I wanted to share this particular story of impact as it powerfully illustrates the tremendous value of taking the time to think and write down your goals and plan for raising and training your children. I have known this couple for many years, and I have observed first hand how devising written objectives, goals, and plans, as I wrote about last week in “Write It Down,” and using the notes and plan laid out from the “Getting Your Family to Mars” parenting series, has profoundly affected the parenting of their 7 children.
I believe their story will inspire you and bless you.
Pastor Mark
Brandon from Wisconsin, husband, and father of 7:
We were first introduced to the “Getting Your Family to Mars” series in 2006 in a Bible Study group. We had our first child, who at the time was about a year and a half old. The impact of the “Getting Your Family to Mars” series has had an indescribable impact on our family’s lives. We can share without a doubt that the encouragement, Biblical teaching, and personal pleas of Pastor Mark through this series have forever changed the lives of each of our children and our marriage. Implementing that teaching into our lives put us on a completely different path in life. Through the notes, written examples, and supplements, we were able to take what we learned in the series and put them into action. We started to evaluate what was truly important to us as a family and as parents, and what was important to Jesus Christ for our family. Our oldest daughter is now almost 16 and our youngest child is 3. We have 7 children, 4 boys, and 3 girls. Writing down our family mission and plan has helped us raise our children so that they hit the mark and become the children that we and God desire them to be.
This series encouraged us to write down a mission statement for our family. It goes into the specifications of setting goals for our family and children that will achieve this mission as a family. We wrote down what we wanted our children to be like, what kind of character traits and skills we wanted them to have. This was the basis of creating goals for our family to achieve our family mission. Then most importantly, we created action plans on what we were going to do that instilled these traits, and would accomplish these goals in our children and as a family.
After creating our mission statement and writing down our plan, we understood that to meet our mission goals with our family we needed to put our plan into action. We needed to evaluate how we trained our children, how we taught our children, what activities our children were involved in, and what people and influences would surround our children. For instance, we realized that letting strangers in the secular world train and influence our children was not an option, because it would not contribute to meeting our goals. We made changes accordingly that would meet those goals.
“Getting Your Family to Mars” was crucial to our family and completely changed the lives of us and our children. We listened to them multiple times, and refreshed and reviewed our plan. We realized that the most important mission and directive from God in our lives are our children and we needed to take it seriously and bring it to the next level, and treat it as the most important mission in our lives.
We are fighting against a very real and active enemy and there is much at risk if we do not take raising our family for Christ seriously in our lives. We cannot afford to be distracted from this mission. We are still on this Journey in raising our children for Christ, and as we progress we are seeing the fruit of our labor. The hearts of our children are seeking to implement ways in their own lives to win souls for Christ. They understand that they are aliens in this world and that they are on a mission in this world against a great enemy. Without the encouragement to write this plan down and following through with implementing this plan, we are confident that we would not be on the path we are on today. In our sincerest gratitude, thank you Pastor Mark for your dedication and passion for God’s people. We are forever indebted to you for pouring into our lives.
Please invest the time to at least look at the notes and listen to the “Getting Your Family To Mars” series. Please take the time to write down your goals and plans. Feel free to use mine, which are in the notes as a template, or simply make them your own. Just Write It Down!
