Much of our Discipleship for Life™ teaching emphasizes the primary importance of renewing your mind. To truly learn, it is necessary to see from the viewpoint of Wisdom, to see the Big Picture, how things fit together. Biblical learning brings forth true Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom. It paints a glorious and non-abstract picture of God and His World. (Of course, we cannot see God completely clearly, but we can know Him as He is.)
But we will not get this clear picture from the ways of the world that we have been taught. From it we will get an abstract, fragmented, unclear picture. The ways that seem right to the natural man not only lead to death, but also bondage, the inability to think and reason Biblically about life, this world and God.
But, where do we begin? We haven’t learned this way. We learned by rote and drill – cram, test, crash and forget – with the emphasis on isolated facts, not unifying Principles. What do we do with our children while we are learning to teach them?
One way to approach this is to start or leave your children in the way of the past – rote and drill, learning individual facts for a test – while you begin to learn this new way. You can do this.
But I believe there is a better way, a way that begins to, step by step, lead them – and you – out of bondage and into Freedom and Simplicity™. These beginnings will ease them into a Biblically principled education for Discipleship for Life™.
As you are slowly learning, renewing your own mind, you can begin to teach them these same new ways. Line upon Line. Can we write perfect lesson plans? No. Can we teach them something? Of course.
I believe the place to start is not with “core subjects” or the “basics”, though you could, but rather with the foundation for all our teaching, the Bible. God’s Word is the primary thing we are commanded to teach our children, and what we are basing all other learning upon.
Begin studying the Bible with your children today, teaching what you learn. Whatever you have internalized from your own study for Biblical wisdom can be shared with your children, and you can teach them how to learn too. Begin to teach your children how to study the Bible. The most important thing you can teach your children is how to learn. You may not know this all yourself yet, but you can apply any part of it you know – in Bible study and other studies as well. Don’t wait until you know it all, teach what you know.
Begin reading with your children, both the Bible and great living books – and discuss what you read. Not just you telling them what was there, but encouraging them to discuss what they saw in the reading.
Begin reasoning with your children. Ask them questions that require them to think. Ask questions that help them to see the connection of what they are learning to the whole of the subject, to the whole of God’s plan.
Begin encouraging your children to reflect on what you (and they individually) read. Encourage them to look at it from God’s point of view. Encourage them to look for how it relates to them. Encourage them to write down their thoughts.
You are wanting to begin the shift, in their minds and yours, to focusing on ideas before details, to seeing cause and effect, to placing everything they learn into a Biblical context. You want to plant small seeds that with nourishment will grow over time and produce a beautiful garden, rather than handing them an unrelated menagerie of cut plants that will soon whither and die.
If you will notice, in the things I recommended to do, just natural, very basic things, you will find the methodology of Biblical learning. In L.E.D. I teaching I term this methodology of Biblical learning “The 6 Processes of Learning”. As stated by Rosalie Slater in the Principle Approach, this is 4 R-ing – Research, Reason, Relate, and Record. Neither is a step by step legalistic formula, but just a way to express the processes of thinking required to learn. There is more to learn of course, but with this you will be off to a great start in Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™.
To begin your own process of renewing your mind, you may want to consider the Freedom & Simplicity™ of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ – The Seminar. It will be held live in North Platte, NE on June 9 or you may purchase it for electronic download on mp3 with bonus doc handouts and powerpoint presentations.
