years.

And it's been exciting to us to see the powerful potentials.

There's nothing divine or magical about it, but homeschool is a tool of the Lord to provide an opportunity to explore and to expand the potentials of our young people.

And it's been exciting to us as we have watched in our own family and as we've seen other families develop to see where those potentials in homeschool lead.

And today we're gonna be talking about several of the P's in the powerful potentials.

The purpose, the vision of what we see in homeschool, the vision of what we can experience, what our young people can experience, the privilege.

We consider homeschool a window of opportunity, a very blessed privilege that we have, a window of time, even as Gene mentioned with Moses.

We'll be talking a little bit about Moses later, but that mother had a window of opportunity.

We have a window of opportunity in homeschooling.

We're going to talk about the principles that we have found, the powerful principles that can motivate and can build in the homeschool environment.

And talk about the priorities within the home and homeschooling.

The planning that's involved in taking the priorities that we've decided are priorities, how do we plan so that if we have 20 priorities, what if we only have time for 10?

What are the 10 that we need to accomplish and how do we plan for those priorities?

Well I remember as a young mother I had never heard of homeschool or had any thought or desire when I first heard of it that I'd ever be 1 to homeschool my children.

We lived outside of Chicago in a suburban setting and I was sharing with my girlfriend 1 day, you know, how we women talk, young mothers, and she was telling me of her early morning walk that day as she was walking down close to the little Christian school around the corner from their home.

And as she was walking, she crossed, her path crossed a couple of six-year-old girls heading to school, first graders, and she knew who they were, she knew their mothers, and she said, good morning girls, and the girls never responded.

And then she heard the 1 little girl say to the other little girl, if it's anything I can't stand is a cheery broad in the morning.

And when she related that to me, I had the exact reaction that you had.

My oldest, Allison, was 4 years old, And I started to get frightened to think that in 2 years she's going to be in this school, the Christian school, and this is going to be the influence.

I mean, talk about being disrespectful for 1 thing, but the attitude that was there was shocking to me.

About that same time, I also occasionally would listen to Moody Bible Institute radio, had a little program there in the Chicago area, and I picked up 1 day this thing, an interview about homeschooling.

And of course I started tuning in because I'd never heard the word before, you know, in that combination.

And I started listening and I was like, wow, isn't this interesting to me.

People actually teach their children at home.

And I can remember the struggle in my heart from the experience of my girlfriend thinking, is my child going to go there?

Because that's what we had planned to do.

And this other new potential and possibility.

So as I began to share with my husband, I had this incredible fear that came over me.

It was just so real and I said, you know, I don't really want to send Allison to the school but neither do I feel capable of training her and raising her and educating her in the home.

Well, I don't know if it's naivety or faith or combination, but I said, honey, let's look into homeschool.

I was confident that if homeschool was out there and if it was a good alternative, that my dear wife was ready for the job.

So I can say that husbands, if you don't do anything else in your home school program, you can be a support and be behind your wife.

And he was a support because I did not have that kind of confidence at all.

And my whole commitment was I'll try it for 1 year.

And I can remember when I went to first grade and reading those little Dick and Jane books, if any of you read those, C-Spot Run books.

And I thought, well, maybe I could handle that.

I'm not a trained teacher, but maybe I could handle this 1 year so in this process of just willing and my part to say okay I'll give it a go when we get there and I was thankful we had a little time ahead of us in that whole period of time God began to work in our lives in a different way and we started researching the laws to homeschool.

Because obviously at that time, we're going back 18, nearly 20 years ago, homeschool was illegal in most states in the United States.

So that put us on a venture and was 1 of the things that motivated us, just 1 of the things that motivated us to move our family to a rural setting and to a state that would offer homeschool potentials.

Well, I knew that if I would be there to support my wife, now obviously I wasn't there on a daily basis, but when I say to be there to support, she always knew I was behind her in this decision.

Not only did she know that I was behind her, but in every way that I could, or in every way that I understood, I was there encouraging the process.

I was encouraging the young people to cooperate with their mother teacher and there to encourage and I knew that if we could have 1 good year together that then there would be another year not to take the whole because people would come to us right at the beginning, people would say, well what are you going to do?

What are you going to do for high school?

And I thank the Lord that he gave us a simple answer.

We're simply doing the best at what God has shown us today.

And if we will do that faithfully today, I'm sure He'll reveal tomorrow when we need it.

So I want to encourage you that it is 1 step at a time, and fathers, especially fathers, husbands, that we can be there supporting in many ways to be behind this program.

Well, I recognize my great need and at this same time God was encouraging me to start going back to His Word.

You know, for so many years, we as a professing Christian nation, we've kind of know the ideas of what Christianity is all about, but we've really not spent time in God's Word to really dig deep for the instruction that's there.

And feeling my need and with the realization desire for my children to be ready for the kingdom of God we started turning our energies back into the Word of God for guidance and for direction and that was a real encouragement to me because I found out that it wasn't important that I had to know everything.

It's not important that you have to know everything in every subject.

What's important is, is that you know how to touch by faith The hand of Christ and take his wisdom to guide you because homeschooling is more than books It's heart work and I also found out that homeschool was more our education was more than just a pursual of a certain type of curriculum.

And it's more than just a preparation for my child to get on and get through life and be successful in this world.

As we began to study God's Word, we found out that education is so much more.

It's a preparation for our children in the kingdom of God.

And that's 1 of the things that we began to recognize that whether you're in a homeschool setting or if you're in a public school setting or a church school setting, education is not just book learning.

Education is the development of the physical, mental, emotional, you know that's becoming very important today, And spiritual powers of the young person, of developing the whole person to be useful in this earth, in this time, and to be prepared for life eternal.

So, through many years of study, I've come to understand, and I simply boil it to a very simple sentence.

True education is to teach my child how to know and do the will of God.

When we understand that as the basic foundational understanding, we build off of that to teach our child how to know the will of God and to be willing to do the will of God.

We find that homeschooling develops the essential attributes.

And if you've homeschooled, how many of you are actually involved in homeschooling right now?

Then you understand that regardless of what you're teaching, you're also developing character, right?

Character is being challenged, it's being tested, character is being revealed, and character is being grown.

And 1 of the things that we look for in character development is truth and uprightness in every dealing of life.

That means that we want to see our young people come to the point when father and mother aren't standing at their side that they make very useful, very conscientious, very spirit-led decisions.

And when we see that isn't happening, we have a work to do, don't we?

The work that I have to do, as long as my young people are at home, and I still have young adults at home, 21 and nearly 20 and nearly 17, the work doesn't stop.

Even though the book learning changes and they may finish their high school or they may finish their, whatever they're taking, the work doesn't stop.

They're still in the home and we still consider it a great privilege to be able to work with them in the home.

And we counted a great blessing that they want to work with us at those ages in the home.

We want to be able to see our young people survive in this world and not just survive spiritually.

We want to see our young people do more than survive when they're in a heathen situation, right?

We wanna know that they're not going to be taken down the track by those influences, but they're going to lead rather than be led in those situations.

Setting Priorities and Successful Planning

Let's continue on with the second part of our powerful potentials of homeschool.

I want to begin by talking about priorities.

Now, 1 of the things that happens is that people try to inject into your life what their priorities are, right?

That means when someone else needs something they want you to make that a priority now.

Well if we let our lives run that way, where do you think we end up?

Meeting everyone else's priorities, running hither and yon, being over committed, being liable to become frustrated, and guess what happens to the priorities at home?

So we want to talk about priorities and the scripture that I think goes along beautifully with this is taken from Ephesians, the fifth chapter, and the 16th verse.

It says there, redeeming the time because the days are evil.

Do we go back and we try to relive the past 15 years?

We can't bring back even a moment once it's gone, can we?

So what's the best way of redeeming the time?

So the best way we can redeem past failures is to refocus our energy and decide that we're not going to let all these other things crowd out the priorities that we need to look at and that we need to set.

We're going to be talking about how to set priorities and 1 of the things that you've been handed is a sheet and it just simply says priorities at the top so if you want to pull that out we're going to have a little bit of we're going to talk about this for a minute.

You'll see that it has 2 lines 2 groups of lines on the left hand side, there's some little short lines, you don't need to use those now.

The long lines are what we're going to be discussing because as we talk about setting priorities, you can, as you all contribute to this part, You can write down the things that we're discussing in priorities and then later You've got the framework you can take it back with your family and in that little left-hand column You can prioritize them as what's important by you know, 1 through 20 or 1 through 10 or however many But our first priority that we have in homeschool, we have it as parents, the first priority is that we honor God in everything.

Isn't that the first law that Jesus said?

Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and then thy neighbor as thyself.

So yes, we can say that's obvious, but You know, as we were talking about this, it just hit me again.

I said to Elaine, wow, that is a tall order, Isn't it?

Unless we're just content to just say the words but I don't think that's why we're here.

Yeah, we just want to honor God in all that we do, and then go on living our lives just like we've been living them.

What does it mean to honor God in all that we do?

Are we really thinking about that in terms of how we set our priorities?

In our home, what we do is we sit down as a family and we discuss what the priorities are.

Even when our children were little, they have ideas on what's important to them.

And for them, you know, it may be 6 or 7, it's important that they get time every day to ride their bicycle, if the weather's permitting.

That's a priority to a six-year-old or a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old.

Their priority may be to learn the phonics and get the dishes done and have a happy attitude.

So you come together and as families you work to establish your priorities.

That means there's a time in the day for everything that's necessary, that's needful, And all of those things we put into our day are priorities with 1 purpose, to honor our Lord.

Just, I think it's an important, at least in my mind, it's something that we have found in school, it's not enough to get a priority done.

I can remember participating with our children in the phonics drills.

And I can remember sometimes facing challenges in getting through the drill.

It wasn't the words that were being drilled, it was the will that was being drilled.

And so the challenge became not just to get them through the drill and to say, got through that 1.

The challenge was to get them connected with the power of God to get them through the drill.

And this ties back to what we talked about, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.

Remember earlier I said I wanted to go back and talk about that?

I remember right where I was standing in our kitchen dining room when I came to realize the importance of that and I said to our children, by God's grace I will never leave you or forsake you when you need me the most.

And that means that if it takes me 2 hours, if it takes me 4 hours, you are my priority under God in this education and training process.

And you know, I remember the first time that each of my children tested me in that.

And I remember that because of the willingness, not that I didn't fail them ever in that test, but early on, because of the faithfulness as parents in meeting that test, they soon learned that they couldn't wear us out.

Didn't have that in our list of principles, but go ahead.

They didn't see us, you know, later on in the evening when we were totally shot.

But they knew that we would not leave them in self because too many of us have grown up being left in self.

You know what happens when we get left in self?

If we don't know how to deal with self, it just wears off after time.

And then we go on with quote, normal life, until we get crossed again.

And then it's right there, driving again.

And by God's grace, we need to help our young people know that it's more than getting the phonics drill done, it's getting the phonics drill done in the grace and spirit of Jesus Christ.

So we're going to ask for your help to establish what are the priorities that we should have as homeschooling parents.

Now that's a very important priority, okay?

That's the purpose of all of the education, is to attain to that.

Okay, that they find friendship with each other.

To model to our children that God is our personal friend so that God can be their personal friend.

Okay, to model that God is our personal friend so that we can help them, encourage them that he can be their personal friend.

Now let's take these concepts and how do we do this in a day?

Because you have to eat sometime in the day and you have to get the math done and you have to get the dishes done and all those things.

Prepare Today for Tomorrow

Hopefully, we're going to have good weather all through our time together, right?

Preparing, it's something we do all the time and maybe we don't think about it in some aspects of our lives.

When I come up to the meal table and I sit down, What happens, husbands, since it's not usually us preparing, what happens if we sit down at that table and no preparation has taken place?

I mean, we take some of this preparation for granted, but without preparation, we don't have success in anything.

And so today we're going to be talking about preparation in the context of educating our young people.

Whether you're homeschooling or you have your children in a private school or in public school, there is preparation needed today for what is going to take place tomorrow.

You see, without preparation there can be no real success.

It doesn't mean that God isn't still working and that God won't still bless us, because doesn't he often give us what we don't deserve?

Often he works with us in many ways when we don't deserve it, but we need preparation.

Preparation is vital and it's shown all throughout God's Word.

Think with me about Esther's preparation.

There she found herself in a very difficult and even life-threatening situation.

She actually asked the king for a banquet.

She set the stage under the inspiration of God to prepare the time that they would spend together, the king, Haman, and Esther.

Remember Solomon when he said that we must prepare in the summer if we're going to have something in the future.

How many of you here do any preserving of food, canning or freezing?

Well for most of us, well at least where we live, you can't have a garden to just go out and pick things out of all year round, right?

And so there needs to be some preparation.

If you want to enjoy those apples, maybe you make them into applesauce, right?

So you can enjoy them, or those cucumbers made into some good homemade pickles, or whatever it is, the cherries off the tree.

If we're going to have the enjoyment of those fruits or those vegetables in the wintertime, we have to do some preparation in the summertime.

Amos said some very important words, and I believe those words are part of the reason why we're here together.

Does it take preparation to meet our God?

Did it take preparation before the day of atonement to meet God?

Matthew, in writing about preparing the way of the Lord.

Did John the Baptist have preparation in order to be the man that God used to prepare the way for Christ?

And you know I like to think that Jesus said he was going to prepare something for us.

Even Jesus is going through preparations to receive his people.

In the very last book of the Bible it says that we need to be prepared as a bride.

Does the bride go through some preparation to get ready for that wedding day?

There's some preparation that special day, that event that should take place once in our lives.

There's preparation prepared as a bride to meet her husband.

So today we want to talk about that preparation in terms of our young people and what's ahead for them tomorrow.

We found it exciting when we went back and looked at the scripture to see how important preparation is.

It's important for our physical life here on this earth, and it's certainly important for us to have our hearts ready to receive Jesus when he comes.

And for our young people, those of us who have children, whether they're little or they're growing so quickly, God has a special work for us as parents to help prepare our young people, our heritage, for his kingdom.

So we want to look at this afternoon 4 areas of preparation that we have found necessary and I'll say vital in that process of preparing our young people for their future, their future in this world and their future in the world to come, which is our most important future.

The first area we're going to talk about, we're just going to highlight these 4, and then we're going to talk in depth on each of these areas.

The first area we wanna talk about is the spiritual preparation that's necessary.

That spiritual preparation, not just of our children, but that preparation that must take place in our hearts as parents.

So I want to discuss spiritual preparation, the need for that, and how we gain that preparation.

We want to look at the scholastic preparation necessary.

Then we want to look at financial preparation.

This is an area we found that many families don't think about until their young people are right on the verge of finishing high school and they think, oh what are we going to do?

And you know, when our children go into further education, it costs money.

And so we want to talk about the financial preparation and then the career and development aspect of preparing our children for their future.

Why are we going through all of this work of preparation?

Well, we see it outlined in scripture, the ultimate purpose, but for this world, the purpose is that our young people can represent Jesus Christ.

In whatever area, whatever path that God has for them to live for Him in this world, that they represent Christ, that their hearts are prepared to meet Him, so that they represent Christ as being honest, persevering, diligent, dependable employees or employers, so that they are kind and principled men and women.

You can look at it in any occupation and when these character traits are part of the character of our young people, no matter what occupation or profession they choose, they have an opportunity to represent Christ in that profession.

Well, let's talk about their spiritual preparation.

Without the spiritual preparation, they aren't going to be prepared to represent Christ in their temporal lives, and they're not going to be prepared to meet Christ when he comes.

And you know, 1 of the things that we have continued to learn in our experience is that if our young people are going to be spiritual, It sure helps a lot if their parents are striving in that same walk to be spiritual.

I'm sure many of us if not all of us have heard the saying do as I say And not as I do.

Okay, And what that is is an excuse to not deal with my past.

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Series

The Powerful Potentials of Homeschool

The Purpose, Privilege and Principles

Transcript

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Parent Series

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Parts

The Purpose, Privilege and Principles

1h

Setting Priorities and Successful Planning

54m

Prepare Today for Tomorrow

1h 18m

Sound Doctrine