We school year round, taking breaks when it suits our family.  Our family enjoys the sense of order and direction this gives us, as well as keeping the children from forgetting too much while taking a long summer break.  We also can take vacations or time off whenever we feel like it–one of the beauties of homeschooling!

As some children are about to start back up into a new school year, we have some very wise words to glean from below, regarding what is most important for our children.  (Emphasis mine)

“It is very grievous to see how some professedly Christian parents are satisfied as long as their children display cleverness in learning, or sharpness in business, although they show no signs of a renewed nature. If they pass their examinations with credit, and promise to be well outfitted for the world’s battle, their parents forget that there is a superior conflict, involving a higher crown, for which the child will need to be outfitted by divine grace, and armed with the whole armour of God. Alas, if our children lose the crown of life, it will be only a small consolation that they have won the laurels of literature or art.

Many who ought to know better think themselves superlatively blessed in their children if they become rich, if they marry well, if they strike out into profitable enterprises in business, or if they attain eminence in the profession to which they have espoused. Their parents will go to their beds rejoicing, and wake up perfectly satisfied, though their boys are hurrying down to hell, if they are also making money hand over fist. They have no greater joy than that their children are having their portion in this life, and laying up treasure where rust corrupts it.

Though neither their sons nor daughters show any signs of the new birth, give no evidence of being rich towards God, show no traces of electing love or redeeming grace, or the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, yet there are parents who are content with their condition.

Now, I can only say of such professing parents that they have need to question whether they are Christians at all, and if they will not question it themselves, they must give some of us permission to hold it in serious debate. When a man’s heart is really right with God, and he himself has been saved from the wrath to come, and is living in the light of his heavenly Father’s countenance, it is certain that he is anxious about his children’s souls, prizes their immortal natures, and feels that nothing could give him greater joy than to hear that his children walk in truth.

Judge yourselves, then, beloved, this morning, by the gentle but searching test of the text. If you are professing Christians, but cannot say that you have no greater joy than the conversion of your children, you have reason to question whether you ought to have made such a profession at all.”

(No. 1148)
A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 21 1873,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.