Making the Most of Every Opportunity

Spending today looking back and thanking God for the incredible gift of our firstborn son. He waited two extra weeks beyond my due date and only came because the doctors went in after him. He cried continuously for weeks. He was a projectile vomiter. And yet the JOY he brought into our lives is indescribable. How was this 6 years ago? I'm so very thankful for our solid helper. Our always smiling, incredibly tall, son with gorgeous eyes. The kind hearted big brother who leaves his friends to be sure his little brother has a playmate. The quality time guy who thanks us for playing games and reading books with him and tells us he knows we love him because we do. Our silly, funny kid. The boy who asks hard questions and does not jump quickly as he seeks for himself to see if he believes that God is the loving, true Savior that we've taught him He is. Oh what a joy and privilege to be his Mommy. Thank you Lord for this good and perfect gift from you to our family.

Since I posted some ways to engage hearts and not just entertain our kids on rainy days, I thought I'd go ahead and share the Bibles and family devotional we use.  1) Young Kids Bible Storybook-  Jesus Storybook Bible - such a great bible storybook for even the smallest child and you can watch videos of it online too! Here's part of the Christmas story video: 2) School age full text Bible-  ESV Seek and Find Bible - great full text bible with LOTS of pictures for young readers! 3) Awesome Devotional-  Long Story Short : Ten Minute Devotions to Draw Your Family to God, Marty Machowski- Great family devotional that dives into the Word!

Playing together is so fun! But rainy, yucky days that go on day after day are hard. I'm praying we will begin to see that they are also opportunities to share Christ in our time at home with our young kid s. So I pray our hearts will stay on Him, our kids will burn some energy in fun activities, and we'll engage their hearts in our time spent with them. I shared lots of ideas how in my last 2 posts (read them here and here ), but here are a few more: 1) Read your kids favorite Bible stories and then help them make a picture book to tell the stories to others! 2) Listen to audio books that engage and pour Christ in through allegory! We love The Chronicles of Narnia, The Mighty Acts of God (narrated bible stories with family discussion questions/application) and when a bit older, Adventures In Odyssey.  3) Clean the house together . It is so good to instill hard work and serving others into our children. Find the fun things (like racing each other while sorting cloth...

I shared in my first post that I desire to do more than just entertain my kids on long indoor days. I want to engage their hearts and pour Christ into them. I know many of you are facing the same long days we do with the same desire for your time to be spent pouring into them. So here is another handful of ideas for yucky weather indoor days spent for the glory of God: 1) Pray for family members. Then make construction paper cards to encourage them with things you love about them. Decorate the cards with stamps, stickers, markers or whatever you have around. This is also a fun time to call people you love and tell them you love them. 2) Teach your kids about the important role a person that loves them has and make a short video to thank them . Example- Teach how God calls the husband to love his wife, provide for his family, etc. Share how God loves what a hard worker Daddy is and we are so thankful for him. Pray for Daddy and then plan and make a short video (usually on my phone)...

In Florida, I tend to spend summer inside (since it's so hot) and winter outside, since it's beautiful here then.  I love to read ideas for indoor play. We don't mind tv/movies, but really like to use that minimally and instead I want to engage my kids. If I'm honest, most of the lists I read online are fun ideas that engage body and mind, but totally neglect the heart. I want to enjoy time with my kids in fun ways, but always intentionally pointing them to Jesus. And long summers (or long winters for my friends up north) provide an opportunity to do that within our home. Day after day after day. How do I entertain them for months? Eek! I'll post a few posts with some things I've done that both entertain AND engage the heart. Here's today's list: 1) Genesis 1 creation art. Go as creative as you want doing layers with different art/craft supplies. Paint sky and land and water, then draw/color plants, then make play dough animals, and last make pipe ...

"Jesus said,  “ Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."   And he laid his hands on them and went away." - Matthew 19:14-15 Though days with my five year old are filled with conversation that often lead to things of God, days with my one year old are much simpler. And I'm enjoying the opportunity to pour Christ into him now in simple ways that I pray will one day produce the fruit of the gospel down the road as he grows.  My sweet one year old enjoying God's creation There are some obvious things we do: praying for him each evening and together at meals, reading baby's first bible, pointing out things God made (the trees, birds, our toes, grass, big brother), sitting together at church in corporate worship before the sermon/kids classes, etc.  But there are a few intentional things I do in the "everyday" of life to prepare the way for Jesus conversations to be normal and daily in ou...

We just reread the chapter in  Sammy and His Shepherd , by Susan Hunt where "My Friend" (Sammy's dear friend from the other pasture) is rescued by the Good Shepherd. My eyes are welling up as I think of Him renaming her "Precious". She's ratty, scrawny, and needy. Yet He sees her as precious. So thankful for this reminder of how my Good Shepherd knows me, sees me clearly and still came and rescued me... and now He calls me precious. Does anyone else ever feel like kids books are really more for parents? Amazon's Product Description: In Sammy and His Shepherd, veteran children's writer Susan Hunt takes youngsters on a delightful trip through Psalm 23 from the point of view of a sheep named Sammy. Sammy lives happily under the care of his faithful shepherd. But one day he meets a sheep from another flock, one who lives in misery because her shepherd is not so caring. Eventually, to the delight of both of them, Sammy's shepherd buys the needy littl...

Last weekend I shared a post (you can read it here ) about remembering and learning from those who have gone before us. A few of you asked what we teach our kids about death and dying. This is a short response that I hope helps. We all know that life here doesn't go on forever and we all will die. But we don't often talk about it. And trying to explain death and "afterlife" to our kids in a way that brings truth-filled hope can feel overwhelming. We love sharing the gospel with our kids and certainly strive to share often that heaven is real, Jesus is real, He willingly died, taking on all God's wrath (anger/punishment) for sin, and then He rose again. The Bible says that because of that now those who are His will live forever in heaven. But one day, I received a phone call saying that our good friends' baby died and the mommy was in danger of dying. My son was there as I received the call (and had to call and tell others). The next week Andy's Da...

We are learning as we parent just how full of sin our hearts are. Though we are starting to address it in our kids, God is drawing out our hearts and it's been beautiful. I shared in this series how change comes from the heart, outward and we use many ways to help our kids see their sin and also know Jesus who loves us and draws His own out  of sin and gives us new hearts to love Him. Read these posts about 1) our hearts , 2)   how parents can choose ease instead of heart training , 3)  questions to draw out the heart , 4)  when to go the next step beyond questions , and 5)  what our correction process looks like . We are not hopeless in sin. We are confident that God changes hearts and brings freedom. So that is what we teach. We teach it from His Word and through our daily actions and conversations. "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh ...

Please read post 1 , 2 , 3 , and  4 to gain a better perspective of this post. All correction in our home comes from a loving call from God to engage our children to see their hearts, know their need for a Savior, and see the incredible love and grace of Jesus Christ who is that Savior. Today, we'll look at our "next step" beyond questions in correction when there is outright disobedience. God lead us here through a children's pastor (who our friends introduced us to through a conference cd) As he shared his wisdom and experience with a local church body, we gleaned so much biblical truth. We later read a similar process in Tedd Tripp's book, "Shepherding A Child's Heart" . *Let me stress here that I believe the MOST loving thing God has done was to lay down His life for us. Correction shows love and is an important way to show Christ's love for us, but I do not say it's the only or even the best way . Just one way to show love out of ...

I've shared throughout these posts about our call as parents to show our boys their heart of sin so they can better see the beauty of Christ's great forgiveness for those who are His and how by beating death, He redeemed ALL that our sin destroys. You can read more in post 1 , post 2 , post 3 . Before I share our full process of correction in sin, I thought I should share how we gauge when to correct. We always look at character and heart, not action! Many things are bad and harmful, but we want our boys to see their sin and seek God. We know that once they are Christ's, their actions will begin to change over time to reflect Him. So we set boundaries to reveal their sin and teach them God's ways.  "Train up a child in the way he should go;  even when he is old he will not depart from it." - Proverbs 22:6 We start showing their sin while they are young. This is to lay a foundation of boundaries and show them how they continually fail. Seeing sin and failu...

I've been sharing about our hearts. In post 1 I said that everything we say and do flows out of our hearts. In Post 2 I shared my tendency to want an easier way than the time it takes with my kids to help them see their hearts. Some of you have (naturally) asked what process we go through with our children to help them see their sin. We have nothing new or unique to us, just what we appreciated as solid biblical truth expounded on by Paul Tripp in his dvd conference "Getting to the Heart of Parenting" and by his brother, Ted Tripp in his book, Shepherding a Child's Heart (discipline process on page 150). Both are amazing and I highly recommend getting them and going through them as a couple. Our main purpose in these questions is to help Jimmy (and Caleb one day) to see that everything he does flows out from his heart... and that is where the lasting change in him will come from as well. Always from the heart outward... "... for out of the abundance of t...

For the   Lord   sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the   Lord   looks on the heart.”  - 1 Samuel 16:7 I shared in my first post in this series how the Bible teaches that our our behavior flows from our hearts. I've been watching myself as I parent. Some days I'm SO tired from conversation after conversation with Jimmy. We have a whole process we go through to address his disobedience. We start with 5 quick questions for him to show Jimmy how the disobedience came from his heart. Sometimes, we then go through a correction/discipline and prayer time. Always, he gets to "try again" and be fully restored. It's really cool to walk through his sin with him and come out fully restored. We have no anger or hardship afterwards, but can continue on in our fun as family. We have AMAZING conversations about Christ during it, BUT, it's a long process and as sin compounds on sin, sometimes I can't even remember when we started or what ...

“ For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit,   for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.   The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. "-  Luke 6:43-45 Jesus was teaching that whatever we see on the outside of people (good or bad) reflects their hearts.  We've been teaching Jimmy that his actions show where his heart already is. And God is teaching us that our words and bad attitude flow right out of our hearts of evil too! I'm so thankful to learn this truth. My bitterness towards someone or anger at Jimmy and Caleb for disobeying isn't because of them! If I'm really grounded in Christ, then my desire will be to lay down my life for them. But since I think of myself and how they "wrong" me, ...