One of my most responded-to posts–“A Letter to My Children About Marriage” revisited today at Raising Homemakers…
“Should the Lord give you the good gift of a husband or wife, and I hope He does, there are a few things I want you to know. Things that you may not hear from anyone else, and certainly not on TV or other media. Sadly, your church may not even tell you.” Read the rest.
Who was He? This Jesus?
“I want to be like Him.”
That is what a Christian is, right? A “follower of Christ”…one who has devoted his life to “becoming like Him”?
All the while we seek the easier virtues, the more visible ones.
Joy: we can be joyful. Bold: we can be bold. Different: we can be different. Zealous: oh yes.
And while Christ was all these things, they did not define Him. What defined Him was the one crowning virtue from which all others spring forth….
Humility.
(Am I like Him?)
But not humility as in some posture before the throne, some temporary form during prayer and worship…
“True humility is to be made of no reputation…it is in our most unguarded moments that we truly show who we are and what we are made of. To know a truly humble person, you must follow that one in the common course of daily life.” -Andrew Murray, Humility
I am pierced to the heart as I measure my love for Him.
“It is a solemn thought that our love for God is measured by our everyday relationships with others. Except as its validity is proven in standing the test of daily life with our fellowmen, our love for God may be found to be a delusion.” -Andrew Murray, Humility
I am broken as I recount yesterday’s harsh words…an “invitation” to wrath, a lack of longsuffering with these little, gangling sheep in my care.
(Am I like Him?)
“It is in our relationships with one another, in our treatment of each other, that true lowliness of mind and a heart of humility are seen.” -Andrew Murray, Humility
If I am a Christian–one desiring to follow Christ–I must make it my FIRST aim to become “nothing”, empty, so that He can fill me with His spirit…a spirit of meekness and humility. It is only when I know that I am nothing, that I can esteem others better than myself.
“Let this mind be in you…”
If I strive for anything in this life, it must be a giving up of my own will to be conformed to His image. It is the only true mark of a disciple.
“Humility is the only soil in which virtue takes root; a lack of humility is the explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a virtue along with the others, but is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God and allows Him, as God, to do all.” –Andrew Murray, Humility
(Photo by Bria, courtesy of Robin @ Celebrating Motherhood)
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon)
Is it possible, in this noisiest-of-ever-century, that we hardly ever hear, hardly ever see anything much?
Have you ever noticed your world when the power goes off? It’s not just that you can’t check you email…it’s a deafening silence that might drive some crazy if it lasted long enough. All the hums and quiet roars are dead, and we are left with much less–or is it more?
I think if we don’t live on purpose, we won’t live at all. If we don’t see through the daily whir, and hear through the daily buzz, we might just miss the life we were intended to live.
If you’ve lived very long, you know that life isn’t that long. Can we say as someone did,
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”
It’s not hard, really. It’s not “sky-diving and Rocky-mountain climbing”…
It’s another warm hug today.
It’s stopping, looking up, smiling, listening, being in the moment fully.
It’s choosing to cast a gentle glance in the direction of one you love, rather than a day-worn scowl.
A walk outside, closing your eyes, and raising your face to the warmth of an autumn sky.
Saying out loud to your children…”Isn’t this world glorious–the one our Lord created?”
Curling up to read Dr. Seuss again, ending with a tickle.
Noticing the forlorn look in your daughter’s eye and being willing to stop your day to draw it out.
Speaking words of life into someone’s heart, taking time to really hear what they are saying, instead of what you are going to say when they’re done.
All these smallish things, woven together over a lifetime…that makes a life well-lived.
Live deliberately if at all.
(Need practical help and encouragement as a mom? When Motherhood Feels Too Hard–the book that will change the way you parent.)
Their naps fall right at cleaning up from lunch and wrapping up morning school stuff, and right before a full afternoon, squeezing all the life out of it I can.
“Will you tell me a story about a horse that poops butterflies?” He wants one about monster trucks. Again.
I was busy. I tell lots of stories. Today I needed to hurry and do…
more important stuff.
And I knew instantly, though she didn’t complain, what I was about to miss.
It’s the thousand small things in a day–the tiny, rhythmic motions that assure a child all is well, life is sure and steady.
It’s my choice to value our short story time as much as the other things, to tell her, by my stopping, that this–she–is the more important stuff.
Don’t we like to think that parenting greatness comes in big, lofty moments? That would be easier. But everything good happens slowly, steadily, growing almost imperceptible over time, through the ignoble, and it’s no different growing people. Maybe that’s why fewer and fewer are signing up for full time parenthood.
Simple. But excruciatingly hard.
And whether it’s telling a nap time story, waiting patiently for a shoe-tying rookie, or putting the broom down because my teenager needs to talk, if I rush through it, or neglect it altogether so I can be “on to bigger things”, I’ve missed the bigger things already.
“We cannot do great things on this earth. We can only do little things with great love.” -Mother Teresa
I’ve used the term “warrior mother” before and I like that word. I think it is accurate, and oddly ironic up against the culture’s drum beat of “I am woman, hear me roar.”
If we could pin point just one place where more erosion to our society has occurred, it is without a doubt the HOME. Broken marriages–the home. Troubled children–the home. Redefining of traditional family life–the home. Women broken and searching for their own worth–the home.
The home is a concentrated point of attack from an enemy who seeks to steal, kill and destroy.
In battle, a known point of attack would be heavily fortified and guarded. I find it no coincidence that “keeper” as in “teach them to be keepers at home” from Titus 2, is translated from a Greek word meaning “to guard.”
Sadly, our enemy has done a stellar job at offering all the right decoys, blinding us to the very NEED to defend home.
We are warriors in the greatest, spiritual sense. Fighting for our homes, our marriages, our children and our own integrity as women of God.
This isn’t about “well, good for you but I’m not made for that sort of thing…it’s not my calling.”
If we have homes, we are called. But we are not called to go at it alone! God has always called the weak and the incapable and then when they admitted, “I can’t do this!“, He replies, “I will go before you…my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
Part of the fighting will be against the battle that rages within us. We can’t give up. Here’s what we do:
We ARE called. We are called to fight, defend, guard and build our homes. To build a legacy that will continue beyond us.
The question is, will we answer?
“His master said, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’..”
Happiness…we orchestrate our lives around finding it, yet it’s like grasping oil through fingers.
Why is it so hard to find? “I’ll be happy when…”
Because contentment, the thing we’re really wanting, is NOT found in our circumstances. Happiness is not a better something, more of something, or a different something. We immerse ourselves in the search for that “something” that doesn’t exist to make us happy.
Happiness is finding peace wherever we are.
We tend to view hardship, loss and waiting as surprising elements of life. We avoid them at all cost (this is natural, of course) and maintain that we could never find happiness there.
The reality is that hardship, loss and waiting are every much a part of life as prosperity, gain and “arriving”.
Life is made up of all these things and contentment is found when we rest in His knowing, His love and His goodness in ordaining whatever comes to pass.
I’m writing this to myself, learning hard–in this place–what true contentment is. It feels like I could be really content when there is more quiet spaces in our home, more room to put our clothes, more shelves for organizing our things, more sleep, more security for my husband’s future work, more counter space on which to cook…
My storm really began after the tornado. The battle for inner calm amid chaos and uncertainty. It brews even now, in the daily challenges to keep this home, to solve the dilemmas waiting each morning, to find contentment in the world that defied my best efforts to keep it constant and unchanging.
And then we all lose perspective, don’t we? Our “problems” so petty compared to others’.
Life is changing. Life is sometimes good and sometimes not. God loves us all the same and promises, not to orchestrate each detail to make us more comfortable, but to be sufficient in every place.
Learning from a tubless bathroom shared by eleven people 😉
(continued from Part 1...) Thinking Like a Christian–Part 2 What Does the Bible Say About Public School?
“There is no God and no soul. Hence, there are no needs for props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or permanent absolutes …. Teaching children to read is a great perversion and a high literacy rate breeds destructive individualism … the child does not go to school to develop individual talents but rather are prepared as “units” in an organic society …. The change in the moral school atmosphere … are not mere accidents, they are the necessities of the larger social evolution. -John Dewey, “Father of Modern Education”
If once we understand that the government actually teaches a religion–Secular Humanism (John Dewey declared Secular Humanism as “our common faith” and it has been granted a tax-exempt status as a religion)–the Christians’ duty should be clear. Just as I would not allow any other religious institution to educate my children (this would be precisely a “false god or teaching”), so I should not consider the most dangerous religion of all…worship of man and his wisdom.
“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday School’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?” Charles F. Potter, Humanism: A New Religion (1930)
“”The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new – the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism…”
John J. Dunphy, “A New Religion For A New Age”“I think that the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny how to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16tends toward the elimination of religious superstition. The average American child now acquires a high school education, and this militates against Adam and Eve and all other myths of alleged history.” -P. Blanchard, “The Humanist”
(For more chilling humanist quotes and the aim of public education…Quotes and Dirty Little Secrets for as many shocking quotes about the intent of public education as one can stand in a day.)
The Bible does instruct us how to educate our children: in “the way he should go” and “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”. Are these mere cliches, or do we study them and allow them to permeate our lives and our parenting?
If we are to train our children “in the way they should go”, it goes without being said that the their education MUST be Christian. If we are to avoid false teaching, we certainly can’t give our children to the tutelage of a truth-hating system (regardless of where a particular teacher stands). If we are to disciple them in the instruction of the Lord, we must be with them more than anyone else. We must talk to them more than anyone else. We must tie our heart strings to theirs, talk to them in the thousands of moments of life about wisdom, showing them how to walk in the ways of the Lord in the details of the day. This is difficult enough to do without the daily influence of a teaching system opposed to our values.
Moreover, the only true knowledge must begin with “the fear of the Lord”.
“Listen , my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. I give you sound learning, so do not forsake my teaching. When I was a boy in my father’s house, still tender, and an only child of my mother, he taught me and said, Lay hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands and you will live.”
“My son, obey your father’s commands, and don’t neglect your mother’s teaching.”
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deut. 6:6
“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.” 1 Corinthians 3:19
Scripture is clear: those who aren’t for Him are against Him. Those who do not walk in light walk in darkness. A worldview (i.e. education, standpoint from which one is taught) is either biblical or worldly, and those are at enmity. This is not neutral ground. We let them walk in the counsel of the godly, meditating in His law day and night, or the counsel of the ungodly, standing in the way of sinners, sitting in the seat of the scornful.
May we be vigilant to seek the Lord and allow His Word to permeate our lives, raising strong men and women of faith to advance the Kingdom of God into the next generation.
Are you a homeschooling mother who worries that you aren’t “doing enough”? Are you thinking of homeschooling but feel afraid that you aren’t qualified? If so, read more…
Join me today at Raising Homemakers for a powerful reminder of the most important tool we can give our children…
“‘Parenting is hard’. My friend announced their family motto. I agree with her 100%.
There’s the delicate balance between “training them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” and all that entails, and the work that only the Lord can do in a heart…We teach them character, to be thankful, to be cheerful to be servant-minded, but all those things must spring from a heart that acts in gratitude toward a risen Savior.
Sometimes it all seems to flow together naturally….
But sometimes, we see the Deceptor’s hand at work using love of Self to breed rebellion and ingratitude.
It brings every parent to the throne of grace faster than anything. We can talk, we can plead; but it soon becomes evident that only a work of God can soften that heart, bringing it to a place of joyful submission to the Lord….
We can’t change the heart. But there are things we CAN do do bring them toward the One who can…
Read all of “Training the (Deceitful) Heart: Giving Our Children the Mighty Weapons”
Most parents believe “school is neutral”, are not aware of any agenda outside of “no child left behind”, and often make decisions about educating their children based on visible traits–the reputation of their school, the teachers they know, etc. So if we are thinking like a Christian, what does the Bible say about Public School?
My intent for this series is two-fold: first, to reveal some history and background into the admitted agendas of key influences in the educational system, and get you to think beyond “is my school a good school.” See:
Public Education: Do Standardized Tests Measure Real Education?
A Closer Look at Public Education: Are We Trained to Serve the Economy?
Public Education: Do You Know?
More on “What’s Wrong With Public School” from Gatto
But secondly, to challenge Christian parents to evaluate their biblical responsibility for educating their children.
Education is NOT neutral, even from a secular standpoint. Social agendas in the last 60 years or so are gaining momentum and academic interests are taking a backseat while our children are being indoctrinated with values not our own. The system is, by and large, interested in making “good citizens”, and often see the family as a hindrance to that aim.
Definition of a “good citizen?” Docile, easily managed, believe-what-we-tell-you men and women driven by consumerism and not likely to challenge the status quo (or recognize the influence of said agenda).
“Schools today do not teach adequately the essential academic subjects. They do not lead by good example. And they do not support traditional family values. Quite to the contrary, they teach that there is no right or wrong, that tolerance is good and being judgmental bad, that competition is wrong and cooperation good; that all children should have high self-esteem, and that they should explore life and enjoy themselves to the fullest. Learning to learn, becoming lifelong learners and fitting-in and getting along with the crowd is all that matters. “Progressive” educators, today, promote consensus and group-decision making, and they discourage individual thinking as being egocentric. They want our children to become “good citizens” that can’t distinguish right from wrong and will fit into the “Global Village” under a “New World Order” that function under a new set of moral values.” Education News
But for the Christian parent, the stakes are much higher. Does the Bible even speak about education? Since the words “public school” are not found in Scripture, is this an area of neutrality?
The truth is that the Bible most certainly tells us how to educate our children and we are accountable to that knowledge. To think that God would remain silent on such an important issue is naive at best.
Two commonly violated biblical principles of education:
Commonly, it is argued that a child can attend school but still have his parents fulfill the biblical command of nurturing him in the admonition of the Lord. I will not suggest this can’t be true when the child is not at school. Yet the fact remains, that for the majority of the day that child is NOT being nurtured in the admonition of the Lord. The majority of the day the child is being subjected to “the counsel of the ungodly”, even if he has a gagged Christian teacher here and there. The curriculum of the state is decidedly opposed to Christianity and separates the knowledge of God from every subject.
This fact alone violates two biblical principles: “walking not in the counsel of the ungodly” and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.
To be continued…
John Taylor Gatto (former National Teacher of the Year after 30 years in the public school system) is perhaps one of the most passionate advocates for school reform overhaul. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
“I want you to consider the frightening possibility that we are spending far too much money on schooling, not too little. I want you to consider that we have too many people employed in interfering with the way children grow up – and that all this money and all these people, all the time we take out of children’s lives and away from their homes and families and neighborhoods and private explorations – gets in the way of education.
And yet last year in St. Louis, I heard a vice-president of IBM tell an audience of people assembled to redesign the process of teacher certification that in his opinion this country became computer-literate by self-teaching, not through any action of schools. He said 45 million people were comfortable with computers who had learned through dozens of non-systematic strategies, none of them very formal; if schools had pre-empted the right to teach computer use we would be in a horrible mess right now instead of leading the world in this literacy.”
“…schooling after the Prussian fashion removes the ability of the mind to think for itself. It teaches people to wait for a teacher to tell them what to do and if what they have done is good or bad. Prussian teaching paralyses the moral will as well as the intellect.”
“Bertrand Russell once observed that American schooling was among the most radical experiments in human history, that America was deliberately denying its children the tools of critical thinking. When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.
Kindergarten was created to be a way to break the influence of mothers on their children. I note with interest the growth of daycare in the US and the repeated urgings to extend school downward to include 4-year-olds.”
Are you a homeschooling mother who worries that you aren’t “doing enough”? Are you thinking of homeschooling but feel afraid that you aren’t qualified? If so, this book will give you answers. Whether you are one of those tired moms, contemplating giving up, or just need some relief, or whether you are considering homeschooling and don’t know where to start, you’ll find this ebook full of answers and practical help. Read more…
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