Educate Your Children

Childhood...“At no other time is there greater capacity for devotion or more pure, uncalculating ambition in the service of God.” Hudson Taylor’s parents speaking of childhood

What a privilege we have been given, as parents, to be the ones, chosen by God, to teach our children about Him, about His desires for our children and about His love for them and others. We should be their primary teachers, even if they attend school away from home. And only at home, most likely, will there be the opportunity for them to have their eyes opened to the lost of the world and their mind developed towards the great need to take the Gospel to the farthest reaches of this earth. With that in mind, I have listed below some suggestions and a number of wonderful resources to help you develop your children into mission-minded children...always mindful and praying for the lost, ready to go if God calls them to the mission field or committed to supporting those who do go through prayer and action.

- Put up a map in your house and start becoming more aware of the world, together

- Write a mission statement for your family or find a family verse that will keep you focused on what God is calling you to do as a family (Phil 2:14-16)

- Sponsor a child through Gospel for Asia, Compassion International, your church, etc. and allow your children to correspond with that child (James 1:27)

- Teach your child about God’s heart for the nations in Scripture: Gen. 12:1-3, 18:18, 22:17-18, 26:4, 28:14;2 Chron. 6:32-33; Ps 67:1-2,7; Mal. 1:11; Matt. 24:14, 28:19-20; Lk. 24:44-47; Rom. 1:5; Gal. 3:8; Rev. 5:9; Ps. 145:4-6

- Watch the following video to help them understand what the 10/40 Window is and how they can pray 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A75w748_Ro&feature=related

- Watch any of the 7 Torchlighter Christian hero videos and go through the learning exercises and lessons that are included. You can find them at Vision Video
- Subscribe to Kids of Courage, the quarterly magazine from Voice of the Martyrs, which introduces your children to children in different countries where it is much harder to be a Christian...it's free  http://www.kidsofcourage.com/

- Pray daily for the lost using Window on the World by Patrick Johnstone or From Akebu to Zapotec by June Hathersmith

- Read Raising Mission-Minded Children by Ann Dunagan, in fact, check out her website at www.harvestministry.org for a wealth of resources on raising mission-minded children!

I also wanted to include a wonderful article by Laurel Diacogiannis of A Journey of Faith. Jim and Laurel Diacogiannis are mission-minded homeschooling parents of 13 children (ages 7-24), including three adopted children from Ghana, West Africa.

Recently, someone asked me how I have raised up 3 children who have chosen to live overseas in service to the Lord.  (I have one child serving the Lord in Argentina for the next 2 years; one in Jordan for the next 2 years; and one currently in India as part of a 6 month missions outreach.) This woman went on to say that it is exciting when even one child from a family chooses such a personal journey … but for 3 to choose a similar journey was quite unbelievable for her.

No, we did not tell our children, “When you grow up, you should be a missionary.”  We did not focus all of our homeschool curriculum on missions (which would not at all have been a bad thing, it just wasn’t something that we thought of).  So, what did we do?

1. We demonstrated an active, everyday, personal walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The heart of a true missionary must come from such a daily, vibrant relationship with the Lord, that they absolutely know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are called into missions work.

2. We trusted God for financial provision, when having 13 children and a teacher’s salary don’t match up on the budget spreadsheet. Our kids know that the Lord will provide for their needs.  They grew up learning how to pray, and how to trust God for the outcome.

3. We talked about and read about missionaries … ordinary people doing extraordinary things for God. One year, each of the children that knew how to read (7 kids that year, I think), read the Trailblazer Books or Christian Heroes Then and Now series (both from YWAM Publishing) for their homeschool history course.

4. We watched videos of missionaries. The Gladys Aylward story (The Inn of the Sixth Happiness) was our first, I think.

5. We went to hear missionary speakers. Cassie told us at age 10 or 11 that she wanted to go to India, after hearing (and meeting) K.P. Yohannan.  (And, that dream came true when she was 21, after previous trips to Haiti, Senegal, and The Gambia.)

6. We supported missionaries. (We have supported Gospel for Asia, K.P. Yohannan’s ministry for over 15 years.)

7. We took our family on Mission Trips. In 2001, we took all 9 children to work in inner-city Los Angeles for 10 days.  We weren’t afraid to take them to the ghetto, to work at a church there.  In 2006, we took all 10 children to New Orleans for 2 weeks.  Just the other day, Elijah (who was only 4 at the time) asked me, “Mom, do you remember when we went to New Orleans and gave all the presents to the kids there?”  We didn’t buy our children any Christmas Presents that year, but not one ever complained … they were filled with joy to be giving presents to the children in New Orleans.

Seriously, we didn’t make a plan to “raise up missionaries”.  We made a plan to raise up children who joyfully love and serve Our Lord.  Whether He calls them to the military, to missions, to teaching, to the pastorate … it doesn’t matter.  Really … ALL we have wanted for our children (career wise) is for them to love and serve the Lord in whatever they might do.  And, that’s exactly what they are doing.

While we have 3 young adults serving the Lord overseas, we also have 3 young adults serving the Lord here on the homefront.  And, we have 7 younger children, still at home, that we are raising up to follow the Lord, follow their dreams, follow their passions, and to be excited wherever it may be that the Lord leads them.

This article is an excerpt from “What Does the Future Look Like for Our Children?”, first published on Laurel’s blog - “I’m Ghana Adopt.”