Life in the Trenches: A Homeschool Mom's Theory of Everything

By Shannon K. Badger

The ways to homeschool are many, but the guidebook for life, the Bible, gives us the foundation we need to make the decisions that go into living the homeschooling life. Veteran homeschool Shannon Badger brings the knowledge of thirty years of homeschooling to the questions of bringing God into your daily life as a mom, being a good wife—even though you homeschool!—organizing your home and school, choosing curriculum, disciplining your children, and teaching them history, science, nature, and purity following the guidance of Scripture. It is all about the foundation of Scripture!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638448624

Book preview

Chapter 1¹

A Continual Conversation

As Christian moms, how do we find the time to spend with God? There are so many demands on us, and trying to meet them all using only our own personal resources is just not going to hack it. We can’t give to our families what we don’t have; and before we can worry about feeding our families mentally, physically, and spiritually, we have to be sure we have food to give them. We need, need, need the Lord and His power; but, once again, the big question is how do we find the time? That is what this chapter addresses.

Plato explained the growth of the knowledge of truth in a person’s life through his famous analogy of the cave. Imagine a slave born in a cave. He is chained with his back to a wall that does not reach all the way to the ceiling. There is a fire on the other side of that wall, which glows and flickers so that the slave sees the evidence of the fire but not the source. At some time, he is unchained and has the choice of going around the wall or not. If he does, he can see the source. He may be blinded at first, but eventually, if he does not draw back, he will be able to see details in the logs and coals and different brightness in areas of the fire, and he can join others around the fire.

After a while of sitting by the fire, he may look off the fire into the darkness and perceive a passageway. At the end of this passage, a different kind of light glows. If he is brave and adventurous, he may take courage and go down the passage to pursue the source of this different kind of light. Sometimes it is cold and white, sometimes red, and sometimes yellow. He gets to the end and finds a turn in the passage. The opening of the cave is before him. At first, he does not proceed and, once again, sees evidence of the light without knowing the source. He takes courage and exits the cave. He witnesses the sunrise and at first cannot bear to see the sun and hides his eyes. Over time, though, he risks looking and identifies the sun as the source.

Plato’s analogy of the cave is perfect in illustrating the growth of our personal knowledge of God. We see evidence of His hand at work in the world and our lives, but we don’t recognize it as Him at first. Bit by bit, we communicate with Him more, see Him at work more readily, respond to His voice more quickly, until finally, one day, we see Him perfectly on His heavenly throne.

Learning to have a continual conversation with Him is the process of getting to know God and recognize His voice better all the time. It all starts with one little turning of the heart to Him.

So what part of our spiritual lives are we talking about here? Does this have anything to do with being saved?

What Is Salvation?

Dr. Earl Radmacher teaches that the Bible uses salvation in three different ways. The first way is redemption. Matthew 1:21 says, You shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins. That’s the salvation that starts at the time of our confession of Christ as our Savior and continues through eternity.

Another meaning of salvation is in terms of glorification. Matthew 16:27 says, For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Second Chronicles 6:4 completes this idea:

Now, arise, O Lord God, to Your resting place, You and the ark of Your strength. Let Your priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let Your saints rejoice in goodness.

Glorification starts at death and continues through eternity.

The use of salvation that applies to us here is sanctification. This is the life between redemption and glorification. Philippians 2:12: Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. This is our walk in Christ, how we grow in holiness, more like Christ, knowing God better.

One day, visiting the dusty, crowded little Christian bookstore near my parents’ house, I found a slim little paperback: Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God. The mere title called out to me, and I bought it. I have read it a dozen times since then, and it affected me so much I studied it and wrote a devotional on it if only for my own benefit. I always feel the Holy Spirit when I try to practice the internal conversation with God that Brother Lawrence recommends, and I wouldn’t be the person I am without it. It has taught me not only to focus on God in everyday activities but to see things the way God does and to love Him so much that I choose to do the things that please Him—imperfectly, I confess, but I’m always trying to improve. At any rate, what I am sharing now has come out of my efforts to have a continual conversation with our Father God.

What Does a Continual Conversation with God Entail?

The fundamentals of a continual conversation are (1) the Bible, (2) prayer, (3) Scripture memory, (4) music, and (5) Christian fellowship.

Prayer is to our relationship with God what conversation is to a human relationship. You have to turn your mind to the Lord, talk to Him, admire Him, share your troubles, and listen!

Knowing the Bible is how we learn to see what is important to God. It’s not knowing every detail. It’s more like a husband and wife spending time together until they know what the other will think, say, or do. If you haven’t read the Bible from cover to cover, this is the best way to get to know it. You don’t have to do it in a year. The first time I did, it took two years, and I later took about five years to read through the Bible in German.

Scripture memory is vital because when we pray Scripture, we know we are praying in the will of God, and we can’t pray Scripture if we don’t know Scripture. There are many Scripture memory systems, the Navigators being a famous one. Helping your child with Awana verses or choosing a favorite psalm or a verse that is particularly useful in your current circumstances can be a good place to start. I have memorized while driving and while climbing stairs for exercise. If you want to be more methodical about it, write out the verse while saying it or even just moving your lips. This engages the auditory, visual, and physical sides of learning though making up motions to match the words would be even better.

Music is vital to our growing relationship with the Lord because it touches our physical, intellectual, and emotional sides. Singing good songs is a way of praying. It intensifies prayer. This is why so many groups sing when trying to change the world for God such as during the civil rights marches of the 1960s and pro-life workers outside abortion clinics. Many scriptures are put to music, and singing a song in your head can be just as moving as singing aloud. A friend of mine cannot carry a tune in a bucket, and she knows it, but she still worships most in song.

Finally, Christian fellowship. There is a tendency to think of our relationship with God as something to be pursued in solitude, and while solitude is important to our Christian walks, God does speak to us through people. Consider Nathan bringing God’s message to David about his sin with Bathsheba.

It was so much easier to stay focused on God when I didn’t have to talk to people very much—filing at the insurance office or caring for infants. Once my children grew and were talking to me almost constantly, I had to realize that Jesus was in the same position, beset by people’s demands from all sides. Being focused on listening for God’s words from them or possibly being a fragrance of Christ to them convicted me that this was a chance to be talking to God or focused completely off myself to serve another person’s needs.

Brother Lawrence’s Own Words

Here is a series of quotes by Brother Lawrence that I believe hold the crux of a continual conversation with the Lord:

The end we ought to propose to ourselves in this life is to become the most perfect adorers of God we possibly can.

When the occasion arose to practice some virtue, he always said to God: My God, I cannot do this unless You enable me to do so, and he was immediately given the strength needed, and even more.

We need only to know God intimately present in us, to address ourselves to Him at every moment, to ask His aid, to discern His will in doubtful things, and to do well those things we see clearly He is demanding of us, offering them to Him before doing them and giving Him thanks for having done them for Him after we have done them. That in this continual conversation, we are likewise unceasingly engaged in praising, adoring and loving God for His goodness and perfection.

God does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think.

It is necessary to take particular care to begin, if only for a moment, your exterior actions with this interior gaze and that you do the same while you are doing them and when you have finished them. Since it is necessary to devote much time and effort to acquiring this habit, you must not be discouraged when you fail, since the habit is formed only with difficulty; but once you have acquired it, you will experience great joy. It would be pertinent for those who undertake this practice to make up interior short ejaculations such as, My God, I am all Yours, God of love, I love You with all my heart, Lord, make me according to Your heart, and any such words that love may beget on the spur of the moment. This presence of God, though a bit painful in the beginning, if practiced faithfully, works secretly in the soul and produces marvelous effects and draws down to it in abundance the graces of the Lord and leads it insensibly to the simple gaze, that loving sight of God everywhere present, which is the most holy, the most solid, the easiest, most efficacious manner of prayer.

When he had stumbled, he simply acknowledged his fault and said to God: I shall never do otherwise if You leave me to myself. It is up to You to keep me from falling and to correct what is wrong. With this, he put the pain of his fault from his mind.

Our sanctification depends not upon changing our works but in doing for God what we ordinarily do for ourselves. He found the best way of reaching God was by doing ordinary tasks, which he was obligated to perform under obedience, entirely for the love of God and not for the human attitude toward them.

Let us devote ourselves entirely to knowing God; the more we know Him, the more we want to know Him; knowledge is commonly the measure of love; the deeper and wider our knowledge, the greater will be our love, and if our love of God is great, we will love Him equally in sorrow and in joy.

Adoring God in Humility

Two perspectives are equally good at teaching us humility. A friend once told me that true humility lay in seeing ourselves as God sees us: miniscule, teeny little ugly sinners yet worth dying for. The other side of humility is seeing God as He truly is and not being able to stand before Him. At a retreat once, the pastor directed us to ask God to show Himself to us. I started repeating "I am"—what God called Himself to Moses—in my head. As I did, I suddenly saw myself. Imagine a patch of skin—dirty, wrinkled, greasy, with black hair going every which way. That was me, my soul, compared to God—smooth, clean, and pure. It made me think of a song that pointed out that being aware of God’s holiness makes me aware of my weakness and poverty. That was what I experienced during that meditation.

Why do we need to have an attitude of humility? Well, fundamentally, we won’t seek God if He is not infinitely valuable, if He doesn’t have something we lack like perfection, goodness, or love; but when we see how small and sinful we are, it makes His love, provision, and salvation so precious and amazing. Luke 12:32 says, Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. He wants to be with poor, grungy us!

Brother Lawrence talks about always confessing his sins even in just getting distracted from thinking of God. At the same time, he says that he simply tells God, That’s just what happens when I do things on my own. So how do we keep our minds on the Lord, growing in holiness? In John 15:4–5, Jesus tells us how:

Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides Me, you can do nothing.

If you abide in Me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. (v. 7)

Here Jesus tells us Himself that time in the Bible and practicing what the Bible says is the way to do His will and be empowered to obey Him, and we simply won’t be inclined or able to without Him.

Why is humility so wonderful in teaching us to know God? Our sin turns us to God. I have found that once God has dealt with one level of sin, He can then move to another. Sometimes He starts with the small sins and works to the big ones, and sometimes He starts with the big ones and refines us in the small ones. In either case, the Spirit-given desire to be holy keeps us coming back to the Lord for His help in purifying our lives.

One last note to chew on: it is a kind of pride to say, My sin is too great for God to forgive. Really? I may not be able to forgive myself without God’s help, but He can forgive anything—even my most horrendous sin.

Adoring God in Loving Him Internally

Mark 12:29–30 quotes the Old Testament:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

In the original language, the heart is the seat of emotions. The soul was a combination of mind, will, and emotions and was actually located in the intestines or kidneys—the gut! The mind, of course, is the intellect; and strength is every bit of physical, mental, and emotional energy we can summon up.

Brother Lawrence says, Always see God and His glory in everything we do, say, and undertake. The end we should seek is to be the most perfect adorers of God in this life as we hope to be through all eternity. This is it. Love God. If you love Him with every action, you will be in constant communion with Him. If you love Him in everything you do, there will be no question of what the right course of action is. You will ask God, How can I love You best in this activity? Am I loving You or doing what I want? Simply offering the activity to God and being willing to not do something can give that peace, that sweet peaceful river of benevolence from the Lord that flows over us when we deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him. Taking a mini-fast from some small allowable pleasure just to show God you love Him draws you closer to Him. I call them dandelion fasts. You know how your little child will bring you a dandelion when they come up in the spring? No one likes dandelions as dandelions; they get droopy in minutes and go to seed overnight in your little vase. But your child did it to show you that he loves you. Perhaps, your mini dandelion fast for God is only for a half a day or a single time, and if He says it’s all right, you can go back to it; but I know I will not turn my mind to Him unless He has put the thought in me, so saying no to myself just to show Him I love Him can’t help but be pleasing to Him.

Other than that, is there a prescribed way of experiencing God internally? Absolutely not. Since we are all so different, I will have a different relationship with God than you or anybody else will. Hagar, the Egyptian woman who was Ishmael’s mother, heard God’s voice and called God, My God, Who Sees Me. Moses saw the Shekinah glory of God in the burning bush and in the tabernacle and came out of God’s presence physically glowing. The Israelites experienced the Shekinah from a distance and beheld the lightning, thundering, and earthquakes of God in the mountain. Elijah heard the still, small voice of God after the wind and fire and earthquakes, and all that was after the ravens provided Him with food. John the Baptist beheld the Spirit descending as a dove on Christ. There are times when my delight in God fills me so much I just have to clap my hands. We are simply commanded to worship Him in spirit and in truth, meaning from the depths of our being, without faking, without trying to impress others or look right.

So I have some questions for you to ask yourself:

Was—or is—your relationship with God a struggle?

Did you ever suddenly experience God’s love?

Have you been hard on yourself?

Have you expected more either from yourself or God?

Have you had any beautiful moments with His Holy Spirit?

What things drew you closer to Him?

Adoring God in Loving Him Externally

Very simply, we can adore God with our actions.

In Christian Reader magazine, Ben Carson described his process when he separated the twins conjoined at the brain. Periodically, he took breaks and stepped out of