Savoring the Scripture

It was nearing the beginning of another homeschool year for us. I had most of my curriculum choices made, but there was still one subject I was unsure of for my older boys: history. There were so many options and there were some I had ruled out, but I still had no idea which one we should use. I had been teaching through James at a small bible study, and we had covered James 1:5, which instructs believers to ask God for wisdom.   I decided to give even this seemingly insignificant detail to the Lord and ask for His wisdom in choosing a history curriculum. Not too much later, I was talking to a friend and she mentioned a curriculum I had never heard of before, and I decided to check it out. I decided to go ahead and order it and give it a try.   Well, that year, in that history curriculum, changed my life.   Primarily what impacted my life was reading the biography of Hudson Taylor and the autobiography of George Muller.   They both were men of the Word and prayer. ...

In the first post, I noted that one of the requirements for a widow that was to be put on the list for the church to care for was that she would have brought up children, nurtured them. I am first exploring how a mother can nurture her children spiritually. Next, a mother can nurture her children spiritually by teaching them to apply the Word of God in their daily living. Deuteronomy 6:6-7, "These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up.”       The first thing I see is that the Word should be “on your heart.” The Word of God must first be on our heart, our inner person.  The innermost place in us that only God Himself can discern is the place where His Word is abiding.  Col. 3:16, “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing ...

While studying 1 Timothy 5:3-16 and specifically the qualifications of the widows who were to be cared for by the church in verses 9-10, one of the qualifications stated that the widow was to be one who had brought up children. I looked at the meaning of “brought up” and it means to bring up children and to fulfill the duties of a mother.  It came from a word meaning to nourish and nurture.  Nurturing is the process of caring for and encouraging the growth or development of someone or something. A Christian mother, as she brings up her children, ought to nurture them.  In what ways should a Christian mother nurture her children? In what areas should she apply diligent effort in caring for and encouraging her children to grow and develop? I thought of four: spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. The specifics of how these are to be applied will vary from family to family and may even vary from child to child within a family. However, there are general princi...