5 Lessons for Homeschoolers from Psalm 19

19 March 2013 / Bible Verses Revisited, Healthy Living, News, Teaching / 0 Comment

Homeschoolers can learn some powerful lessons from Psalm 19. Here are 5 teaching concepts embedded in this beautiful poem:

Psalm 23 for Homeschoolers

22 November 2012 / Bible Verses Revisited, News / 0 Comment

The Lord is my shepherd (and good thing, too- there are days I don’t have clue where I’m headed)

I lack nothing eternally important for my homeschool

He makes me to lie down and take a nap sometimes

He leads me beside quiet waters of prayer

He refreshes my soul so that I can teach again tomorrow

He guides me along the path of righteousness so that what my children learn glorifies his name

Even though I walk through the darkest valley of doubt about my abilities to train my children worthily,

I will fear no evil for I have learned that

You are with me, and it is your homeschool- not mine

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me because they show that you are the true teacher- I am only the vessel

You prepare a table before me in the presence of the folks who nay-say homeschooling

You anoint my head with the oilof gladness when we finish each math lesson

My cup overflows- and so does my desk, the portfolios, and the kid’s book crate

Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me through the piles of papers all the days of my life

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, whew- that’s a relief!

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Homeschool parents read the Bible AND Pray!

For resources to encourage your time in the Word and in prayer, visit the EBookstore and check out Vicki's Prayer Journals and our free Genesis 1 In-Depth Bible Study Guide, or literature study guides to go along with classic works by Christians with grit like Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place and Brother Andrew's God's Smuggler.

I Corinthians 13 for Homeschool Moms

18 November 2012 / Bible Verses Revisited, News, The Home / 0 Comment

Back by request: Here is our classic post:

If I speak in the tongues of French or Spanish, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of spelling and can fathom all mysteries of histories and all knowledge of arithmetic,

If I have a faith that can move mountains of laundry and dishes each day, but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the purchase of good curriculum and give over my body to hardship of long nights of lesson preparation and research that I may boast of how well my kids are educated,but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient with slow learners.

Love is kind when they forget how to multiply again.

It does not envy my friends whose kids were born knowing long division.

It does not boast when my kids can sing well but my friend's kid does not.                                           

It is not too proud to admit to my friends when I’m tired and discouraged.

It does not dishonor others’ homeschooling methods.

It is not self-seeking and unwilling to invest in the homeschool culture around me.

It is not easily angered when my kid declares he doesn’t like science.

It keeps no record of wrongs- in me or in others.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth and teaches my kids the same.

It always protects my family and friends.

It always trusts that God has a plan and cares what is happening.

It always hopes that I will be able to hear God and obey His will for my family.

It always perseveres- even on LONG days.

Love never fails.

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BTW- It helps to pray. For some guided prayer activities for moms or teens, try our 2 e-prayer journals just $2.49 for quick, guided prayer activities. ALSO FREE downloads of Genesis 1- Study Guide (easy, inspirational, educational) AND Carry Each Other's Burdens (how to truly help a friend during tough times).

Here's Sabrina's Romans 8 for homeschoolers:

Say "YES!" to God's plan for your homeschool and "NO!" to everything else

01 November 2012 / Bible Verses Revisited, Personal Growth / 0 Comment

I loved Vicki's post last week that talked about the "No," God has given each of us, and the importance of using it.

Are you wisely saying, "No," to things that you know are not from God?

And are you taking God at His word in Romans 8 that you were created to be more than a conqueror as you follow His agenda?

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Reading books by great Christian writers like Corrie ten Boom, Brother Andrew, Joni Eareckson Tada and others will strengthen you for the journey!

Our literature study guides enrich the reading for you and your homeschooler.

Click here to view excerpts from these and other Great Christian Writers!

 

Colossians 3:1-4 and 12 for Homeschool Moms

31 August 2012 / Bible Verses Revisited / 2 Comments

A Friday morning meditation for you!  I've been working on committing Colossians 3 to memory for the last couple of months, and as I meditate on it, I'm forever looking at the many ways to apply it to my life.

Here I am, beginning a new academic year in our homeschool, and I'm thinking Colossians 3 for the homeschool mom.

Since then, you've been raised with Christ

and how amazing is it that He included YOU in His resurrection and ascension!

set you hearts on things above where Christ is seated  at the right hand of God

'cause in essence that's right where you are living at this moment, even though you keep forgetting it.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things

When you see that the dirty dishes have gotten temporarily out of control, thank Him for His perfect control of all creation at all times.  When your kids are grumpy (or you are!), think about His unfailing, unwavering, ungrumping love.  When you resent your worn-out living room furniture, think about the wealth untold in the beauty of heaven, and remember that it is yours to enjoy forever!

For you died

(really and truly....all the nasty stuff about you that drives you crazy even more than it annoys the people around you?  That stuff is the flesh, and that's not you any more.  That stuff died with Jesus on the cross!)

and your life is now hidden with Christ in God

and can you possibly imagine a better place to hide?  Take a second and picture it.  Your life, all the scared pieces of you, all the guilt you feel over mistakes you make, all the frustration you experience when something proves to be trickier than you planned for, every bit of your life is hidden with Christ (your perfect bridegroom) in God.  That's where you live, sister!

When Christ, who is your life

(ain't that the truth!  He is my life.  Why do I keep forgetting that in the heat of the moment?  Why do I look to my hubby for everything?  Why do I look at my kids and think I can define who I am because I homeschool them?  Christ is my life!)

appears, you also will appear with Him in glory

with no more defects, no frustration, no migraines or muscle spasms in my neck, no cellulite, no confusion, no shame, no rage.............in glory.  With Him.

Therefore, as God's chosen people

(He picked ; on purpose!  And you were NOT the last-one chosen!)

holy and dearly loved

Thank You, God that I am holy because You have hidden me inside Yourself, wrapped me in Your holiness.  Wow, I look better this way!  And thank You that I am dearly loved.  Lots of people love me (more than I realize, probably), but only You love me perfectly.

clothe yourselves with compassion

when the long division just does not make sense.

kindness

when you have to correct your child.  Speak the truth, but do it with such kindness in your words, your tone and your body language.

humility

Can you honestly share your life with your kids today instead of having to pretend to have it all together and make them feel small and dumb by comparison?

gentleness

when you have to remind your husband of something for the 3rd (or 5th or 9th) time.  Can you refuse that harsh, sarcastic edge absolutely?

and patience

with yourself as well the others in the house.  You, also, are not home yet.  We are all works-in-process until we are finally, fully, face-to-face in the presence of God.

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Our EBookstore isn't just the place for unique and adaptable curriculum for your homeschool, it also has Prayer Journals to bless your quiet times each day, and a variety of free downloads like Carry Each Other's Burdens and Genesis 1 Bible Study Guide to encourage and equip you as you follow the call of Christ in your life.

 

 

 

Personalizing Scripture

10 April 2012 / Bible Verses Revisited, Personal Growth, Prayer / 4 Comments

Your homeschool is a great place to teach your children to memorize scripture.  When I was young I memorized many Bible verses, and that word that was hidden in my heart comes to mind quickly and easily even after all these years.  Another skill you can teach your children that will bless them for the rest of their lives is to personalize scripture when they read it.

Personalizing scripture is more than just intellectually acknowledging that the Bible is God's word speaking to me today.  It is asking the Lord to help us take real ownership of the truth in His word as we read it.  Here are a couple of ideas for getting started personalizing scripture.

Psalms are an easy place to begin.  Many of the psalms are very much a personal expression of the psalmist's feelings.  Memorizing a few verses from various psalms expressing feelings common to human beings provides a vehicle for getting comfortable praying the word of God.  When we pray to God what He has already included in His word, there is an immediate focus and power in that prayer.  For example:

• "You are a shield around me, O Lord; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head," (Ps. 3:3) is a great verse to pray when I am discouraged.
• "Lord, You have assigned me my portion and my cup; You have made my lot secure," (Ps. 16:5) when I am trusting Him to provide what I need in a situation.
• "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer," (Ps. 19:14) when I realize that my thought life is straying into critical judgments, or worry, or bitterness.

Beyond simply learning to pray scripture verses that I have memorized, I have also found great blessing in meditating on a particular short passage of scripture, emphasizing a new word or phrase each time I run over it again in my heart.  For example:

"Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths; guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long."  (Ps. 25:4-5) is a verse that becomes personal as I meditate on each piece of it.

• SHOW ME Your ways...  I need You to show me, Lord.  I will mess it up if I just try to figure out Your word and my life on my own.
• Show me YOUR ways...  I am surrounded by a world that wants me to do things the way other people think I should.  I need to live YOUR way, or not at all.
• Show me Your WAYS...  I find lots of knowledge about You in the Bible, but I need to learn the WAY to apply that knowledge, to live out what I have memorized.

And so forth!

Many of the epistles are filled with instruction to Christians.  From these passages, I can personalize the scripture in the passage to help me clearly focus on the importance of owning that truth in my own life.  For example:

Galatians 3:23-24 says "Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.  So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith."

As I read it again, I learn that this applies to me specifically.  "Before faith in Christ came to me, I was held prisoner by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.  So the law was put in charge to lead me to Christ that I might be justified by faith in Him."

As I meditate on it, I can pray His words back to Him:  "Before I had faith in You, Lord - and thank You for GIVING me faith so that I could believe! - before that I was a prisoner.  I was bound up by my inability to fulfill the requirements of the law.  I was locked into that failure, unable to ever break free from the sentence of "Falling Short" that hung on me all the time.  You revealed faith in Christ to me, You introduced me to salvation because I had already seen that my situation was hopeless under the law.  I understood that I was never going to cut it as PERFECT on my own; the law showed me that, and I was prepared by the law to know that I needed the salvation Jesus Christ provided in Himself for me."

Wow!  My heart gets happy and my eyes get weepy just typing this blog post.  Those verses in the Bible are there for us to take as our own, to understand as God's word to us personally.

Including these types of exercises as we have times of devotion with our kids in our homeschools will help lay a foundation of understanding in their hearts.

They will grow up knowing that God's word is more than a book; it is life.

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For a personal look at the first chapter of Genesis, download the FREE Bible study guide from our EBookstore.

Vicki's Prayer Journals are filled with various exercises to sharpen the focus and deepen the richness of your prayer life.  Click here to view excerpts.

5-Minute Friday: Ache

02 March 2012 / 5-Minute Fridays, Bible Verses Revisited, Personal Growth / 1 Comment

On Fridays, we link-up to www.thegypsymama.com and use the prompt word Lisa-Jo posts for a 5-minute post.  Here's what she says about why 5-minute posts are important:

"We write because we love words and the relief it is to just write them without worrying if they’re just right or not. So we take five minutes on Friday and write like we used to finger paint. For joy in the process. No matter how messy the result."

I like to give myself an additional challenge, and find a way to tie the prompt word in to whatever our theme has been at 7 Sisters for the week.  This week's theme has been Drama/Mother Teresa.  This week's prompt word from Lisa-Jo is: ACHE.

Ready, set, go!

Some of you may not know that 7 Sisters' Allison Thorp is my real-life sister-by-birth, too.  I am blessed to have her for my sister and my "Sister!"  The cute blonde in this picture is our other sister, Heather.  Heather went home to be with the Lord in December 2009 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

This week in our homeschooling community here where MD/DE/PA come together, we lost a brother who had been battling Ewing's Sarcoma bone cancer for two years.  He was 23 years old.  His relationship with Christ had a radical impact on our community as we were privileged to be a part of his battle against cancer in prayer and service.

His home-going, like Heather's, is bittersweet for us.  Sweet because we know that the unfailing love of Christ sustained them here and welcomed them to a pain-free, glorified new body in His presence.  Bitter because we know Jesus to be our healer, we prayed with faith in His healing power for our loved ones, and we don't understand why His answer was, "Yes, but not there; here."

The ache of incomplete knowledge is always there for Christians.  I Cor. 13:12 says, "Now I know in part, but then (when the imperfect is made perfect in the fullness of Christ) I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."  There is so much we CAN understand from the word of God, from the wisdom of his Spirit, and from life experience as we follow Him.....it ACHES when we hit something we can't wrap our understanding around.

As my 5-minutes is almost over, I look to Mother Teresa's example.  When she experienced a long, long (try 50-years-long) "dark night of the soul" during which she knew by faith that God was present, but she could not seem to feel His presence, she concluded that accepting His will when we do not understand it is something to rejoice in.  It is a reminder of our complete and utter dependence on the God of the universe.  It prevents us from foolishly running off in our own strength, because we are reminded that we just don't get it all.

The ACHE we feel keeps us safely at His side where He may guide us in all things.

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For more on Mother Teresa, visit the EBookstore for a sample copy of my play A Weekend in Calcutta or literature study guide to accompany Malcolm Muggeridge's wonderful book Something Beautiful for God.

If you need a little encouragement to just get through a rough patch in your home and homeschool, here's a video of my paraphrase of Romans 8.  What can separate us from the love of Christ?

5-Minute Friday: Grit

24 February 2012 / 5-Minute Fridays, Bible Verses Revisited / 4 Comments

On Fridays, we link up to www.thegypsymama.com and get a prompt word from Lisa-Jo, and then I write without overthinking or overediting for 5 minutes...and post the results! I add an extra challenge for myself and try to tie the prompt word to our 7 Sisters theme for the week.

This week our theme was SCRIPTURE VERSES (paraphrased for homeschool moms),

and this week's prompt word is: Grit.

Philippians 3:1 - 4, and 7-8 for Homeschoolers:

Homeschool mamas, rejoice in the Lord!  It's no trouble for me to write the same things to you again (I'm used to repeating myself, anyway...), and it is a safeguard for you who (like I am) are tempted to look to the wrong things for your identity.

Watch out for the scary Homeschool Cops, those folks who criticize the life out of your homeschool, who tell you everything is wrong about your family because you don't homeschool exactly like THEIR family.

For it is we who are depending on God for our homeschooling inspiration and perseverance....we need His GRIT to make us tough enough to muddle through the academics, the household management, and the sometimes-messy relationships.

We are worshiping God by saying, "Okay! Let's do it!" to whatever He guides us in.  We are glorying in Christ Jesus by saying, "Thank You for saving us from the mess we would make of life if we did it on our own!"

It is we who don't put any confidence in the perfect curriculum, or the perfect "I bake all my own organic everything all the time no matter what" menus, or the perfect everyone-gets-along-beautifully and we-are-learning-calculus-in-second-grade co-op.

...but whatever was to my profit - my mad teaching skills, my ability to sew window treatments that would shame a pro, my super-smart kid who could probably go to college at 13, my ability to stretch a dollar to cover a week's worth of groceries - WHATEVER was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things!

(Okay, I can ususally hammer out posts in the 5-minute time-frame, but this one took me 8 minutes.  Just keeping it honest, y'all.  Honesty takes GRIT!)

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Homeschool parents with GRIT read the Bible AND Pray!

For resources to encourage your time in the Word and in prayer, visit the EBookstore and check out Vicki's Prayer Journals and our free Genesis 1 In-Depth Bible Study Guide, or literature study guides to go along with classic works by Christians with grit like Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place and Brother Andrew's God's Smuggler.

Sermon on the Mount for Homeschoolers

23 February 2012 / Bible Verses Revisited / 0 Comment

Back by request, Here is our Homeschool Version of Sermon on the Mount:

 

Blessed are the poor in wallet, for theirs shall be creatively constructed or attained curricula.

Blessed are they that mourn that they are not experienced enough to teach their kids math (or art, or chemistry…): for they shall be comforted as they observe that in their weakness God is strong.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the skill not to get sucked into arguments with their kids about why they have to do math (science, spelling…), they’ll just quietly motivate their kids to get it done.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness (rather than hunger and thirst for having a homeschool program that keeps up with the Jones’s homeschool program): for they shall be filled will praise for God when they see that He has a unique plan for each family.

Blessed are the merciful when their children forget how to multiply 7x6 again (or how to spell occasional or how to conjugate faire…): for they shall obtain mercy when they forget where they put the car keys again..

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God’s will and God’s love as their goal for their homeschool programs, not just college scholarships nor the applause of others.

Blessed are the peacemakers: as they model the fruit of the Spirit for their children, their children will want to be like them- children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for homeschooling’s sake: for they will get the last laugh when their children grow up to be well-educated, well-socialized, Christ-following adults.

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Blessed are those who download FREE stuff from our ebookstore: Sabrina's Genesis 1 Study Guide, Carry Each Other's Burdens, and more! 

If your teen is ready to expand his prayer life (or you enrich yours), download our Prayer Journals. They are easy, quick, interactive prayer activities. 30 activities= $2.49

 

 

Romans 8 for Homeschool Moms

21 February 2012 / Bible Verses Revisited, Healthy Living, Humor, Personal Growth, Prayer / 5 Comments

This is a classic post that first ran in Sept. 2011.  Be encouraged!!

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What shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble with curriculum,

or hardship with learning disabilities,

or persecution from people who think we're nuts for homeschooling,

or famine because Math took extra-long and there's nothing ready for dinner,

or nakedness because we haven't caught up on the laundry in about a month,

or danger from kitchen chemistry experiments gone wrong,

or sword (because if you have boys and you're studying the medieval period...)?

 

As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” (Okay, that's probably a little dramatic. But there are days...)

 

No, in all these challenges we homeschool moms are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

 

For I am convinced that neither the death of my dreams about how things OUGHT TO look,

nor life that feels like it's running 100 miles per hour while I hold on by my fingernails;

 

neither children who act like angels,

nor children who act like demons;

 

neither the present material we are studying,

nor the future subjects that only God knows how we can master;

 

nor any powers (understanding exponents, that is!);

 

neither heights of success where I am tempted to take the credit for our fabulous homeschool,

nor depths of frustration where I am tempted to take the blame for our miserable homeschool;

 

nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the LOVE OF GOD that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Romans 8:35-39 (Sabrina's Homeschool Version)
And here's the vlog version, just recorded a couple of days ago:

 

 
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 For some more inspiring “scripture” for homeschoolers, check out Vicki's Sermon on the Mount for Homeschoolers.

Genesis 1 Bible Study is FREE to download in the EBookstore.

For some REAL inspiration, download a copy of Prayer Journal 1 or 2; these 30-day prayer adventures will open up your conversation with God, and help you turn to Him in every situation as you are reminded of His unfailing love for you!