Your child truly can do all things through God who gives them strength. God has amazing plans for your son or daughter. So encourage them to seek him in faith, love, and obedience. Remind them that their feelings of frailty or insignificance are okay because that’s the ground level where God starts building.
Read MoreAs soon as my son became mobile, I became increasingly aware of the difficulty of connecting with people on Sundays. Unless someone is willing to walk with me through the halls as we chase the child like shadows, most conversations are cut off mid-sentence. While many are quick to laugh it off, it’s difficult to ignore the low-level frustration that settles in as I attempt to placate the interrupted interaction with the often empty promise: “We’ll talk more next week!”
Read MoreYet we recognize both lanes are headed in the same direction—godly Christian maturity. That direction aims to reach a destination: each Christian boy should aim to be a godly man one day, and each Christian woman to be a godly woman one day. The right direction leads to the right destination.
Read MoreYet we know the sacred responsibility we have as Christian parents to teach our children to pray from the heart. We know that however simple a prayer may be, it must be sincere. And we know that the Bible—especially the Lord's Prayer—instructs us richly in how to approach God. So if you sometimes find yourself, as I do, settling into superficial prayer with your kids, I want to encourage you with a simple method that has helped my family pray with more biblical balance and sincerity.
Read MoreNeedless to say, Sunday morning is a marathon. That’s true when I roll in right on time, let alone early enough to bear the burdens of other believers, mingle with members, and greet new guests. But again, I got to church early, so we might as well make the most of it. What I give up is an extra twenty minutes on the sunrise side of Sunday morning, and what I gain is a glimpse of earth as it is in Heaven.
Read MoreThen I paused: Wait — that’s the gospel. That’s why Jesus came! The entire meaning of Christmas is bound up in this beautiful truth: We were so deeply stained by sin that we could do nothing to save ourselves, nothing to remove the wickedness within. We needed to be completely remade. We needed a Savior to come into the world and pay the penalty we could not pay.
Read MoreSince God cares about this, so should we. Our families can play a vital role in God’s global plan even without leaving our local communities. We can fulfill our role as the primary disciplers of our kids and guide our families in cultivating a heart for the nations. And it doesn't have to be time-consuming.
Read MoreWe want our kids to honor the Lord in everything, so others would see their lives and give glory to their Father in Heaven (Matthew 5:16). This is God’s purpose in creating humanity, and it’s also our objective in parenting. In the midst of all the conversations about how to help our kids discover who they are, we’ve completely overlooked the importance of teaching them what they are: human beings, created in God’s image.
Read MoreWe have an opportunity to tell the sufferer and the struggler, “The result of walking with the Spirit will be goodness in your life, and goodness is good for you and for everyone else.” Yes, we will suffer. Yes, we will struggle. But how sweet it is of God to grow goodness in our lives through our relationship with him! It’s okay to be okay, and it’s more than okay to stay that way.
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