As homeschooling parents, there are many important things we want to teach our children: reading, writing, and arithmetic for starters.
But there is an extremely important lesson that we want to make sure our children learn, and learn well!
And that is: if we are going to be God-followers, we are going to be different.
Family and community are ordained by God, and we all (including our children) have a natural desire to want to belong, and not to stand out as different. But following God is going to sometimes make us different from society, sometimes even different from our Believing communities, and sometimes different from our families. But it’s worth it.
Teach your children about Noah – of how he was so different from absolutely everyone else! After all “every intention of the thoughts of (everyone’s) hearts was only evil continually.” (Gen. 6:5) But Noah walked with God. Consider how hard and painful that must have been. But he and his family alone were saved.
Teach them of Joshua and Caleb – two out of twelve who trusted God to do the impossible, because He said He would.
The list goes on – Moses experienced so many occasions when it seemed as if he was standing alone. David followed God’s ways even when Saul became an enemy and tried to kill him. David had opportunities to kill Saul and those on David’s side urged him to do so – but he knew doing so would be wrong before God, and he succumb to his friends’ pressure. Jeremiah was a lone voice, obeying God and giving his people God’s message even though it made him extremely unpopular.
Jesus, as well as his followers, were persecuted for doing and saying what God wanted them to.
We need to teach this very important lesson over and over, “when we sit in our house, and when we walk by the way, and when we lie down and when we rise”, as it says in Deuteronomy 6:7.
We don’t need to seek to be different for the sake of being different – we just need to follow God, and to teach our children that to hear the Almighty God, our Heavenly Father say, “Well done!” is all the reward we need, and will more than make up for not being just like everyone else.
Of course we know that our children learn best what is modelled to them, so let’s make sure that we are following God and having the courage, when needed, to dare to be different.
