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