Heart Training

As a pastor of a bunch of folks, a husband of one woman, and a father of four boys, I am realizing with each passing day the profound importance of the heart.  I am convinced that in a family, in a church, and in a society, nothing is more important than the heart of a man. 

This fall, our church has been focusing on The Heart of the Matter http://www.fbcpaducah.org/resources-audio-video.html.  In addition, Tony Woodlief's recent work, Somewhere More Holy has been used by God to encourage, challenge and refine me.  Here is another excerpt:

I guess in all this homeschooling and training and handwringing over whether we're getting it right is a desire not just for our children to be well-educated, but to have good hearts.  We are working out how best to train them--in our classroom and in every other room as well--not only to help their intellects flourish, but because part of building a home, we are learning, is training our hearts and the hearts of our children to seek God where he will be found.  Wendell Berry argues that schools ought not to focus just on imparting skills, but on cultivating humanity.  "For human beings the spiritual and the practical are, and should be, inseperable."  Training up the heart is more important than teaching the mind, adn this is what we are wrestling out each day, on the battlegrounds of our own hearts as well as theirs.  "I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his studies than high in athletics," wrote Teddy Roosevelt to his son, "but I could a great deal rather have him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or physical prowess."

Pastor Todd