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God is Near: Certain Comfort for Moms

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST I walked into Walmart thinking about purchasing a watermelon and salad greens to create a nice, fresh summer meal. I pushed my sunglasses up on my head and proceeded through the route I always take: through the seasonal and sale stuff (just in case there is something good) and then past the candles, women’s clothes, and straight to the produce. Walking my route, I was taken aback. Where the sunscreen had been showcased just last week stood huge displays of glue sticks, pencils, markers, and crayons. Excuse me, Mr. Manager; don’t you know I haven’t even gone on my summer vacation? It is certainly not time to think about school yet! Still, no matter how frustrated I might get with the early arrival of school supplies in my store’s aisles, the new school year is just around the corner, and mothers everywhere are preparing their hearts for the new school year—homeschoolers, Christian schoolers, and public schoolers alike. A Fear We All Have Felt In my role as the Director of Children’s Ministries at my church, I’m privy to the thoughts of many mothers. As moms think about “back to school,” one emotion keeps bubbling to the surface over and over. I hear it in their voices, in the questions they ask, and the conversations they have. It’s not a pretty emotion. It’s one that can sometimes paralyze us.  Fear. We’ve all felt it. Moms are afraid of the task of raising children in today’s culture. When kids are home with us all summer and activities are more family based, that fear slips into the recesses for a bit. But the thought of sending our kids out again to interact with others at school, sports, even our homeschool co-ops, means exposure where we might not have control over what comes in...

God is Near: Certain Comfort for Moms2023-08-15T13:17:08+00:00

Summertime Discipleship with Your Family

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST “Summertime and the livin’ is easy…” Well, that’s how the song goes anyway. Although I’m not quite sure that summer is all that easy for a mom with kids wanting to go to the pool, have a friend over, visit the park, and build forts in the woods, I do realize that summer is a more flexible time of the year. The long, unscheduled days present opportunities to engage in fun activities, making special memories as a family. That’s what we love about summer, isn’t it? Although my kids are grown, I know that I treasure our picture albums full of smiling, sun kissed faces squinting into the sun next to carefully constructed sand castles. Summertime “easy livin’” also presents us with numerous opportunities to engage our children with the gospel, and that is even more precious than a well-crafted memory album! Memorize Scripture Together Because summer offers a reprieve from the rigors of schoolwork, it is an excellent season to start a Bible verse memory program for your whole family! Choose a verse or passage to learn. Introduce it to the family during dinner, discussing what it means and how it applies to life. As a family, choose an award. Perhaps this could be a trip to the ice-cream parlor, an outing to the lake, or a night by the fire-pit toasting marshmallows for s’mores. Anything can work as long as everyone agrees. Then start memorizing, just a few words at a time, adding to them daily. Have the kids make posters with your family verse, and tape them up on the fridge, in the bathroom, and on your doors. Say it together in the car, in the morning, before bed, or at random times during the day. Once you’ve all learned it, enjoy your reward! You could even make a goal to memorize several passages and have a great big end of summer celebration!...

Summertime Discipleship with Your Family2023-08-15T13:24:03+00:00

Wisdom of the World vs. Wisdom of the Word

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST Everything is beautiful in its own way!... Never say I can’t; always say I’ll try…..If the sun doesn’t shine, create your own rainbows…..Throw kindness around like confetti….Be true to yourself….Follow your dreams….Dream big!....You can be anything you want to be… Inspirational quotes. They’re everywhere! On little kids’ t-shirts, bumper stickers, water bottles, journal covers, and classroom walls. They sound so witty. Clever. Like little pearls of wisdom. Good slogans by which to live your life. “Yes! I WILL follow my heart, try harder, and shoot for the stars! I can be whoever I dream I can be, and love IS LOVE!” Written in rainbow colors, with butterflies adorning the borders, this “wisdom of the world” beckons to our children. It can be quite confusing. Sometimes these slogans can be true; other times they can be outright lies. Often they are lies hiding right next to truth, subtle in their deceit. That is what makes them so dangerous for our children. Lies parading as wisdom. Teach the Truth There is only one true source for wisdom, and that source is God as revealed to us in His Word. However, ever since the events of Genesis 3, we are prone to seek wisdom from other places. How can we guard our children, teaching them to discern the truth from the lie? Simply put, we must teach our children the truth. How do I know that 2+2 does not equal five? Because I was taught how to count. If you counted out two things and had two more, you kept counting. That is adding. I learned this by grouping beads. I learned by counting on my fingers. It never varies. Two things plus two more always makes a total of four. You can’t convince me that 2+2=5 just by putting it on a pretty poster. Even if all my classmates say 2+2=5, I still won’t believe it, because I KNOW the truth! We do the same with God’s Word. We teach it to our children by rote (like we learn to count). We tell them what the Bible says. We share with them the wonderful stories. We memorize Scripture. Just like I held and manipulated those counting beads, we let our children experience and interact with what God says in His Word. This gives them a foundation of truth. They learn what kindness is, and respect, honor, and obedience. They learn about repentance and sin. They know God’s Word because we are living it with them...

Wisdom of the World vs. Wisdom of the Word2023-08-15T13:37:13+00:00

Who’s Entering Your Tent?

ESTHER BAIRD|GUEST This summer I’m teaching the I AM statements of Jesus in a ‘Spiritual Life Tent.’ It’s part of a conference center in the Adirondacks near where we live in the summer. And while there are some Christians in the organization, it is not explicitly a Christian center. In fact, it’s intentionally interfaith and ecumenical. So each week when I walk into my tent, (truly it’s a tent, like the sort you’d set up for a large family picnic with four screened walls to keep out the bugs… but do they ever really keep the bugs out?) I never know who might show up, or what they might believe or not believe, or even harbor anger that they were once associated with the church. The classes are small, perhaps 3-4 people on any given week, which means I can’t hide behind lecture style teaching. If people have different views, I know it. Immediately. The classes are more like conversations where I’ve chosen the topic. And yet, one of the I AM statements is, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” At first, I worried about teaching that specific week. How could I actually tell whoever walked into the tent that Jesus was the only way in an interfaith setting? What if they were Buddhist? What if they’d left the church and were angry at God? What if they thought Christians in America were obnoxious know-it-alls? Thankfully, I’ve seen again and again that Jesus not only is the answer, but he shows us how to explain the answer...

Who’s Entering Your Tent?2023-03-24T18:17:06+00:00

Perfectionism, Shame, and Freedom in Christ

DUSKI VAN FLEET|GUEST Sitting in my counselor’s office the day after I lost my temper with one of my children, I shared the details of our hard day and my disappointment with how I responded. I tell her how puzzled I am when I mention my failures as a mom, because people often tell me they could never see me angry or yelling at anyone. They rave about what a wonderful mom I am and point out the ways they see me getting things right. It seems to me they think I have it all together, while all I think is, “If you only knew me. If you could only see how hurtful I can be.”  Her response takes me by surprise. “Well, why can’t both be true?  Does it really have to be one or the other? Is it possible for you to be both a really good mom and a mom who makes mistakes?” Hold please, while I let this one sink in.  Considering her questions, I began to think of other similar scenarios that trigger the same thought pattern within my brain. For instance, when I realize I forgot about a friend’s text from days ago expressing a need for help, I suddenly declare myself a thoughtless, selfish friend. When I interrupt my husband again and he becomes frustrated, I pronounce I am a terrible wife. As I thought about my roles in life throughout the rest of the day, I realized how often my failures define my identity.  Stuck in a Thought Cycle Black and white thinking keeps me stuck in a cycle of perfectionism and shame. I invest a lot of my time, thought, and emotional energy into learning how to love my people well. I also work hard to put what I am learning into practice. I love my husband and my kids so much, and I care deeply about their hearts and the stories God is writing for them. I want to be a part of those stories and impact them for good. I am a good wife and a good mom. That is one truth.  There is also another truth. I am a sinner. I carry in my body the sin passed on to me and every human when Adam and Eve chose to sin. I live in a fallen world that has broken and wounded me. Evil is hunting me and through deception, wants to obliterate the good God desires for me, my husband, and our children. There are times I choose to believe the devil’s lies, and I emotionally wound the people I love. This grieves my heart...

Perfectionism, Shame, and Freedom in Christ2023-03-24T18:21:06+00:00

Delivered from the Tyranny of Emotions

I talk to myself a lot, or rather, preach to myself as the ever-helpful Martin Lloyd-Jones reminds us to do. Recently the preacher in my head has been clearly and loudly reminding me: You don’t have to bow to your feelings. I tend towards being a sponge – soaking in and filling up with the emotions of others and owning them – even though they are not mine to own. I’ve begun to see that as I fill up on anxieties or frustration, all I can do as a sponge is wring it back out all over whomever squeezes me at the wrong moment. Thankfully, God is not like this with us – taking on our emotions, being changed by them, and dripping all over us in kind. Yes, He weeps with those who weep and clearly and vividly displays emotion! Yet, He is not controlled by emotions. His response to the sin and brokenness of this world is always perfect, right, and true. My emotions have a place, and rightly so, as God made us to be feeling creatures, but my emotions shouldn’t have the final say about what is true in a situation. God, in his severe mercy, has given me a number of opportunities to practice this lately. As the waves keep crashing, I keep grabbing the opportunities, though sometimes not very well, to sink into the truth. 1 Peter 5:7 reminds us to cast all our anxieties on Jesus because he cares for us. I imagine wringing out my emotion onto Jesus, knowing He can handle it, and then asking Him to fill me with the truth, bowing in submission to that truth, not bowing to my ever-changing emotion.

Delivered from the Tyranny of Emotions2022-05-04T22:59:58+00:00

Living With Gospel Tension in a World Gone Binary

Long, long ago, in college classrooms far, far away there were no personal computers. In fact, there was simply one little basement room in the entire campus of my college that had two or three computer monitors and a computer system that ran paper cards. Really. This was the era in which I took my first computer programming class. (Truth be told, I despised that class. Attention to detail is not my strength, so every time I had an extra space or a mis-placed keystroke in the code I wrote, the program would not run. Then I would spend hours trying to find and fix my error. But I digress…) My biggest takeaway from BASIC programming was that computer programs run on a binary system of rapidly processed continuous choices between “1” and “0.” That’s it. (Remember that next time you spend $1000 on a laptop!) A Binary Culture Do you ever feel like our culture is operating inside of a computer? Have you noticed that so much that poses as discussion is couched in binary ways? If you spend any time on social media, or on cable news, or in political theater, you are likely to find yourself regularly bombarded with either-or propositions. This or that. Them or us. Rich or poor. Rural or urban. Black or white. Is this really the nature of God’s universe? Do we live in a static computer program or in a dynamic universe held together by God’s power? Does God reveal himself through a set of binary propositions or does he reveal himself through his Word and his world? So much of what the Scripture teaches us is that life is lived in tension. There is not only conflict between good and evil—which I am not discounting—but also a literal tension between two right things. Christ was described by John as “full of grace and truth.” That is noteworthy because it requires so much godly tension. Grace AND truth. Fallen human beings are prone to one or the other. Jesus as the only perfect human being flawlessly exhibited both. While none of us can possibly perfectly emulate Christ, by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit we are called to be conformed more and more to his image. What I am asking each of us to reflect on is this: “Where am I presenting or embracing a binary stance where there is a biblical call to embrace the tension between two good things?”...

Living With Gospel Tension in a World Gone Binary2022-05-05T00:11:29+00:00

Parenting in a Culture of Relative Truth

"Absolute Truth. Absolute Truth.  Everything in the Bible is the Absolute Truth." I can still hear my daughter singing this chant she learned in her two-year-old Sunday school class. My husband and I had her sing it over and over again because of how adorably expressive she was—her clapping hand motions were as loud as she sang. By God’s grace, almost twenty years later, the words of this song are settled deep into her heart. She knows the absolute truth of His Word, trusts in His righteousness for her, and now with a voice that moves me to tears, sings of His truths each week at her campus’ RUF gathering. But in holding firm to the Truth about Jesus, she increasingly finds herself at the crossroads of our rapidly changing culture and the Word of God. As do we all. Our culture today is very different than it was when I began parenting, and certainly from the world in which I grew up.Truth today is not absolute, and the Bible is not seen as authoritative. Instead, pop culture tells us to do "whatever makes you happy" and "you do you." Even Christians have bought into this mindset, sometimes without even realizing it. But the less we hear the true gospel and spend time in God’s Word, the more susceptible we become to subtle twists to the truth.

Parenting in a Culture of Relative Truth2022-05-07T23:28:42+00:00
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