Just before we left for Japan, I was sitting with one of my closest friends (a woman my age, with whom I’d shared many miles of the homeschooling journey) and she asked what topics I would be teaching on in Japan. Before I could answer with many specifics, she burst out with this: “I wish someone had told me, back when we were slogging along, that God’s main purpose for me in homeschooling was to learn to love.”

I knew what she meant. When you’re in the thick of homeschooling (and holidays, too, now that I think of it) life is so filled with task triage and the urgent needs of others that it’s easy to lose sight of the main thing. But Jesus highlighted the main thing for us: we are to love God with all our might and main, and love others as ourselves (Mark 12:28-34). Of all the things that we homeschoolers teach our children (and remember, the most powerful kind of teaching is modeling), loving has to be at the top of the list. To love one another was the one new command that Jesus gave us (John 13:34). It’s the way, He said, that the world will know that you are my disciples (John 13:35). Loving is the culture of the Family of God. Love is what Jesus demonstrated for rebellious sinners when He came to earth as a baby. Out of love for us, He clothed Himself in human flesh and left the glories and fellowship of Heaven itself (Philippians 2:7). We are meant to feel God’s love; to know if for certain in the objective display of Love on the Cross. But, that transaction is meant to go further. Love is one of God’s communicable attributes, and we are meant to show it to others because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

As we go through this busy season, and as we come up to the week or two when many of us have time to reflect on the year behind us and make fresh starts in the year ahead, I’ve been impressed by God’s Spirit to write a series of meditations on love in the context of homeschooling. My approach will be to use 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 to systematically walk through characteristics of loving one another. There are eight questions that I’ll be attempting to answer in each article in this series:

1. How does God use my situation–being a homeschooling mom–to teach me to love?
2. How do I fail to respond in a loving way in these situations?
3. What does my lack of love reveal about wrong heart attitudes that must be addressed?
4. What bad fruits do I reap as my unloving behaviors create ongoing cycles of folly?
5. What does God say? How can the gospel make a difference, and teach me to love better?
6. In light of what I’ve seen, how should I respond right now to God and others regarding my current, unloving habits?
7. What does (or can or should) loving look like in the homeschool setting going forward?
8. What cycles of blessing can I hope for as I turn to God and grow in my ability to love?

These questions derive from more general ones that were developed by David Powlison, of the Christian Counseling & Education Foundation. Powlison’s influence has blessed me for about 15 years, and recently I’ve had the time to take an amazing counseling course (entitled The Dynamics of Biblical Change with recorded lectures by Powlison) that has helped me to understand and apply the questions more and more deeply to issues of my sinful heart. I’m so grateful for the grace in Dr. Powlison’s life, and for the courses that are offered via distance learning!Before we jump to verse 1 Corinthians 13:4 and start looking at loving, I’d like us to consider the first three verses of this chapter, which itself actually come in the middle of a three-chapter discussion of spiritual gifts. Having just written to the Corinthians that there are more (and less) excellent spiritual gifts to desire (tongues and prophecy, respectively), Paul says that he will show them an even more excellent way (to be spiritual). He writes this:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.1 Cor 13:1-3 (ESV)

How can we apply this to homeschooling? Let me paraphrase the above by setting it in a more familiar context.

1 If I tell my children all day long to love God and each other (in even the most eloquent terms), to study hard, to be diligent, and to love learning but do not let them see a living, breathing example of love as I walk through the process of homeschooling them, then my words are so much noise in their ears. They can never bring about the results that I desire.  2 If I am the wisest of parents, having insight into my children’s hearts at all times, and flawlessly delivering to them all instruction, faithfully, day after day, but do so without love, I am nothing. 3 If, by dint of great effort and sacrifice, I find and manage to purchase an amazing curriculum that is the most expensive and lavish one available, and I work diligently to deliver all the lessons from it as directed, but do not do so in a loving way, I gain nothing.

Homeschooling is not primarily about us imparting academics to our kids, or even about us training our children in right living. It is about learning to love God and others. It’s about us learning to love God and others!God gives all of his disciples the same amount of limited amount of time each day, and a host of choice points. Those choice points are tests: how will you react and respond to the people and situations you encounter today in a world full of sinners? The results of our reactions and responses to the tests shape us and others. That’s how God sanctifies us, and forwards His amazing plans. God gives all of His people others to love each day as part of His training process. But, to only a chosen few of His children, God gives homeschooling. We homeschooling moms are assigned a very limited number of people, who matter to us greatly, to love. Being imperfect, we often fail. Being our Father, God knows what He’s up to. He’s changing us into the image of Christ by the perfect means for each of us individually. If you are homeschooling because of a call of God on your life to do so, then this is the context in which you are to walk out the primary commands of God: love Him and love your neighbor as yourself.

What a privilege and joy it should be to realize that, even as we work to foster a desire for life-long learning in our kids, God has not yet graduated us from the school of life. We are to be life-long learners, too! And we are to embrace the lessons that He has for us with hope and faith, because He has begun this work in us, He has placed us in this context, He has promised to be in it with us, and He will never tire of watching over us until His great purposes for us in the context of homeschooling are fulfilled.

Do you read this feeling that you have been bad at loving, or missed the main point? I have good news! God knows. He understands. He loves you. It’s why Jesus came to die for you: so that you could be forgiven of your past sins (both of omission and commission) and live this day in hope. And you’re not alone. No one reading this has loved perfectly. We can’t love truly apart from His grace. But, because of Jesus, the grace that we must have is abundant, freely given, and inexhaustible.  James 4:6-8 (ESV) assures us:

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

He is good. He is with you in your homeschooling journey. And, He is up to something. Let’s explore the lessons of loving that we learn in the homeschool setting together as this month unfolds! And as we do, I would so love it–if you have insights, anecdotes, or additions to my thoughts–if you would post them as comments. “Magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His Name together” so that we may all grow richer in love!

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