I have my dream job. I am a home educating mother of seven who has always been committed to Christian education. I remember feeling palpable gratitude at the age of four towards my own parents for sacrificially sending me to a true Christian school where the Lord convicted me and converted me.
Growing up, I had my heart set on becoming a missionary. I read books about missionaries, I studied foreign languages in the hope that the Lord would use me abroad, and I even went to Bible College to become better equipped.
Little did I foresee that God was preparing me to be a missionary to my own children, nor did I anticipate the abundance of fruit that would be mine once we took the step of faith to educate our little ones at home.
Training before service
It would be child’s play for me to list things wrong with the UK school system. Up and down the country, parents are voting with their feet and removing their children from government school classrooms.
However, while it is absolutely correct to withdraw children from institutions where they are being educated in ungodliness, I have come to regard home education as an inherently positive action.
We are not hiding our children from the world, but striving to present them as ‘mature in Christ’ (Colossians 1:28), and to equip them to serve our Creator.
Throughout history, there is a precedent of training before great service. Consider the disciples who spent three years with the Lord Jesus before being sent to the nations. Or Timothy, who learned the gospel from his mother and grandmother before traveling with Paul and then becoming pastor of the church at Ephesus.
Consider Hudson Taylor, who immersed himself in the Chinese language and the study of medicine before departing for China, or David Livingstone who studied medicine and theology before travelling to Africa.
The Reformers were well-versed in the classical languages before God used them shine the light of the gospel in Europe and in the church. Time and time again in our history studies we come across God’s precedent of training before service. We make no apology for the fact that we are deliberately training up our children in the Lord with the overwhelming hope that they will one day serve him.
