Begin the Insurmountable with Love

Can I just remind you for a minute of what we have covered so far?  As a parent we are called to be just that, parents.  Because we have little (maybe even big) people that are younger than us and are under our roof, we have an important job in the kingdom of God and we have been CALLED to parent!  We are also called to be proactive in our parenting and prayers to ensure we are entrusting our children to God daily and seeking his path for them.  Only he knows that path and purpose for which they are here and it is all part of his master plan not ours.  So we are called to release the control and entrust our children to him.  But, we are to take his blueprint (the bible) and proactively use it to equip our children to make him the center of their lives, which will enable them to live out the fruits of the spirit (among other tenets of our faith) for the rest of their lives.  "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6

Holy guacamole?  Seriously?  I am questioning my ability to begin and continue that kind of parenting and would not be surprised if you all think I am pretty much off my rocker.  Isn't it enough to get through the day, end with a prayer and ask each child what their day's highs and lows were.  I mean really, we are only human.  But let me encourage you.  Do you know the story of Esther?

Esther was an Israelite that was born in Babylon during the exile period and remained there after many of the Israelites had returned to Jerusalem and the surrounding areas.  She was beautiful and became the Queen of Babylon which was unheard of in that time, since the Jewish people were the foreigners and the slaves in Babylon, thus the term exile.  Once she was the queen, her Uncle Mordecai uncovered a plot to annihilate the Jewish people living in Babylon. So Esther finds herself in an unusual position. She is Jewish but is also the Queen of Babylon, wife to the King.  Her Uncle encourages her that she is in a unique position to save her people because she has an assembly with the King as well as being Jewish.  She was unsure about what she should do.  She was afraid, I would imagine, of what the king might do to her if she were to defend this group of people, which were, paradoxically, her people.  Then Mordecai speaks the most amazing thing to her and she, through a seriously of carefully orchestrated events saves her people from annihilation and remains Queen of Babylon.  Ready for it?  Here is it: "For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish.  And who knows but that you have some to royal position for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14.  And who knows that you have come to parent these children at this time for such a time as this?  God's plan will be fulfilled in our children or around us regardless of our actions.  But can't we chose to be a part of it or not?  Remember the called parenting, we are in a unique position in our children's lives to entrust them to the Lord by encouraging them to make him their center and what better way to start than to train them to live out the fruits of the spirit?

As we walk through this I encourage you to keep a journal through this process!  I am a runner and I have an amazing group of women that I run with regularly.  We challenge each other, understand each other's pace, and ebb and flow with the different good and bad days of running.  They know that when I hit a hill, I put my head down, look at the ground and plug along up the hill.  Running is very mental for me.  If I look up to the top of the hill 9 times out of 10 I will stop and walk.  To see the top of the hill is daunting for me and feels overwhelming and insurmountable.  But if I put one foot in front of the other, look at the ground in front of me and keep going, 9 times out of 10 I beat the hill with strength and speed.  Looking up to the top of the parenting hill before me I could easily stop and continue on my normal parenting routine.  The task of helping my children find their journey to somewhere and training them to make God their center seems insurmountable. I was with an older friend the other day (80 years old to be exact) and he was talking about his children and how they are not walking with God and that he had read that faith (true living belief in God that influences the way you live) most often skips a generation.  I will look at the ground in front of me and conquer this parenting hill because I do not want faith to skip a generation.  I want to be a wave in a wonderful legacy that is full of love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  So keep a journal as we embark on this journey, because at points in the hill you will feel defeated and overwhelmed, but if you look back you will see the fruit of your labor.  There is beauty in not constantly focusing on the top of the hill, but in looking at where you started and how far up you are.

John 3:16..let's begin with the beginning of love as we should know it.  For kids, this is a great lesson.  Yes, they might be able to recite John 3:16, but do they understand what it means and what was given up for us?  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  John 3:16  Just to start have a casual conversation with your kids.  Do it while they are engaged in something else with their hands or bodies.  I am planning on a little gardening with them, and painting a chair in the garage.  Just ask some questions that will give you insight into their thoughts and spur a conversation on God's love for us.  What is your most favorite thing in your world?  What do you love to play with the most?  Who do you love at school?  Who is your favorite friend?  What is the thing you want most?  What if you had to give that up and never have it again?  What if you had to give it up for someone else who was not very nice to you? 

God gave his most cherished possession up for a group of people that were not very nice to him.  Sometimes they followed him, sometimes they loved him and sometimes they ignored him and even spoke negatively about him.  Follow your children's reactions and see what they come up with.  Then relearn John 3:16 with a child-like awareness of God's amazing gift.  Next week we will talk about love as an action and do some fun activities.

By His Grace

Training Them Up

Remember that verse in 1 Thessalonians? "We continually remember before our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 1:3)  Parenting is work that, at its best, is produced by faith in our humble ability to parent, prompted by our deep and intense love for our children and we are able to endure because we are inspired by our hope in our all-knowing and loving God.  Right?  But it is not that easy if we are being honest and my path to finding my children's journey is one wrought with confusion, frustration and a feeling of inadequacy.

Before I was a mother, I was a sales trainer in the software industry.  It was a challenging job, as sales people are energetic, action-oriented people with short attention spans, who have a hard time being told what they could do better or simply how to do something at all.  Sound like anyone who lives in your house?  I, however, had the task of translating all that marketing wanted the sales group to know into a palatable form that would stick with them and be useful for them in their sales cycles.  Hmmm...sounds a little like trying to parent my children to the journey God has for them.

To that end I believe that while there are many teachable moments as parents we are truly called to be trainers of our children.  Teaching and training are two different things, though each has its time and place.  Teaching is imparting knowledge and training is giving someone the ability to practice that knowledge repeatedly. So, while we are on the path of trying to help our children find the journey God has for them and while we are trying to impart biblical knowledge and standards through teachable moments, are we providing an opportunity to practice the use of that knowledge and how it might play out in their day to day lives. Which, by the way, is completely different than our day to day lives.

God's blueprint for parenting is the bible.  Remember in my last post I talked about how wonderful it would be if we all trained our children to move through their days using the fruits of the spirit while putting on the armor of God?  Now it is one thing for us to have our children memorize the scripture and talk about what it means, but are we creating opportunities for them to practice the use of the Godly skills that have been laid out for them?  The skills that will put them on God's path for them and keep them returning to him for guidance as we become less of their center and he becomes more.  It takes 30 days to change a habit.  Did you know that?  It is a little depressing when I think of the habits in my life that I would like to change.  But it also takes 30 days to create a habit!  That is much more exciting.

So this is what I have been working up to.  We are called to parenting, not just challenged. We have the perfect blueprint in the bible and I am setting on a journey to train my children up to seek God and to ultimately turn to him as their center and not to me.
"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6

For the next seven months I will be training my children in the fruits of the spirit.  I plan to talk to them about the fruits but also give them opportunities to practice those fruits and talk about how they can change the way they view situations.  I will share my ideas and activities with you and would love for any of you to join this journey.

I am stepping out prayerfully in faith, prompted by both my love of God and my love of my children. I desire a journey to somewhere for them, not a race to nowhere, and will draw my endurance from the God that has truly inspired me.

The month of June is dedicated to LOVE!

By His Grace

God's Parenting Blueprint

As parents we are always looking for direction.  We want to understand the 'new' parenting methods.  I remember when my daughter was born, my step mother asked what the 'new' parenting book was, in her time it was Dr. Oz.  As believers, there is one parenting book and source that is the ultimate guidebook and resource and that is the bible.  Don't we want our children's foundation and life direction to come from the Lord?  In Hebrews 11:10 it says, "For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God."  Are we training our children to look for foundations that are built by the Lord and based on his principles and commands?

Another bible parent that truly struck me was David.  In 2 Samuel David is King of Israel and is a strong and Godly king.  He made some mistakes in his life, but all in all his heart was to serve the Lord.  One of the things David wants to do is build the temple for his God in the land that was promised to his people which they were finally inhabiting.  It is his heart's desire, the one thing that he continues to fight for and drive toward.  Then in 2 Samuel 7:5-16 God speaks to David through the prophet Nathan.  He basically tells him three things:

1. You don't need to build a house for me, I am not in need of one. (verse 5)

2. I have made you ruler and will make a house (and safety) for Israel (verses 8-10)

3. I will build my own house through my own son, who will be David's offspring, who is Solomon.  2 Samuel 7:13 says, "He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."

David responds with one of the most beautiful prayers I have encountered.  He does not say, bummer Lord, I really wanted that, I was hoping to be the one, I thought that I would be able to be the one to build your house.  Instead he thanks God for his sovereignty and acknowledges God's greatness!
"How great you are, O Sovereign Lord!  There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears".  So David sets out to prepare his son Solomon to be the builder of the temple.

There are so many parenting lessons in this story.  But the most poignant for me is the illustration that we need to equip our children to be their own temple for the Lord.  When Jesus died on the cross, we became the inhabited temple of our God.  He dwells in us.  If we are going to follow David's lead we need to be preparing our children to be temples for the Lord.  It gives me chills to think about that and also scares me to death.  How can we possibly do this?  Where is the direction and guide, where is the step by step process to parenting that will enable our children to walk with God inhabited in their hearts?

God has provided the blueprint.  If we seek a blueprint for parenting it is there for the taking.  The bible is the ultimate parenting blueprint.  As David provided a blueprint for the building of the structural temple, God has provided a blueprint for building the structural temple in our children's hearts.  God has made known to us through his word his direction for our lives and our children's lives.
"I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business.  Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."  John 15:15

Seek his word as your primary parenting book.  I challenge you to dissect it, learn it, create opportunities for your children to learn it and live it.  Is it going to be easy?  No!  But imagine the wake of generations behind you.  What if we all operated in the fruits of the spirit?  What if as a group, we Christians truly did put on the armor of God and we equipped our children to do the same?  What if we applied 2 Peter 1:5-7 to all situations in our lives and equipped our children to see through that same lens?

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence[Or virtue ],  and in your moral excellence, knowledge,
and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness,
 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:5-7

I plan to embark on a journey to somewhere, a place where my children learn and are engaged in the creation of their hearts as God's temple.  I will do this with God's love and Christ's perseverance ("May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance."  2 Thessalonians 3:5) and I will start with the fruits of the spirit.

By His Grace

Entrusting Our Children Daily

As parents we are controlling, right?  We have feelings and opinions about how our children should deal with situations, how they should react to their friends, how they should respond to adults, the list goes on and on and gets very detailed.  My daughter has this unruly, wonderfully curly hair and I know that if she used a certain brush and the hair product that I keep purchasing for her she would have these long curly tresses that would be the envy of all women everywhere.  Well, at least the ones like myself with straight hair.  I am constantly peaking into her bathroom as she gets ready and saying, did you put product on your hair, what are you trying to do, can I help?  Control of my children's lives, appearances, actions, habits is something that I deal with daily.

God wants us to release that control and to entrust our children to him daily.  Ugh...that is going to be hard, right?  However, if we entrust them we have truly placed them in the hands of someone who has their best interest at heart and knows exactly the path by which they will glorify him.  Do we believe in our God's ability?  If we do, then the entrusting of our children should be easy.  But it's not.

"...because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day." 2 Timothy 1:12

I want to trust him with them and I try daily to do so. One of the most amazing mothers I have encountered in the bible is Hannah.  In 1 Samuel 1 and 2 is the story of a woman who had been unable to get pregnant.  She desired a child, a son actually, with all of her heart.  She went directly to her God and prayed for a child.
And she made a vow saying, "O Lord Almighty, if you will look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life..."  I Samuel 1:11
She does become pregnant and she does more than entrust her child to the Lord.  Once he is weaned she actually gives him to the priest in the temple, Eli, and he is raised by Eli.  She visits him yearly and brings him a robe each year. (1 Samuel 2:19)  Can you imagine having a child, feeding him, then weaning him and actually giving him up to the Lord not only intangibly but tangibly?  I cannot, but I have great reverence for Hannah and the act of giving her child physically to God.  Hannah's son was Samuel who grew to be a man of God.
"...the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord." I Samuel 2:21b

While God has not called me to give my children to him physically, he has called me to parenting which involves trusting him and entrusting my children to his plan and abilities.  Because of what Hannah did and the knowledge I have of my God, I will make an effort every day, even in my humanness, to entrust my children to the one whom I believe and know that all things work together for his good.  Will it be easy?  No!  But...he has provided the best and most important parenting book. He has provided the parenting blueprint that is better than any other blueprint out there, the bible.  More on that next week!

By His Grace

Proactive vs. Reactive Parenting

If you are like me you tend to pray for help and guidance in specific parenting situations.  Lord, please enable Cole to enjoy baseball so we can get through the season.  Lord, please do not let Emma fall off that horse as she races around the barrels on a huge animal. These are reactive prayers; prayers to help a situation that is already in motion.  However, if we look at the successful kings and parents in the bible, they were proactive in their prayers and parenting.  Throughout 2 Chronicles and much if Israel's history, the successful kings were those who prayed to the Lord and asked where he would lead, into battle, into the land, where to build the temple, instead of prayers for success in a battle already at hand, or favor in a land they were already in, or blessing on a temple they had already created.

In Judges, there is a woman who is barren and is visited by an angel of the Lord who tells her that she will have a son.  She goes to her husband, Manoah, and tells him of her experience and his FIRST reaction is the following:  "Then Manoah prayed to the Lord: 'O Lord, I beg you, let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us how to bring up the boy that is to be born." Judges 13:8
Manoah went directly to God, proactively and asked for direction in bringing up the son he was promised.  That son turned out to be Samson, who, even in his faults, was a man of God.  Manoah entrusted his son to God before he was even born.  He started the parenting adventure by seeking God's direction while Samson was still in the womb.  Similarly, Hannah and Elkanah sought the Lord when they were pregnant with Samuel.  They proactively prayed that he would be a man of God from the beginning.
"She said, "Oh, my lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you, praying to the LORD. "For this boy I prayed, and the LORD has given me my petition which I asked of Him. "So I have also dedicated him to the LORD; as long as he lives he is dedicated to the LORD."  1 Samuel 1:26-28

The Lord wants us to be proactive.  When we are proactive everything tends to go better.  I just had a situation where this played out.  My son is a thoughtful and planned child.  He is not comfortable when he is rushed, he does not like to be late, and does not enjoy new situations if he is not appropriately ready and prepared.  This preparation includes the getting ready for, leading up to, circumstances around, and time during all situations.  Little League opening day just passed.  During the week I knew that I had to get his picture order envelope in, his uniform collected and tried on and be sure that I reminded him of the event the day before and the morning of the event.  So I did everything except the 'try on the uniform' portion.  As we started to run short on time the morning of opening day, I sent Cole to his room to put on his uniform knowing full well this might not go well.  After a couple minutes I walked in and found him crying at his mirror.  His pants were huge and we did not have time to sew them or exchange them.  He would not wear last year's pants because they were different and he is a rule follower and to him a uniform is a uniform.  I hugged him, pinned the back of the pants and we both dug deep for the grace to deal with the situation and to move forward.  He made it to the opening day and had a great time. 

Generally, we parents try to be proactive for our children in a lot of situations.  We try to be proactive but sometimes things fall through the cracks.    How much more important is it to start with proactive prayer and guidance in all parenting situations?  Do we trust God to come through?  Even in what we see as little stuff, like baseball opening day?  "...because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day."  2 Timothy 1:12
I am proactively trying to entrust my children to God each day.  I am excited to proactively parent them according to God's word and direction.  More on that next week!

By His Grace