Book Review: Family Driven Faith

“Christian education is a critical tool in the culture war.  More importantly, it is a critical tool in the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation.” Voddie Baucham, Family Driven Faith

Beware…only read this book if you are ready to engage the battle for the hearts and minds of your kids.  Powerful read…extremely necessary…spread the word.

• Just as the farmer who expects crops needs to till, plant, water, weed, watch, and pray, the parent who desires to see a harvest in the heart of his or her child must do the same.
• They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.  1 John 2:19
• The fact that we no longer require exemplary family life from those who lead us is indicative of the fact that we have dropped the ball on this issue from the top down.
• If I teach my son to keep his eye on the ball but fail to teach him to keep his eyes on Christ, I have failed as a father.  We must refuse to allow trivial, temporal pursuits to interfere with the main thing.  Making the team is a tremendous achievement; however, it must be put in its proper perspective.
• Acts 1:6-8: God has a purpose that is larger than you.  God has a plan that includes you.  God has a place that suits you.
• There are many worthwhile pursuits in this world, but few of them rise to the level of training our children to follow the Lord and keep His commandments.  I desperately want my sons and daughters to walk with God, and I am willing to do whatever it takes, whatever the Bible says I must do in order to be used by God as a means to that end.
• I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images.  Isaiah 42:8
• How can we avoid worshiping idols in a culture filled with them?  How do we rise above the culture and walk with God?  It can be challenging, but I believe it can be done.  We simply need to follow Paul’s admonition in Ephesians 5.
• We cannot expect our children to rise above our example.
• Time is precious, and you only get one chance to raise your children.
• The key is to understand that our children don’t belong to us–they belong to God.
• It is also important that we instill habits of holiness that will have lasting influence on our children.
• Our homes must be strife with the aroma of love.  Those who visit us should notice immediately that they have left the world of self-serving, egocentric narcissism and have entered a safe harbor where people value and esteem others above themselves.  Outsiders should enter our homes and never want to leave.  Our neighbors should find excuses to visit us just to get another whiff of the fragrant aroma of love.  The brokenhearted should long to be near us.  The downtrodden and the abused should seek us out.  Families on the brink of disaster should point to us and say, “Why can’t our home be like that?”
• Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object.
• Love is proved by our efforts.
• For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Colossians 1:13-15
• Truth: That which corresponds to reality, identifies things as they actually are, can never fail, diminish, change, or be extinguished, must be able to be expressed in propositional statements, and is sourced in the God of the Bible who is the Author of all truth. (Paul Shockley)
• The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.  Psalm 19:1
• All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17
• If all I give my children is limits and rules, they will do what I tell them as long as I am around.  But once they leave my home, they will live in accordance with their worldview, not my rules.  Thus I must spend as much time shaping and molding their thinking as I do making rules.  Legalism simply sets up external, extra-biblical standards that take the place of biblical thinking.
• You shall teach God’s Word diligently to your sons. Deuteronomy 6:7
• We have come to believe that parenting is a task best left to professionals.  Unfortunately, this mentality is not limited to the culture at large; the church has also been affected.
• If my goal is to send my children forth as arrows (or nuclear missiles) bent on making a significant impact in the world for the cause of Christ, they are eventually going to have to know the Lord for themselves and think He thoughts after Him without me looking over their shoulders.
• Find books about men of faith that will inspire your sons and women of faith with whom your daughter can identify.  It is important for our sons and daughters to have targets to aim for.  There is nothing as inspiring as people whose lives were very ordinary but who were used by God to do something extraordinary.
• You shall…talk of them (God’s words) when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.  Deuteronomy 6:7
• Obedience is a spiritual issue.
• Delayed obedience is disobedience.
• If we are to experience multigenerational faithfulness we must come to a place where we throw off the shackles of our culture and live in the fullness that is found only in Christ.
• God has designed your family–not the youth group, not the children’s ministry, not the Christian school, but your family–as the principal discipling agent in your children’s lives.  The most important job you have as a parent is to train and disciple your children.
• Failing to catechize our children only makes it that much easier for the Secular Humanism with which they are constantly bombarded in school, on television, and through friends, neighbors, and coaches to take root and become the guiding principle by which they live.
• A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. Luke 6:40
• Whom will your children resemble at the completion of their “formal” education?
• How can I effectively “make disciples” of my children if I send them off to the government school forty-five to fifty hours per week?
• See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.  Colossians 2:8
• Do everything in your power to place your child in an educational environment that supplements and facilitates their discipleship.  Do everything in your power to avoid the influence of government schools that are incapable of bringing up our children in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).
• My soul yearns for the day when Christians recognize the central role of education in the discipleship of our children and the incredible opportunity we have to truly evangelize people looking for something better than American schools that rank sixteenth out of seventeen industrialized nations in math and science and place our children at risk for school violence, drug abuse, student/teacher sex abuse (which is far worse than anything the Catholic Church has experienced), homosexual propaganda, sexual promiscuity, teen pregnancy, and functional illiteracy.  Oh, how I long to see the day when Christian schools are seen as cities on a hill that become to parents looking for something better, saying, “On Christ the solid rock we stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”
• God will honor the family that honors Him.  And He will strengthen the bonds that tie their hearts to one another and to Him.
• Many Christians live and work in this world, as if their Christianity was a low priority in life, and this world and its pleasures were all important; when indeed the things of this world are fleeting and Christianity is the one thing we need most.  John Bunyan
• Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many and in horseman because they are very strong, but they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord! Isaiah 31:3
• How dare I pour my life into equipping other families at the expense of my own!
• The pursuit of family driven faith can be costly.
• Are you fully aware of the theology, philosophy, and ecclesiology of the other spiritual influences in your child’s life?  If not, get up to speed immediately.
• Education is inseparable from discipleship.  Luke 6:40
• The Nehemiah Institute has demonstrated since 1988 that education is the greatest shaper of worldview.
• Christian education is a critical tool in the culture war.  More importantly, it is a critical tool in the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation.
• The evidence is sobering.  The answer is simple.  The time is now.  We will either win the culture one family at a time or will continue to lose the culture one family at a time.  Either way the family is the key.