Our Children Are Our Ministry

By taking on all aspects of raising your children, including education, you can be the steady influence that every growing child needs in their life. Parenting is ministry work. Our children are the mission field, not the missionaries, and that means we need the time to guide them in the right direction and to protect them from an atmosphere of worldly ways. Enjoy the insights from home educating moms to get equipped from God to teach them diligently.

Talking Points

1. What we often get backward; we want to send them out to be the light to the world, but they still need to learn about being the light
2. The danger of misplaced expectations.
3. Parenting as missional work; living out the love of God (1 Corinth 13:7: “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things . . “)
4. What happens when we get it right (and when we don’t).
5. Practical ways to disciple our kids:
   • Make space for questions. Let them wrestle out loud without fear.
   • Open the Word together — even if it’s messy or inconsistent.
   • Model your own walk with Jesus. Let them see it.
6. Be intentional about who we surround them with (or helping them find the right people to surround them.)
7. Pray with them and for them — out loud.

Scriptures

• John 8:12: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
• Proverbs 22:6: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
• Isaiah 54:13: “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.”
• Deuteronomy 6:6–7: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 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.”
• Corinthians 13:7: “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures  all things.”
• Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
• Luke 8:15: “But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.”
• 2 Timothy 3:14–15: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings…”