Age of Opportunity - 3

Chapter Three - "What is a Family? A Definition"

Notes and Quotes:

"The family is God's primary learning community."

"The family is radically different from the classroom as a setting for learning. The classroom is a vacuum, separate from life. In classrooms we go to elaborate lengths to recreate life so that we can study it. But family life is life!"

Parents are God's primary teachers/instructors.

Who are children?

• Covenantal - created to be in a relationship with God, thus we should focus on training them to love and serve Him, not "to live autonomous, self-oriented, self-directed, and self-sufficient lives." Further, "in every moment, a child is accepting his role as a creature and living in worshipful obedience to God, or he is exchanging God for some aspect of the created world he is living to get."
• Social - created to be in relationships with other people; made for community, not "self-made individualism"
• Interpreters - always thinking and attempting to make sense out of life; we have got to help them see that we can't properly interpret life (what goes on around us OR within us without first understanding Truth . . . God's Word)
• Heart-driven - behavior stems from the heart
  

"The goal of a person's life is not to be a healthy individual; the goal is to be a person living in community with other people" and all living in community with God.

"Children are not just reacting to facts," they are interpreting them. Do everything you can "to get your kids to think out loud and instill in them a distinctly biblical view of life."

"Ask good questions and be a good listener."

"Our goal is to be used of God to expose and nurture the hearts of our children so that they want to behave in a way that pleases the Lord."

"The 'sin is bad, don't do it' brand of parenting forgets that sin is not only a matter of behavior, but a matter of the thoughts and motives of the heart as well. . . We cannot be satisfied with the 'fruit-stapling' agenda of controlling behavior."