Home Education and the Great Commandment

I have two speeds: run and sleep. As an example, consider that I graduated with my Master of Divinity degree on Saturday, was married the next day on Sunday, and the first of our four sons was born nine months later!

In hindsight, I see that the only preparation I had for home educating our children occurred in a class I had taken on Christian education at seminary. Our assignment was to write a paper on the Biblical view of education. Instead of reading what experts thought about how to teach one’s children, I wanted to know what God thought. I used my old hardback concordance to look up every word relating to education: ‘teach’, ‘teacher’, ‘instruct’, ‘instruction’, ‘instructor’, etc.

After searching through these passages, I concluded that parents were to be the primary instructors of their children and the most important material to teach was the Word of God. While there were many passages about parents instructing their children sprinkled throughout the Bible, Proverbs and Deuteronomy contributed the lion’s share of the verses.

One of the key Scriptures that directly addresses teaching our children is found in Deuteronomy 6:7: “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.”

As God gave us children, I often read this passage and wondered how to apply this command. Should I be leading regular family worship times? What did it look like to talk of God’s commands when I sit in my house, walk by the way, lie down, and rise? I wanted to follow God’s design for my family and wondered how to do it.

The first thing Sandi and I did was begin having regular family worship in our home. After many years of trying and failing, meeting together to read the Bible became a staple in our home. I then taught workshops on how we made this a habit in our family and even wrote a book about it. I also discussed discipling our children and modeling our faith in front of them as we walk by the way, rise up, and sit in our homes.

A Light-Bulb Moment

One day, a parent approached me at a conference after I had just finished a presentation. She asked me why I began with the 7th verse and skipped the 5th and 6th verses. I said I did not know, and at my first opportunity opened the Bible and read Deuteronomy 6:5-6: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”

A light bulb went on in my mind, and I saw the order in which the Holy Spirit had orchestrated His divine blueprint for family discipleship. What we were doing as a family was right and profitable, but I missed the order in which the Holy Spirit had orchestrated His Word. There is a reason verses 5 and 6 precede verse 7. Before I can teach my children to love God and His word, I the teacher, must love God and His word. I should not expect my children to know and have a relationship with God if I am not in a heart relationship with God myself.

The Great Commandment

I discovered that Deuteronomy 6:5 is the passage Jesus quoted when asked what the first and great command was in Matthew 22:37-38. I wondered if I really loved God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I began asking God to help me to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I didn’t know how He would answer this prayer, but since it is clearly according to His will, I knew He would. I expected that I would wake up one morning and experience some sort of quickening in my heart and find my affections being drawn heavenward.

However, God surprised me by how he answered my heartfelt request. My love for God had increased but not how I anticipated. Over several months, God began making me aware of His affection for me. Through several experiences and Scriptures, His Spirit taught, revealed, and conveyed to my heart how much He cares for me.

Why We Love God

One day, I prayed to God: “This outpouring of love for me is nice, but I already knew that you loved me. What I am praying for is to love You with all of my heart.” As soon as I prayed, the Spirit brought to mind 1 John 4:19: that “we love because He first loved us.” I immediately understood that this is how our heavenly Father operates. As God has revealed how much He loves me, I am finding that I love God more than ever. My newfound appreciation for God is in direct proportion to the revelation of His love for me. God has taken the initiative and made me know that I am His and He is mine.

I never doubted that God loved me; this truth is taught plainly in Scripture. But the verse the Holy Spirit used to make me know how much He loved, and liked me, was John 15:9: “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved You. Abide in My love.” The Father and the Son have an incredibly tight intimate relationship. As I read the gospel of John, I see how much God the Father loves Jesus the Son. Then to think that Jesus loves me as much as His Father loves Him is incredible. I am believing as never before how much God loves me and find myself loving Him more than I ever have.

How the Rubber Meets the Road

Deuteronomy 6:6 goes on to say, “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” I also need to ask God to enable me to love the Word of God and have it “on my heart.” The divine order of the whole passage in Deuteronomy 6:5-7 makes so much sense. When I love God with all my heart, and have His Word on my heart, then I am equipped to teach my family to love God and His word.

When God and His Word are the desire of my heart, talking about God and His word will flow (when I rise up, walk by the way, lie down, and sit in my house). I finally saw that the best thing I could do for my family was to fall in love with God and His Word. A heart relationship with our heavenly Father is what prepares and equips us to teach our children.

In hindsight, I see that my desire to teach my children is what led me to discover the pattern in Deuteronomy 6. I confess that I never gave much thought to whether I loved God with all my heart or not. But as I pondered the wisdom and beauty of this command and its order, I discovered that I really wanted to love God and His Word with everything in me so that when I teach my children diligently, they will know and sense that this message is from my heart and the most important pursuit of my own life.

Desiring to be a faithful, diligent parent has led me to be a better follower of Jesus. Perhaps this is what happened with Enoch. After God gave him a son, Methuselah, the Scriptures state that “Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah.” (Genesis 5:22) Enoch also appears in Hebrews 11:5, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.”

May God help us to love Him and His Word with all our heart so that we may pass this love on to our children, and grandchildren, to the glory of God.