In the trenches?

We all get busy and for moms of many, every day is busy.  Sometimes, life moves beyond the normal busy days and you find yourself in the trenches.  Have a new baby at home?...a virus turning your house upside down?...perhaps someone in the house has a chronic illness?  Whatever the trench you find yourself in, you know how it goes...  Your schedule has gone out the window, sleep is coveted but nowhere to be found, the laundry is piled up, homeschool lessons may be hit or miss, and the children are acting....well, less than perfect.  It's hard, the days can be long, and it's oh so easy to become discouraged!  However, you aren't in the battle alone.  The Lord is right there with you every step of the way - through every shed tear, every endless cleanup, every sleepless night.

When things have been tough for me lately, I've found it easy to slip into self-pity and despair but praise God, He has shown up and reminded of something so precious...so vital!  You may miss a math lesson, and history may seem to be well, history.....But no matter what the situation, you need not skip the one needful thing, that one good part!  You can still pray with and TALK TO your children as you go through your busy days, reminding them of their (and your) need of a savior, of God's goodness and unending grace and mercy.  You can point them to the love of Christ, teaching them to treat others with love.You can still look them in the eye and tell them that no matter what is happening, God is still good and Jesus is the answer to every situation.  Let them see you praise and thank Him despite your weariness...sing a song of praise while you are huddled in the trenches together. Don't let sickness or sleeplessness get in the way of pointing them to the Living Word at every opportunity!

I'm feeling so blessed...so thankful for God's mercy in this busy season of life.  Will you purpose to walk out, and talk out, your faith with these precious souls God has entrusted to you?  I'm starting fresh today....

When the flood comes

Somewhere along the way, many Christians have gotten the idea that once they put their faith in Christ, life will go smoothly...things will be a piece of cake.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  There is refining that must take place, a molding....being broken and reformed into someone more like our Lord.  It's a process, and it's often a painful one.  I want to be sure that my children understand the way it really is to serve Him.  The last thing I want is for them to buy into the idea that life will always be smooth sailing and nothing will ever bring them to their knees so long as they confess Christ as their savior.  However, I must be sure that they understand...no matter what they are going through He is still faithful, He can be trusted, and He has not forsaken them!!

One of the ways we can do this as parents is to not coddle them to much.  Don't shield them from everything in your life that is difficult.  We must let them see that their are trials to walk through...even crawl through on our knees in total dependence upon Him.  Show them that you have faith in Him no matter what the situation is...show them that He is to be trusted no matter what.  When we keep our trials from our children we may very well send them the message that bad things never happen when you are walking with Yeshua....that things are always easy and everything goes our way.  I'm not saying we have to give them every detail of our struggles.  But, when the big trials come, the ones that are more like a flood and you have to sink or swim, have faith or give up...you need to let them see you walk by faith and not by sight with a daily reliance upon the only One who can keep your head above water.

Raising Godly children

Around here we have been in somewhat of a valley for quite some time.  There have been many, many trials.  Over the past week, the trials seemed to be unending, coming from every direction and usually at the same time : )  However, through it all, God has of course been faithful!  And I give Him all the glory.  With all that has been happening, when my husband found me having a tearful moment yesterday he of course thought I was worried about bills, or the girls' recent illness, or something along those lines.  However when he asked what was wrong, I said something that I never would have said years ago...before Christ picked me up out of the miry clay and washed me clean.  I told him I was far more worried about raising children who love and live for the Lord than I was about paying the electric bill or anything else.  You see, troubles come...it's part of life.  There is no sense worrying about our food, shelter, and clothing because His word says there is no need to.  I know that God will work all those things out as He sees fit.

Now, I know that the salvation of my children is in His hand as well so I'm not really worried about that.  What I was tearful about is the example I set for them....how I live out my life for Christ before them through the years.  I don't want to fail...I can't let that happen.  I must do whatever it takes to give them a Godly example to learn from...I must feed them scripture daily for every situation in life...I must remember to praise and thank the Lord when things are hard instead of complaining!  It's a tough job...no doubt about it.  But it's one that I'm ready to tackle with a fresh determination.  Things have been pretty chaotic around here and I've let things fall by the wayside.  It's time to pick myself up, crawl into the lap of Jesus, pour out my heart to Him daily...and then let Him use me as He sees fit.  Times a wastin' as they say....    Moms who are in the trenches day to day with many children, don't let it overwhelm you to the point that you let things slip away.  Feeding and tending His sheep needs to be the top priority of every day!  Take your burdens to the Lord, and He will work it out.  In the meantime, keep quoting scripture, keep nurturing, keep disciplining.  Do it all for His glory and His namesake.

Scented memories

After I bathed the baby tonight, I was getting her diapered and dressed when I sprinkled some baby powder on her and thought "Wow...I will never tire of this smell." Smell is a wonderful sense....it can bring back a flood of memories. There are scents from my childhood that I can almost smell if I concentrate hard enough.

So the baby powder got me thinking....a lot. One day many many years from now, when all of my children are grown and there are no more babies, I hope that I will be able to look back and remember the smell of baby powder instead of remembering all the messes. I don't want to look back and think about all the hard work raising a quiverfull requires, the stains on the carpet, the worn out furniture, the bickering between siblings, or the constant need to clean something. I want to be able to just close my eyes and bring that baby powder smell to my senses....and remember the splashing in the tub, the laughter of siblings playing, rosy cheeks and messy hair in the morning, snuggling up on the couch and reading a good book to the kids, watching the babies grow into young adults, and all the other blessings that a houseful brings.

I want to cherish these years and hold them dear. Unlike so many, I'm in no hurry for them to be over. Children are given to us by God to love and disciple....not rush out the door thankful that our job is done. May we find joy and keep our focus during this season of life. It will be over far to soon.

What kind of fruit do you bear?

The Lord Himself has much to say about bearing fruit. There is a clear way for you and anyone who knows you to gauge whether you are truly a Christ-follower, or a Christian in name only....by the fruit that you bear! There are plenty of people who believe in Christ that aren't truly desiring to follow Him. The Bible teaches that even the devil believes in Christ!

Matthew 7:15-20 teaches that a good tree can't bear bad fruit and neither can a bad tree bear good fruit. So what kind of fruit are you bearing? If you are walking in the spirit you should be bearing those fruits....love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.... Does this sound like your life? Are you angry, bitter, and impatient? Do you love those that hate you? Are you gentle or harsh? Are you meek or obstinate? I would humbly like to suggest that if you aren't bearing good fruit, it's time to check your heart and life. Galatians 5:24-25 says "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."

If you claim to know Christ and find that you are bearing bad fruit....could it be that you are unregenerate? There will come a day when it will be too late to make it right. There is no time like the present to repent before a Holy God and start walking with the Lord....to surrender your whole life to Him. If you are living with one foot in this world and aren't fully surrendered to Him, it will be evident to those around you. How can we properly disciple our children if we aren't really disciples ourselves? For the sake of our children and the sake of our own souls, each of us that professes Christ with our mouths needs to be sure are hearts are aligned with His!

Waiting on the fruit...

If you are like me, you like to see immediate results from all your hard work. It's something I'm trying to get over but it's slow going for sure : ) The never ending task of helping our children to learn God's word, to learn to love one another and get along, and to learn fractions for that matter can be exhausting work. Sometimes I find my self asking "when oh when will I see the fruit of my labor?" It seems that lately my patience has really been tried and I have had to work extra hard to smile and speak gently to my children. Believe me it can be really hard by lunch time to keep up the happy face!

When I feel the fleshy side of me start to creep in, the only thing I can do is take a deep breath and give it to the Lord...again and again. He's the only one who can mold me and change me. Do I always overcome the flesh and look immediately to Him? Of course not....and when I lose my patience I repent....again and again. It's an ongoing process that is sometimes painful and a lot of hard work. It can be so hard to set the example of Godliness for our children but they ARE watching. Kids don't miss a thing believe me.

So, what's a mom to do? Keep looking to the Lord, keep praying and repenting, and keep loving those little blessings He has given us. I know that I will need to be in almost constant prayer today as we are all sick and feeling cranky. Praise the Lord that He hears our prayers all the time....even the ones we have to hurriedly send His way.

Gently leading or forcefully driving

It can be so hard to find a balance when training our children. Unfortunately, many parents become frustrated with the long process and find themselves losing their patience. When this happens, the flesh can take over and we can easily become harsh, overly critical, and very demanding. However, this is not the way our Lord deals with us. Now I understand that as believers we will suffer hardships and pain but our precious, patient Lord isn't standing over us yelling and demanding obedience. He LEADS us to where He wants us with grace, patience, and love.

This is the way we should be training our children.....grace, patience, and love. We need to show our children Christ in our daily living and behavior. Do we want them to see Him as impossible to please? Not at all.....Yes He has stringent expectations but HE IS mercy and grace and we should be pouring them out on our children. All the while, gently leading and encouraging them to chose the right paths....teaching directly from the scriptures starting at a young age....showing them that His word is the only source of absolute truth and that the Lord is to be obeyed in everything.

It's no easy task that's for sure. But it is one that should be of the utmost importance in the Christian home. Homeschooling lends itself very well to this sort of training. We are with them throughout the most important days and years of their lives, able to impart truth to them consistently and without the influence of secular anti-Christian teaching undermining our efforts. The job is difficult enough without these other influences.

So how are you training your children? Are you ignoring them until they are getting on your nerves and then raising your voice and issuing orders? Are you expecting them to know how to act and behave even though you aren't investing any time in teaching them? Or are you daily setting a Godly example and holding important conversations with them about God's truths? Are you keeping them close to you throughout the day and involving them in your life? Are you walking them through scripture and asking questions enabling them to think about God's word for themselves? Please don't say "This is what the bible says and this is what you are going to do..." That's not the answer! GENTLY LEADING is the key.....just like the leading of our Savior, The Good Shepherd.

Lessons learned in a large family

Large family life is the perfect setting in which to develop Godly character. How we act and how we treat other people is not only important to our testimony, it is important to the Lord. Teaching our children godly character can be very tricky. It means setting a good example for them day after day...modeling the sort of behavior we expect of them. In other words, we have to stay on our knees before the Lord asking him for the grace to keep our own character in check.

In a large family, there are SO many opportunities for each family member to learn SO many things.......patience, love, deference, loyalty, service, diligence, responsibility, peacemaking, orderliness, selflessness....the list goes on and on. It takes a lot of time and a lot of repetition to see the fruit but when our children are grown and teaching the same things to precious blessings of their own, the reward will be that much sweeter.

Now anyone who knows me personally certainly knows that our family by no means has it "all together". We have a looooonnnnngggg way to go in the character department : ) However, the Lord has led me to a place where there is no choice but to work much harder at developing Godly character in my children. I see things in my children that make me cringe and then fall at the feet of my savior and seek his direction....and ask for forgiveness. Why? Well, because I have failed to properly train my children in so many areas AND because so many of the things that make me cringe are things they got from watching me. It can be very painful to witness that's for sure.

You see, back when we only had two or even three children things were different. They were calmer, didn't argue that often, and things were pretty peaceful. However, over the years as the Lord has added more children to our family things got ahead of me and while they are basically well behaved, there are some areas where we could use some work. So character development is high on the list for our homeschool this year. It is coming second only to study of the Word.

Please don't misunderstand me. I know that some changes in character can only come through repentance and putting our faith in Christ....by having a total heart change. But we can help to develop good character but teaching them good habits, through lots of conversation, books, scripture, etc. And what better place to practice patience than in a large family? Oh the opportunities the Lord gives us each day!! His design for the family is so perfect....If only more Christians would realize what a blessing it is to surrender the womb to God.

Be careful what you say

I can't seem to let this go today. There is a lot to say about the way we speak to our children...and anyone else for that matter. But in regards to our children, if we want them to continue in the faith we need to be extremely careful how we live out our lives before them. My little blessings are waking up now and need my attention so I will close with a couple verses that sprang immediately to my mind when I finished the previous post.

Provers 15:1
A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

Colossians 4:6
Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.

Multi-generational faithfulness

My desire for multi-generational faithfulness has been weighing heavily on my mind of late. Just think about it....raising children who cling to the faith, who then raise their own children who cling to the faith, and then those children do the same, and so on and so on. I realize you can never count on ALL of your children, grandchildren, etc. following the Lord but if there were a strong commitment in every Christian home to make this a priority, what a difference we might see in the world!

So, how do we go about raising our children to continue in the faith? I can assure you it won't happen by living a halfhearted commitment to Christ. The Lord doesn't want lukewarm followers. Why would our precious ones want to share our faith if they don't see any excitement about it from us? Do they see you walking with the Lord daily and doing your best to serve Him with everything that you have? Do you take the time to teach them in the everyday moments of life about who He is and what He has done for us? Do they see you living like someone who is expecting the Lord to return at any moment? Have they seen you crying out to God in brokenness and repentance? Are you excited to get to church every week to seek shelter from the world and worship a Holy God?

Do you shower them with the grace your Savior has shown you....or are you always harsh and unforgiving? Do they see you clinging to the Lord and His word during the good times AND the bad? Are you living with one foot in the world and one in the church....walking with Him when it's convenient and doing what you please when it's not? Are you earnestly teaching them from the scriptures at an early age or do you assume they are to young to really understand, and put it off for another day?

We must do so much more if we want to pass our faith on to our children. My earnest prayer is that from this day forward I will pour myself out daily to live for Him and point my children to Him.....to follow the commands in Deuteronomy 6: 4-9:

⁴Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

⁵And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

⁶And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

⁷And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

⁸And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

⁹And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Speaking of grace....

For some reason I just can't seem to stop thinking about treating our children with grace. It's burning a hole in my soul : ) When I think of the way we can crush their spirits so quickly with just one harsh word it makes me want to cry out to God for help! Sometimes it can be so hard!

Sometimes a mom or dad may respond harshly or in anger because it's been a long, trying day with a houseful. Or maybe it's because they are all going crazy at once. Perhaps it may be something even deeper.....like the fact that they are behaving like children and some parents just can't stand the way children act. Most won't admit it of course but it's true! Adults need to remember that it was the Lord that created each individual child with their own quirks, strengths, and weaknesses! Some are quiet and some are not. Some have nothing to say and some never quit talking (I can testify to this because five of mine are girls!) Some are very active and some are couch potatoes. It's just the way He made them. Now I know that their is a difference between kids being kids and sinfulness....which of course needs to be dealt with (also with grace as the Lord deals with us). But when they are just being kids sometimes we need to just let it go.

Our children love us so much - something else the Lord put inside of them. They just want to have our attention and feel loved in return. Unfortunately we are sometimes tired and often selfish. We want peace and quiet - something that is hard to find in a houseful of blessings : ) How often do we send them off to another room to play because they are making us crazy only to be irritated with them later when we find they have made a mess? A lot of the things that irritate us could be avoided if we would simply keep them WITH us instead of scattered throughout the house. We would be there to listen to them, laugh with them, and immediately address sin/heart issues. Proverbs 29:15 says "The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."

It is my firm belief that we need to pour ourselves out serving, training, AND enjoying our children. After all, Jesus told us we must die to self and serve him. How much harder it will be for our children to grow up to serve Him and die to self without the help of a godly example!

Hmmm.....selfishness and not letting God control the size of your family. Another post may be brewing : )