human resources

i’m often asked about resources we use for spiritual formation in our family/homeschool, & increasingly my answer is less specific, because the resource i use more than any other, besides scripture, isn’t written, but human.

“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

II Corinthians 3:2-3

as i was praying about what to write next in this journal, i realized that ideally these posts would build upon each other, & i want to build a solid foundation & progress in an orderly way. the surest foundation there is, is Christ, & also… your relationship with Him. when this is solid, discipleship of those around you will be natural! you won’t be able to stop talking about what’s He’s done & what He continues to do in your life, & you’ll validate the truth of scripture, personally, to your kids. though i do have a few physical resources to share, first i want to share the two most effective resources i’ve discovered over the years, as i’ve shared the gospel with my own children :

testimony & spontaneity

there’s no substitute for a mom who opens up her own story to her children, whether it’s her crisis/conversion story, or her journey of continual transformation in Christ. testimony is witness! if you’re saved, you have a story; you’ve been born again! even if you, yourself, grew up in a Christian home, there’s the old you and the new you—who you were before Christ, and who you are now. you may have grown up hearing the gospel for years, but there was a decisive moment when the good news actually moved from head to heart, & you repented & believed. (of course by belief i mean, more than just a mental assent that what you read in the Bible is true, but a full faith in Jesus as the one and only atonement for your sin.) our friend max, a house church planter among skateboarders, says, “salvation is transformation!” if you were one thing, and now you’re another, you’ve been transformed—you’ve been saved! and you’re no less saved than anyone else. your conversion may not seem as radical as someone who’s hearing the gospel preached for the very first time, who’s then set free from bondage to drug addiction, but your story is actually, most likely, more relatable to your children than those gnarly ones!

i think it’s helpful to take some time to think over your own story in order to share it succinctly with your children (or others). what were your sinful or unhealthy habits or thoughts before you were saved? what did you struggle/battle most with? was it something external, or more of a heart sin or sins? what drew you to your need for a Savior? for me, my own salvation was accompanied by freedom from patterns of disappointment, envy, self-pity, and sarcasm, and also freedom from religion! i’d lived my whole life in a Christian home, “trying to be good”, trying to earn my own righteousness. i thought being a Christian was about being “a good person”! in despair i finally collapsed under the pressure of it in my early twenties as a missionary in the jungle of peru. the Lord allowed me to see that even with all my best efforts, my heart had remained desperately wicked, and i wasn’t even as clean as i thought i’d been externally, after all! i just couldn’t do it on my own. i needed a Savior! remorse washed over me, and then the cleansing blood. and in His kindness He healed my body in that moment, too. this doesn’t seem “radical” in the realm of testimonies, but the transformation has been just as real. Jesus has freed me, cleansed me, healed me, and i praise His name!

along with testimony, spontaneity is your friend here, too. your children are constantly dealing with real-time struggles. constantly! while you and your children may often read the Bible together, listen to sermons, know your basic orthodox Christian belief, memorize creeds, memorize verses & hymns, be attentive to how you can share the gospel in your own words in real-time. respond to spiritual crisis moments—they’re an opportunity for the Spirit to insert Truth at that very moment! was a blatant sin just exposed in their heart or actions? are they in bondage to some hidden sin, and can you share the One & Only remedy? are they helpless to help themselves, mentally or spiritually? the gospel will most effectively be shared in a moment of crisis—of real, felt need, with Christ as the answer to an actual, present problem.

my daughter’s struggle with fear & anxiety presented itself as a real crisis, but a real opportunity, too—every desolation is an invitation! she was saved a year & a half ago, & now she knows : Jesus saved her! Jesus healed her! Jesus set her free! & she loves Him for it. the next day she asked to be baptized (which we promptly did—in our tub!), and we laid hands on her for her to be filled with the Spirit. this is what we do in our family, as we’ve seen modeled in the book of Acts.

don’t be disheartened if they don’t respond the first time. sometimes, they do seem to respond, & they even repeat the prayer after you, but you can tell within a few days (especially when they’re very young, & just want to please you!) if it really “stuck”. with my younger kids, it took several times of sharing the gospel, & even several times of them seeming to respond, before there was evidence in their lives that He’d really come in and transformed them. you will know when it’s happened; it’s undeniable!

in my next post i’ll share some physical resources we’ve enjoyed over the years, but for now, i’m going to post this before the weekend. 🤎

images below : “softie church”, august 2024