Making the Most of Every Opportunity

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, ...