LEAD THEM FORTH

What is your plan as you begin homeschooling your children each day? Are you facing the huge challenge of completing all the curriculums you purchased for each child? Your goal is to make sure you get through them all?

Dear mother, can I encourage you to relax. Making sure your children complete all their lessons each day is not true education. What is the meaning of education? It comes from a Latin word meaning, "to draw forth from within, to bring out, to lead forth, to develop the innate capacities of, to rear." It has the meaning of upbringing rather than instruction.

Get on the right track, dear mother. There is much more to education that stuffing your children with information that they will invariably forget. God has divinely put desires to seek out knowledge, aspirations, abilities, and special gifts in each one of your children. Seek to draw forth and bring out what God has already put in them. This makes education exciting, and you work with God, instead of plodding on on your own.

I am most probably looking from a different perspective than you. My children are mostly in their forties. My oldest son will be 50 years in a few weeks. What do I see looking back? More than ever, I see that God created my children and put His plan in them from the beginning of time. They have accomplished amazing things, beyond what I could have ever taught them. They have fulfilled their dreams in spite of me! It wasn't their school lessons that helped them do what they are doing today. It was the giftings God had already put in them.

Of course, there are disciplines of teaching and learning that are important for life. But, dear mother, always keep in mind that your highest calling is to draw out from within your children the amazing gifts God has put in them and LEAD THEM FORTH with encouragement, motivation, and vision to fulfill the GREAT THINGS GOD HAS FOR THEM.

Love from Nancy Campbell