It Starts at Home

It Starts at Home: A Practical Guide to Nurturing Lifelong Faith is exactly what it suggests it is – practical encouragement for living out your Christian faith within the four walls of your home.

My husband, Jonathan, beat me to reading this book and so we both ended up giving this one a read. This book makes the point that simply sending your children to Sunday School without living out faith at home is not going to produce a committed Christian for life (should that be your intent.) Authors Kurt Bruner and Steve Stroope are here to remind parents/guardians that it is what children see lived out at home that will most effectively impact them during their life walk. With that in mind, the authors address Christian parents and give practical tips as to how the parents can share their faith. And how, exactly? By living it. Which is a lot easier said than done!

Bruner and Stroope talk about the importance of providing your children with a lens of truth – a worldview, if you will. (This is true no matter what your faith. If you want your children to believe what you believe, you’re the only person who can convince them by the way that you live that what you believe is correct in any way, shape or form.) The authors stress the importance of intentional parenting and that’s something that I think is lacking to a great degree. In this fast-paced world, it’s hard to set aside the time and be focused enough to intentionally parent. It’s something that definitely requires commitment and passion and, let’s face it, we’re just too tired and lazy to do it!

The authors suggest “120 Days of Intentional Parenting” in order to really focus on how you want to be and what message you want to present to your children as parents. They say to start with a clear purpose:

“As one blessed with the gift of children, you are called to inspire and nurture the faith of the next generation as life’s greatest privilege and priority.”

Christian or not, I think that society today downplays the blessing of children and the importance of raising them well.

The authors though are very much coming at the reader from a Christian perspective and I found their encouragements and reminders to work with my children’s giftings and temperaments, to play and laugh and build a legacy to be a fresh kick-in-the-pants reminder that this current stage of parenting will not last forever. Thus, I need to make the most of it.

I should say that the front cover of this book is branded with a recommendation to read by Rick Warren. Honestly, that was enough to make me want to put the book down. (I know there are those who really admire and respect Warren but I’m not so much of a fan.)

The main gist of the message of this book:

– Create and provide a clear purpose for your parenting/for your family
– Create a safe environment
– Purpose to pursue truth
– Pay attention to your own faith. Actually live it.

The back of the book also includes a chapter on “Intentional Grandparenting” for those of you in that phase of life.

An intriguing book, mostly encouraging and one that I offer for your consideration.

Editor’s note: This is Carrie’s last post, so this is really and truly farewell (but not goodbye!).

Carrie finds that she needs a lot of encouragement to “press on” as a stay at home moment. She finds and blogs about books such as these on her own book blog, Reading to Know.