When Mom Needs Those Wings Like Eagles

When Mom Needs Those Wings Like Eagles - Parenting Like HannahDon’t you just love Isaiah 40:31? “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (NIV) As a Christian mom, there are days when I need to hear that verse multiple times.

God wants us to be productive Christians. He calls us to be involved moms, training and loving our children. I don’t recall though any verses where He called us to burn-out. Exhaustion from time to time perhaps, but not that complete utter burn-out.

Recently, I was given an opportunity to review the book Your Sacred Yes: Trading Life-Draining Obligation for Freedom, Passion, and Joy, by Susie Larson. Larson understands how easy it is to overcommit, confuse busyness with productiveness and the host of other choices that can cause Christians and Christian moms to burn-out.

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Exposing Teens to Fun Christians

Exposing Teens to Fun Christians - Parenting Like HannahWalk into most youth centers.  Listen to the testimonies given by adults. They are often sad stories of consequences from disobeying God. While those stories have a place in youth ministry, often these testimonies are ignored by the very teens for whom they are given.

Teens often feel almost invincible. Of course those adults had problems, they obviously weren’t very bright anyway. Teens know they can “have fun”, disobey a selected few of God’s laws for several years and escape unscathed.

Probe a little deeper and there is actually just a wee bit more to the story. Ask a few more questions and you will often find the teen is terrified of living the obviously dull and boring life that is the fate of every Christian. I mean look at their parents!

What those teens and frankly, I am beginning to think their youth ministers and the vast majority of the people in the Church no longer realize is that you can have the most exciting, fulfilling, adventurous life possible and still keep the “big three” commands of the teen and college years (no getting drunk, using drugs or sex before marriage). In fact, you may even be surprised at the adventures some of the people in your congregation had and are still having. They just don’t talk about it in church.

Start asking people at church about some of the adventures they have had in their lives. Ask them if they had to sin to have those adventures. If not, invite them to share their stories with your teens and possibly the teens in your church. Make it as clear as you can that it is absolutely possible to have a ton of fun (with none of those nasty consequences) and obey God at the same time.

Changing your child’s world view of the ability of Christians to have fun and still be godly, may just increase the likelihood of them doing the same themselves. I think that’s a legacy any family and any church would love to have!

Teaching Kids About the Bible and Context

Teaching Kids About the Bible and Context - Parenting Like HannahOne of the easiest ways for a false teaching to gain traction is to quote a scripture out of context or make up an entire context that isn’t even there. Yet, we rarely teach kids and teens how to use context to help them understand the scriptures better.

Teaching kids about context is something a parent can easily do at home with even upper elementary aged kids. Train your children to never accept one Bible verse as “proof” of anything. Often a verse is only a piece of a much larger puzzle God puts together over numerous verses, chapters and even books of the Bible.

Encourage your children to look at least at the few verses before and after a verse they are given. Some Bibles have an almost paragraph format to the chapters now. Encourage older kids and teens to read the entire “paragraph” or even the entire chapter. Really difficult passages to understand may require reading the chapter before and after the chapter in which the original verse is contained.

Practice with your child thinking about what information those extra verses add to the original verse. Does it tell us more about what was happening when the verse was said? Does knowing what was happening add additional meaning or change their understanding of the original verse a little? What was the purpose of the entire chapter and not just that one verse? Does what your child was told that verse “proved” fit in with the meaning of the entire chapter?

The other danger with context is something that has cropped up in the last few decades. it is an attempt to totally discount entire, very clearly written scriptures under the guise of some made up context not included in the verse, chapter or even book. You may have even heard someone say, “Of God didn’t mean that for us. It was because thus and so weird thing was happening in that city.” Where they get their information from is never quite clear as it definitely is never in those scriptures or any nearby scripture. Teach your children to not let things quite possibly entirely made up by someone, trick them into disobeying a very clear scripture. Remind them Satan is the father of lies, so be wary of anything not backed up by the Bible.

Taking a little extra time to teach your kids about the Bible and context can protect them from being tricked by false teachings – whether the motives of the teacher or pure or not. It’s just another tool you can give your kids to help make it easier for them to stay on God’s path.

Don’t Give Up, Mom

Don't Give Up Mom - Parenting Like HannahBeing a mom is the best job in the world. Most days. Then there are those days when everything seems to go wrong. Things break down, your kids have forgotten everything you have ever taught them about rules and manners and who knows what else has happened. It’s tempting to go hide under the covers and give up.

Moms often need that extra bit of encouragement. It helps to know other moms have felt like giving up, too (FYI, I think we all have at one time or another.). They need to know it is worth it to keep working on your marriage or training your kids. They want to know that even though it doesn’t seem like your efforts are making a difference, they really are.

Holly Wagner’s new book, Warrior Chicks: Rising Strong When Life Wants to Take You Down may just give you the encouragement you need to take those covers off your head, get out of bed and face the day. I love her concept of the idea of a mom being a warrior. Not in a militant feminist sense, but as in a warrior for God.

She analyzes the idea of the biblical and historical warrior and the traits that make the best warriors. She covers everything from standing your ground, to being prepared to focusing on the goal and more. Each chapter gives examples from the Bible as well as from secular history and current events to illustrate the concept.

Ultimately, this is a book of encouragement. The author is either currently or just recently finished battling breast cancer (It wasn’t totally clear). Cancer is not the focus of the book. In fact, at times she goes so long without mentioning it, I almost had forgotten it was a part of her personal story.

Instead, she focuses on a lot of issues that can make women want to give up fighting. She includes topics like abuse, financial problems, marital issues, illness, job loss, parenting issues and more. In her mind anything and everything that can keep you from doing what God wants you to do – and mind you she doesn’t mean sitting in a church pew, but very active Christianity – she wants to help arm you to conquer and get back to battling for God.

She gives a lot of good advice, but perhaps my favorite is her advice about handing on the baton. She discusses relay races and how in Christian life we should always be accepting batons from women older than us and handing them off to women younger than us. She says the minute there is a woman on earth younger than you, you become the older women in the Bible called to start training the younger ones. I also appreciated how she reinforced we all should be humble enough to learn from those who have already walked down a path and to teach those who are currently on the one we have completed.

There were a couple of things I wish I could change about this book. She quotes scripture, but you have to fumble around in the back to find what scripture she is quoting. Frankly, I’m often too lazy to go to that much trouble. Also she uses the Message version, which alters scriptures so much from the original wording I often had trouble figuring out if she were quoting scripture or some random person. (There was little identifying information with any quote.)

My biggest irritation was how the book was formatted or typeset or whatever you want to call it. There were not proper paragraphs on a page. Sentences were scattered everywhere. Sometimes two or three were together and sometimes each would get a separate line with several blank lines until the next sentence. Tons and tons of white space. Frankly it gave me a headache as I tend to speed read and it is almost impossible when set that way. My brain rebelled and wanted to put down the book even though I really thought it was a great book.

If you are a Christian mom ( or any Christian woman) who is struggling in life, this book can give you the encouragement you need. It can give you new ways of thinking about things. Hopefully, if it’s reprinted at some point, they will format it like most books and it won’t also give you a headache!

 

 

This book was given to me for free in exchange for my honest review.

Teaching Kids About Sin, Sinners and Judging

Teaching Kids About Sin, Sinners and Judging - Parenting Like HannahIf your kids are exposed to any kind of media- social or otherwise – eventually they will read about a “famous” Christian who has sinned. They will read articles or tweets implying Christians should never sin, or when they do, they become hypocrites and have no right to try and share their faith. They will be exposed to people who accuse any Christian who shares God’s Words about any topic of being judgmental, while also reminding readers the Bible says not to “judge”. No wonder our kids are becoming so supportive of the “You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anybody, because who am I to judge” mentality so popular today.

The problem is that all of the above are misunderstandings and frankly false representations of God and what is in the Bible. So what are the godly principles you need to reinforce with your kids when the next “famous” Christian is vilified in the press?

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