"A Prayer for Gospel Parenting"

It has taken me many years of living as a Christian, and many years of parenting, to start to grasp how very big the grace of the Lord is, how very beautiful that grace when shown to others. This prayer from Pastor Scotty Smith says everything that I want to. Do read the entire post, and join me in that petition.

Oh, the arrogant pride of thinking that by our “good parenting” we can take credit for what you alone can graciously do in the lives of our children. Oh, the arrogant unbelief of assuming that by our “bad parenting” we’ve forever limited what you’ll be able to accomplish in the future.

Oh, the undue pressure our children must feel when we parent more out of fear than faith; more out of rules than relationship; more out of and pride than patience; more out of comparison than covenant; more out of threats than theology. Forgive us. Free us. Focus us.

Father, since our children and grandchildren are your inheritance, teach us how to care for them as humble stewards, not as anxious owners. More than anything else, show us how to parent and grandparent in a way that best reveals the unsearchable riches of Jesus in the gospel. We want the gospel to be beautiful and believable to our children.

Amen.

Literary Power

It was Charlotte Mason's conviction that the child should work steadily through a complete book. Little snippets of information here and there just don't hang together. Our generation is prone to amuse itself with fragmentary information and resources. We flip on the TV for brief programs, and then we think we know about the subjects they dealt with. A few paragraphs in a magazine, and we think that we've formed an opinion. What is happening often is that we are merely forming a habit of amusing our interest, and then for getting the fragments. This is not education...The child needs books with "literary power."~ Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

Beholding is becoming

The following letter was written by John Piper to a teen in his church. But really, what a word of wisdom for all of us, no matter what our age, because we all need to be reminded that:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
This was one of the greatest secrets I ever discovered:
Beholding is becoming.

There is much in this letter that echoes some of what I want to communicate well to my children-
that God is good,
and His creation is full of awe and wonder,
and that life in His plan is joy.

But read it in Piper's words (from Desiring God, Letter to an Incomplete, Insecure Teenager by John Piper):

Four years ago a teenager in our church wrote to me for advice about life in general, and identity in particular. Here is what I wrote, with a big dose of autobiography for illustration.

Dear ________,

My experience of coming out of an introverted, insecure, guilty, lustful, self-absorbed adolescent life was more like the emergence of a frog from a tadpole than a butterfly from a larva.

Larvae disappear into their cocoons and privately experience some inexplicable transformation with no one watching (it is probably quite messy in there) and then the cocoon comes off and everyone says oooo, ahhh, beautiful. It did not happen like that for me.

Frogs are born teeny-weeny, fish-like, slimy, back-water-dwellers. They are not on display at Sea World. They might be in some ritzy hotel's swimming pool if the place has been abandoned for 20 years and there's only a foot of green water in the deep end.

But little by little, because they are holy frogs by predestination and by spiritual DNA (new birth), they swim around in the green water and start to look more and more like frogs.

First, little feet come out on their side. Weird. At this stage nobody asks them to give a testimony at an Athletes in Action banquet.

Then a couple more legs. Then a humped back. The fish in the pond have already pulled back: "Hmmm," they say, "this does not look like one of us any more." A half-developed frog fits nowhere.

But God is good. He has his plan and it is not to make this metamorphosis easy. Just certain. There are a thousand lessons to be learned in the process. Nothing is wasted. Life is not on hold waiting for the great coming-out. That's what larvae do in the cocoon. But frogs are public all the way though the foolishness of change.

I think the key for me was finding help in the Apostle Paul and C. S. Lewis and my father, all of whom seemed incredibly healthy, precisely because they were so absolutely amazed at everything but themselves.

They showed me that the highest mental health is not liking myself but being joyfully interested in everything but myself. They were the type of people who were so amazed that people had noses—not strange noses, just noses—that walking down any busy street was like a trip to the zoo. O yes, they themselves had noses, but they couldn’t see their own. And why would they want to? Look at all these noses they are free to look at! Amazing.

The capacity of these men for amazement was huge. I marveled and I prayed that I would stop wasting so much time and so much emotional energy thinking about myself. Yuk, I thought. What am I doing? Why should I care what people think about me. I am loved by God Almighty and he is making a bona fide high-hopping frog out of me.

The most important text on my emergent frogishness became 2 Corinthians 3:18 —

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

This was one of the greatest secrets I ever discovered: Beholding is becoming.

Introspection must give way to amazement at glory. When it does, becoming happens. If there is any key to maturity it is that. Behold your God in Jesus Christ. Then you will make progress from tadpole to frog. That was a great discovery.

Granted, (so I thought) I will never be able to speak in front of a group, since I am so nervous. And I may never be married, because I have too many pimples. Wheaton girls scare the bejeebies out of me. But God has me in his hand (Philippians 3:12) and he has a plan and it is good and there is a world, seen and unseen, out there to be known and to be amazed at—why would I ruin my life by thinking about myself so much?

Thank God for Paul and Lewis and my dad! It’s all so obvious now. Self is simply too small to satisfy the exploding longings of my heart. I wanted to taste and see something great and wonderful and beautiful and eternal.

It started with seeing nature and ended with seeing God. It started in literature, and ended in Romans and Psalms. It started with walks through the grass and woods and lagoons, and ended in walks through the high plains of theology. Not that nature and literature and grass and woods and lagoons disappeared, but they became more obviously copies and pointers.

The heavens are telling the glory of God. When you move from heavens to the glory of God, the heavens don’t cease to be glorious. But they are un-deified, when you discover what they are saying. They are pointing. “You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy” (Psalm 65:8).

What are the sunrise and sunset shouting about so happily? Their Maker! They are beckoning us to join them. But if I am grunting about the zit on my nose, I won’t even look out the window.

So my advice is: be patient with the way God has planned for you to become a very happy, belly-bumping frog. Don’t settle for being a tadpole or a weird half-frog. But don’t be surprised at the weirdness and slowness of the process either.

How did I become a preacher? How did I get married? God only knows. Incredible. So too will your emergence into what you will be at 34 be incredible. Just stay the course and look. Look, look. There is so much to see. The Bible is inexhaustible. Mainly look there. The other book of God, the unauthoritative one—nature—is also inexhaustible. Look. Look. Look. Beholding the glory of the Lord we are being changed.

I love you and believe God has great froggy things for you. Don’t worry about being only a high-hopping Christlike frog. Your joy comes from what you see.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

There is another metamorphosis awaiting. It just gets better and better. God is infinite. So there will always be more of his glory for a finite mind to see. There will be no boredom in eternity.

Affectionately,

Pastor John

(art credit: Girl Whose Hair is Blown by the Wind by Hiromi Taguchi at AllPoster.com)

Tell ye your children

Charles Spurgeon's evening devotion for July 11th is a wonderful reminder to us of the awesome responsibility and privilege we have as parents. I pray that you will be encouraged by its bold exhortation! Press on!

"Motherhood is a Calling"

The piece starts with "Your hands are full!"
How many times have I heard that?
Five almost-teenagers, and this is still a very good read...

Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross. There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.
- Rachel Jankovic, "Motherhood is a Calling," at Desiring God, July 14, 2011

(art credit: Good Housekeeping cover by Jessie Willcox Smith, September 1926)

31 days of prayer for children

This link will take you to a guide for praying through 31 days of Scripture for our children.

31 days of prayer for children

I printed it out and trimmed it a bit and put it with my Bible and my journal.

(thank you to Ann Voskamp and A Holy Experience. As she writes, "this is the greatest gift to give to our children, the gift of our knees...")

(art credit: A Child's Prayer by anntalitha at etsy.com)

Full Moon Rising

"It's dawning, my full moon rising: I was lost but know I am found again, Jesus, and I know what I want: to see deeply, to thank deeply, to feel joy deeply. How my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy -- and seeing shows the way in.

The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible. And it is the art of gratitude that makes joy possible. Isn't joy the art of God?

It's true! What that ancient man Irenaeus, very disciple of the apostle John, wrote: 'The glory of God is the human being fully alive and the life of the human consists in beholding God.' ...And I am fully alive beholding GOD!" ~ Ann Voskamp, one thousand gifts, pg 118

waiting

Learning to wait is a grace for a woman who fears God. Waiting with a gentle spirit is a miracle–a beauty, an acquired habit that comes with practice and experience. Choosing to take today in its stride–choosing to see the glory of the moment in the midst of frantic children, choosing to look for beauty and the fingerprints of God in the midst of the messes requires a heart decision–Psalm 27 says, “Let your heart take courage–let it–make it, choose to let your heart fill up its boots to the power of God’s abiding grace. Choosing to believe that my prayers have not hit the roof of my home and gone no further, but that God indeed is present.

from "The Never Ending Issues of Life- how to endure gracefully" by Sally Clarkson's blog I Take Joy, 27 June 2011

(art credit: Waiting for the Boats by Philippe Lodowyck Jacob Frederik Sadee, 1881)

The Secret of Fufillment

Wisdom from Carolyn Mahaney and the GirlTalk blog, from The Secret of Fulfillment

"Recently, at the end of a conference session where CJ and I fielded questions, a woman approached me with a query of her own: “So what do you do on the side?” she inquired.

“On the side?” I echoed, not fully comprehending her question.

“What do you do for personal fulfillment?” she sought to clarify. “You see I’m happy my husband has his ministry because that provides him with personal fulfillment. But I pursue my own hobbies because they provide personal fulfillment for me. So,” she repeated again, “What do you do?”

I was unprepared for her question. And I’m sure my answer was insufficient. (How often I have an eloquent answer after the conversation is over!) If I had it to do over again, I’d tell her about Dorothy.

Dorothy was a woman who knew the secret of true “personal fulfillment.” A single mom whose husband left her with a son to raise, Dorothy didn’t spend time worrying about herself. Instead, she was always serving and caring for others. I knew her because she was my Sunday School teacher. And Dorothy was one of the most joyful women I knew.

At my bridal shower everyone wrote down a piece of advice on a slip of paper. I only remember one, and it was Dorothy’s. Her secret to a fulfilled life? “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).

Our culture is constantly telling us to find our life; that we’re the center of our world, and as such, we need to take care of “me” first.

But when I’m the center of my world, my world becomes very small—because I’m the only person in it. When I try to find fulfillment in anything besides loving Christ and serving Him, I will only end up more frustrated and completely unfulfilled.

Now, don’t misunderstand. I think we as women should express our creativity, and even more importantly get sufficient rest. But the purpose of creativity should be to glorify God with our gifts, not to find “personal fulfillment,” and the goal of rest should be to strengthen us for service.

If we want “personal fulfillment" as women, we must not follow our culture’s prescription. Rather, we must lose our life for Christ's sake. Then, amazingly, we'll find that our world expands. We'll know the thrill of seeing the fruit of our sacrificial service in the lives of those around us. So for true "personal fulfillment," let’s follow Dorothy’s example as she followed Christ."

(art credit: Mothers by Kathleen Green)

different

"Being a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but being a Christian makes me a different kind of woman,”

Elisabeth Eliott

but how?
different in what way?
I immediately think to Romans 12:2-

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect...


(art credit: Female Head (La Scapigliata) by Leonardo DaVinci, c. 1508)

Over and over again

"Good manners have been elevated to the level of Christian righteousness.

 ”Moralistic parenting occurs because most of us have a wrong view of the Bible. The story of the Bible isn’t a story about making good little boys and girls better. As Sally Lloyd-Jones writes in The Jesus Storybook Bible:

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne—everything—to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life.

This is the story that our children need to hear and, like us, they need to hear it over and over again."

from "The Danger of Moralistic Parenting," by Elyse Fitzpatrick, on The Resurgence blog

Kids behaving well is good, and it is very convenient, but it is not enough and it is not the end.
Do I show my kids the same Grace that the Lord has shown me?
How do I find that right balance of justice and mercy?
That is some of what I struggle with.
And that is why I go back to that Story of rescue, the Story that is True, over and over again.

(illustration by Jago, from The Jesus Storybook Bible)

A Mother's Calling

"Mothers who understand that God desires "godly offspring" (Mal. 2:15) realize what an important part they play in fulfilling God's desire. It takes diligence, hard work, and faith to raise godly offspring for God, but it is a soul-satisfying work." ~ Nancy Wilson

"God had things He wanted me to learn that I could only learn as a mom at home. He still does. I have come to believe that staying at home is as crucial to my personal and spiritual development as it is to that of my children." ~Allie Pleiter

if I don't draw close...

But I go to church, often only because I am dragging them with me, and often because if I don’t draw close to the liturgy and the Cross and the blessing, I may well go stark-raving mad.
- Tony Woodlief, "Confession of a child-dragging churchgoer," WORLDmag.com, March 18, 2011

Reading this piece by Woodlief, I remember all too well those years of dragging little ones to church. 
Little ones who didn't want to sit still. 
Little ones who couldn't whisper.
Little ones who may or may not have been thunked on the noggin when they fussed with one another.

There were the years of being THAT close to getting out the door when a distinct odor halted the entire operation until a diaper was changed.
There were the years of trying to take toddlers into the nursery, only to have them scream long enough that I would be called back, usually just in time for the sermon.
There were the years of "I have to go to the bathroom."  "Wait."  "I have to go to the bathroom."  "Wait." "I have to go to the bathroom.  NOW!"

Now, they know how to sit still and they get themselves dressed and fed and they don't need snacks or quiet toys for the service.
And even so, some Sundays I get that same pull to stay home,  only now it's because "I don't want to go..." and "why do I  have to go?" and "I'll go but you can't make me go to Sunday school..."
Dragging big ones to church can be equally as hard, in a completely different sort of way.

But I go to church, often only because I am dragging them with me, and often because if I don’t draw close to the liturgy and the Cross and the blessing, I may well go stark-raving mad.

I slip into the pew and bow my head and utter the same prayer as I have for all these years.
Please Lord, meet me here this morning.
Please Lord, show me your Glory.
Please Lord, show me your Grace.


And He does.
He speaks through the Word and the song and the prayer.
He shows Himself in people and community and fellowship.

We never leave the same as when we arrived.
Thankfully.

Earnest, Secret, Believing

Earnest, secret, believing prayer should never cease to be daily presented for our offspring...That parent has neglected a very important branch of his duty, who has suffered one single day to pass by without bearing his children upon his heart before God in private prayer. -- John Angell James

As I read this, I reflected on the amount of time I really do spend in prayer for my children. While I spend much time in prayer for them, I also recognize that there needs to be particular times of "going to battle" for them on my knees before the Throne. May our Lord give us wisdom as we intercede on their behalf!

The Lord IS my shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd. Psalm 23:1

"Not was, not may be, nor will be. "The Lord is my shepherd."
He is on Sunday, on Monday, an through every day of the week. He is in January, in December, and every month of the year. He is when I'm at home and in China. He is during peace or war, and in times of abundance or poverty."
- J. Hudson Taylor

Just a Few Qs...

I stumbled across this blog, Pyromaniacs, today. I wanted to share this article with you entitled,
"Are you sure you want a husband who...?". It is thought provoking and challenging.

What do you think?

Our marriages has a profound effect on our children. Let's consider how we view the calling to be wives.

Inspiration from Titus 2

Family Focus, Part A
Family Focus, Part B
The Biblical Role of a Woman, Part A
The Biblical Role of a Woman, Part B
by Alistair Begg, senior pastor at Parkside Church near Cleveland OH.


Click on the titles above to hear wisdom and inspiration from Titus 2 on marriage and raising a family.

Share your thoughts!

"The Joyful Impossibility"

I faced the fact that in order to be a tool of grace, I desperately needed grace myself. In a moment of confessing and forsaking my delusions of autonomy and self-sufficiency, I faced my weakness of character, wisdom, and strength. I admitted to God and myself that I didn’t have inside of me what it takes to do the task I was called on to do. I did not have the endless patience, faithful perseverance, constant love, and ever-ready grace that were needed to be the instrument in the lives of my children that God had appointed me to be. And in that admission, I realized that I was much more like my children than unlike them. Like them, I am naturally independent and self-sufficent. Like them, I don’t always love authority and esteem wisdom. Like them, I often want to write my own rules and pursue my own plan. Like them, I want life to be predictable, comfortable, and easy. Like them, I would again and again make life all about me.

It hit me that If I were ever to be the tool of transforming grace in the lives of my children, I needed to be daily rescued, not from them, but from me! That’s why Jesus came, so that I would have every resource that I need to be what he has chosen me to be and do what he has called me to do. In his life, death, and resurrection I had already been given all that I needed to be his tool of rescuing, forgiving, and transforming grace.

- from Paul Tripp, "Parenting: The Joyful Impossibility,"

I can't even possibily begin to count the times that I have felt that my ability to parent well, yea- even to love well, was completely beyond the possibility of success.  Actually, I'd probably have more success counting the times I knew moments of competency!  Doubts began in the very beginning- they are allowing us to take this beautiful creation home? Sickness.  Discipline.  Growing independence. They continued even, especially, today- are we allowing our children experiences they will hate us for, or even worse- suffer for, in the years to come?  There are moments, days, seasons, in our home, in our family, that are painful, discordant, anguished. Desperate cries for rescue. And yet, there remains the light of hope, and of promise. 

... in order to be a tool of grace, I desperately need grace myself.

That is the truth that I cannot allow myself to forget, for their sake, for His...

(art credit: Grace by paintingtruth at etsy.com)

Stoked and Rekindled

After almost a year hiatus from Giant Faith, the passion to spur each other on to fulfill the magnificent calling that our Mighty Creator God has given us has been stoked and rekindled.

Seasons change. Our stories continue. Our stories are being unfolded. The symphony is being played just as the Great Composer has written it.

Let's continue to press on in this wonderful journey He has set before us to train up our children in the way they should go... for His glory and their good!

I pray that the following video will inspire you to soak up life and treasure every bit of it.

Figuring Life Out - One Thousand Gifts