God’s blessings to the many of you who have contacted me, and whom God has blessed through my words, by His grace alone! All glory goes to Him who alone is worthy. I have and am nothing without Him. Any worthwhile thing I have to pass on comes only from Him and by His grace. All the rest, that falls and fails, is of me.
I so desire to complete my book of Freedom & Simplicity™ through Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™, but my life is very full of living LIFE right now. My family can attest that I spend every moment I can spare (and probably many that I should’t) at the computer, working on sharing with you (corporately, as in this blog, elists, and my website) and individually. And attempting to gather my notes into coherency for my book. All the while, planning lessons for and teaching my own children. In addition to the normal wife, mommy, home keeper foundations of my life. Don’t feel I am complaining, my joy is in what I do. I only get frustrated that I cannot do it fast enough.
On to today’s topic. If you haven’t read our thoughts on “Wisdom: The Principal Thing“, please do so. It is the foundation underlying everything we teach. Today I desire to begin sharing a little more practically what the goals and methods of achieving them are in L.E.D.
Keys to L.E.D. – Part 1 Faith & Virtue
Though not exhaustive, this series of articles will give you some foundational keys to the philosophy of L.E.D., the goals we are seeking to attain, and methods we utilize to get there. I hope through these to begin to paint a picture wherein you can examine some of the details to show you more clearly what L.E.D. is. Links to previous articles will be used to help pull those together for you.
We desire L.E.D. to result in our children to:
1) Be led by the Spirit – Our children should be governed internally by the Spirit of God, not by external motivation, either positive (physical reward) or negative (force or manipulation), nor by internal “fleshly desires” and selfishness. We do not desire to “candy coat” our children with Scripture, having much “head knowledge” but not living it, but for them to truly desire to love and follow God in everything they do. We desire: that they love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength; that they recognize that every “issue of life” proceeds from the heart, that they understand that for every external, seen action (effect) there is a prior internal, unseen except by God, attitude, motive, and thought, that they would know that character produces conduct; attitude produces action. Therefore, we are primarily home educating to reach the hearts of our children.
Methods we use:
a. Fervent Prayer – that God opens their hearts to Himself, that they may receive His Glorious gift of Christ that will completely transform their lives. He is the only one that can do this, but prayer is the means He has chosen to work through.
b. Parenting their Hearts – Endeavor to “keep” your children’s hearts. Be trustworthy of guarding their hearts. Recommended parenting resources listed here.
c. Feeding them the Word – for in it is Life. Feed your children the life-giving Word daily. It is “living and powerful” and “able to divide between soul and spirit, and discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart”. We have many Bible teaching resources listed here, but mainly recommend this as a basic foundation to all other Bible “studies”.
d. Cultivating their Hearts – through godly life-changing literature. Stories that capture the heart with godly principles, character, and conduct. “Add to your faith virtue.” Recommendations and more on life-changing literature here.
This is the foundational Key, which we will build upon.
