Tips from Mom

Things You Can't Afford NOT to Do:

1. Find good slow-cooker recipes. The time it takes to find them and try them will come back to you a thousand times over. Throw it in the pot in the morning, and dinner-time will feel like you're on vacation!

2. Purge the excess. Excess breeds chaos. If you don't use it regularly or if it doesn't fit, set it free. Donate it to charity or make a few bucks off of it at a resale shop. The extra space you'll have will make your home (even the closets) a place of peace -- a place you actually want to be.

3. Manage your household; don't let it manage you. It usually takes LESS time than you think to tidy up, unload the dishwasher, purge the closets, etc. If you let it go, the work will pile up so high you won't know where to start. And starting IS the hardest part. Imagine you have company coming over in 15 minutes -- and then zoom through as much housework as you can. (Chances are, if you get up a good momentum, you'll want to keep going!)

4. Have the kids clean and de-clutter with you. Impress upon your children the feeling of satisfaction that comes with having a clean, orderly space and with giving to those less fortunate. If you do this, they will learn to be good stewards, to be organized, to be charitable, to value "things" less than people, and to keep a loose grip on the material "stuff" of life. After all, you can't take it with you.

5. Plan your meals for the week and grocery shop accordingly. It will save you time wondering what to make each evening and running out to the store for one more ingredient, AND it will save you money in keeping you from the "need" to order in or pick up restaurant food.

6. (On a more serious note...) Plan for eternity. Today could be your last. Don't make the tragic mistake of thinking it can be dealt with later because "later" may never come.

(Acts 16:25-31) But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, "Do yourself no harm, for we are all here."

Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

So they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household."

Socialization: Homeschooling vs. Schools

By Michael F. Haverluck
CBNNews.com
May 2, 2007

CBNNews.com - It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."

Many homeschoolers share this sentiment when it comes to public schools, believing that the moral relativism, violence, peer pressure, drugs and promiscuity found inside their gates provide an inadequate setting to properly socialize their children.

Yet 92 percent of superintendents believe that home learners are emotionally unstable, deprived of proper social development and too judgmental of the world around them, according to a California study by researcher Dr. Brian Ray . What makes homeschool socialization such a hot topic?

With approximately 4 million children currently being homeschooled in the U.S., along with a 15- to 20-percent yearly growth rate, many professional educators and school boards are concerned that this exodus will keep funds from entering the public education system.

Many teachers also believe that successful home instruction by uncredentialed parents undermines their expertise and jeopardizes their jobs.

Questions about inadequate socialization are often brought up as a means to disqualify homeschooling as a viable alternative form of education, but are the arguments valid?
A look at the research on this socialization debate shines further light on the issue.

There's no place like home

Why is there such a dichotomy in the socialization experienced between homeschoolers and conventional students? It all has to do with the learning environment.

The National Home Education Research Institute disclosed that the 36 to 54 hours that students spend in school-related weekly activities make peers and adults outside of the home the primary influences in children's lives - not the parents.

Realizing the harm that this constant exposure can produce, especially if it's not countered by involved parenting, most homeschoolers are well aware of their children's need for close one-to-one contact throughout the education process. Jesus understood the importance of continual intimate contact with His students, as He ate, slept and fellowshipped with His disciples 24 hours a day. It is unlikely that Jesus would have entrusted their training to strangers.

So how do these different settings affect children? Dr. Thomas Smedley believes that homeschoolers have superior socialization skills, and his research supports this claim. He conducted a study in which he administered the Vineyard Adaptive Behavior Scales test to identify mature and well-adapted behaviors in children. Home learners ranked in the 84th percentile, compared to publicly schooled students, who were drastically lower in the 23rd.

Welcome to the real world

Many school socialization advocates argue that homeschooling precludes children from experiencing real life.

Instead of being locked behind school gates in what some would consider an artificial setting characterized by bells, forced silence and age-segregation, homeschoolers frequently extend their everyday classroom to fire departments, hospitals, museums, repair shops, city halls, national parks, churches and colleges, where real community interaction and contacts are made.

Dismantling the stereotype that home learners spend their days isolated from society at kitchen tables with workbooks in hand, NHERI reports that they actually participate in approximately five different social activities outside the home on a regular basis.

Furthermore, researcher Dr. Linda Montgomery found that 78 percent of high school home learners were employed with paying jobs, while a majority engaged in volunteering and community service.

Research presented at the National Christian Home Educators Leadership Conference divulged that homeschool graduates far exceeded their public and private school counterparts in college by ranking the highest in 42 of 63 indicators of collegiate success. They were also ranked as being superior in four out of five achievement categories, including socialization, as they were assessed as being the most charismatic and influential.

Biblical or worldly socialization?

When most home educators and school administrators speak of successful socialization, are they referring to the same thing?

Education researcher Dr. Michael Mitchell found that being popular, aggressively competitive, materialistically driven and self-confident are traits promoted in conventional schools.

His study shows that these campus ideals are discouraged by Christian home educators in favor of building their children's character and dismantling selfish ambitions. Integrity, responsibility, respect for others, trust in God, biblical soundness and an amiable disposition topped the ideal social qualities they desired their youth to embody.

Many Christians who homeschool believe that the greatest socialization their children can have is to be trained to emulate Jesus, who is a servant of man. Home educators examined by Mitchell strive to dismantle any selfish ambitions and self-aggrandizement seen in their children, as opposed to cultivating them.

Getting ahead of one's peers is not consistent with Jesus' urging in Matthew 20:25b-28, which calls for Christians to seek a lowly and servile role to those around them. However, this does not mean that Christians are called to underachieve, as Colossians 3:23 exhorts readers to push for peak performance in every endeavor, but for the glory of God rather than for selfish ambition.

Pride is also promoted in the public schools. It is often repackaged as self-esteem in programs such as "Here's Looking at You, 2000," in which education researcher Dr. Amy Binder reports that students are instructed to believe that they are "the most important person in the world."

Many Christian home educators assert that the kind of pride being taught in the schools is discouraged throughout Scripture by Jesus and Paul, who preach against lifting oneself up or putting oneself first in favor of assuming a lowly position among others, as seen in Luke 14:10-11 and Romans 12:3.

They often contend that traditional students are driven to achieve high marks in order to attain lucrative and prestigious jobs that can lead to lives of self-indulgence, while the Bible calls man not to be overcome by material concerns.

Even though God enjoys prospering His children, He also warns us in 1 Timothy 6:10 that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

Negative socialization

The mass socialization conducted within schools has brought about a proliferation of delinquent behavior within this nation's youth, reports education researcher, Dr. Michael Slavinski. He notes that student bodies are increasingly riddled with violence, drugs, promiscuity, emotional disorders, crime, contempt for authority, desperate behavior, illiteracy and peer dependency - just to name a few.

Today, parents are not as surprised to see reports of fifth-graders having sex in class; hear about school shootings; find drugs or condoms in backpacks; receive phone calls from the police and principals; or witness defiant, apathetic and unrecognizable tones in their children's voices.

"Live and let learn," say many parents. Most home educators are fine with this, as long as their children's learning comes from mature, seasoned and embracing adults who have the children's best interests at heart - above political or economic agendas. They believe that such training shouldn't come from peers either, which amounts to the blind leading the blind.

When the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist was administered by education researcher Dr. Larry Shyers to identify 97 problematic behaviors in two groups of children, traditionally schooled students exuded eight times as many antisocial traits than their homeschooled counterparts. This lies in direct contrast to claims by public school advocates that exposure to campus life leads to proper socialization.

Light of the world

Many Christian parents are concerned that homeschooling would not allow their children to fulfill the great commission of sharing the gospel with non-believers. They often site Matthew 5:14-16 about being the light of the world.

Some Christian homeschool parents argue that even though young believers are to reach out to the lost, they are not called to immerse themselves daily in a hostile setting that constantly works to influence them in the ways of the world. They recognize that those with strong Christian upbringings are still vulnerable to the ungodly climate of the schools.

In Proverbs 4:11-15, King Solomon realized the vulnerability of his son, proclaiming his responsibility to train him in godly teachings and keep him from stumbling over the vices of this world.

Just as parents know that children are not prepared for war, many Christians believe that youth are not equipped to fend for themselves in the spiritual warfare taking place within schools.

A nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group shows that 80 percent of Christian families send their children to public schools where their faith is attacked. Based on the study's findings, it appears that their kids are the ones being "evangelized" by the religion of secular humanism. More than half of their Christian teens believe Jesus actually sinned and only nine percent hold to moral absolutes, while 83 percent of children from committed Christian families attending public schools adopt a Marxist-Socialist worldview, reports the group.

For more statistics on Christians in education, click on The Barna Group.

Consistent with these figures, Christian producer and occult expert Caryl Matrisciana reports that 75 percent of public-schooled American youth brought up in Christian households disown their Christian faith by the first year of college. NHERI finds that this is only true for less than four percent of homeschooled youth.

Most home educators would not trade the blessings that homeschooling brings their families and society for the world.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, The Barna Group, NHERI, Dr. Michael Slavinski, Dr. Brian Ray, Dr. Thomas C. Smedley, Dr. Larry E. Shyers, Dr. Michael Mitchell, Dr. Linda Montgomery, Dr. Rhonda A. Galloway, Dr. Amy Binder

Moral Code for School Children

From Collier’s, The National Weekly © 1925

If I Want To Be a Happy, Useful Citizen I Must Have:

Courage and Hope
I must be brave—This means I must be brave enough and strong enough to control what I think, and what I say and what I do, and I must always be hopeful because hope is power for improvement.

Wisdom
I must act wisely—In school, at home, playing, working, reading or talking, I must learn how to choose the good, and how to avoid the bad.

Industry and Good Habits
I must make my character strong—My character is what I am, if not in the eyes of others, then in the eyes of my own conscience. Good thoughts in my mind will keep out bad thoughts. When I am busy doing good I shall have no time to do evil. I can build my character by training myself in good habits.

Knowledge and Usefulness
I must make my mind strong—The better I know myself, my fellows and the world about me, the happier and more useful I shall be. I must always welcome useful knowledge in school, at home, everywhere.

Truth and Honesty
I must be truthful and honest—I must know what is true in order to do what is right. I must tell the truth without fear. I must be honest in all my dealings and in all my thoughts. Unless I am honest I cannot have self-respect.

Healthfulness and Cleanliness
I must make my body strong—My eyes, my teeth, my heart, my whole body must be healthful so that my mind can work properly. I must keep physically and morally clean.

Helpfulness and Unselfishness
I must use my strength to help others who need help—If I am strong I can help others, I can be kind, I can forgive those who hurt me and I can help and protect the weak, the suffering, the young and the old, and dumb animals.

Charity
I must love—I must love God, who created not only this earth but also all men of all races, nations and creeds, who are my brothers. I must love my parents, my home, my neighbors, my country and be loyal to all these.

Humility and Reverence
I must know that there are always more things to learn—What I may know is small compared to what can be known. I must respect all who have more wisdom than I, and have reverence for all that is good. And I must know how and whom to obey.

Faith and Responsibility
I must do all these things because I am accountable to God and humanity for how I live and how I can help my fellows, and for the extent to which my fellows may trust and depend on me.

Think On These Things

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Musings on God -- part 2

In the last post by the same title, I attempted to give a reconciliation between the truths of God's perfect love and His perfect omnipotence as it relates to human pain (alongside a much better explanation by C. S. Lewis). This understanding is merely a jumping off point for coping with life's suffering and is wholly inadequate if divorced from God's own Word.

Pain -- physical, emotional, spiritual -- has purpose in God's economy. (How that in itself testifies to God's goodness that He should reappropriate the suffering a sinful race brings on itself for our own benefit!)

And although pain entered the world willfully by Adam's sin bringing death, God has seen fit to express His mercy by not allowing our suffering to be purely punitive in nature, redeeming even our very deserved suffering for His glory and our good.

As far as I can understand it, pain (beyond its genesis in Adam) has three causes. In each case, God illustrates His Godly character to us.

First, and most obviously, we suffer as a result of the natural consequences of our sin. God has designed us to function best within certain boundaries, and that for our own safety. Just as no one truly loves his child whom he also allows to run freely into traffic, God prescribes limits to what His creatures can and should do physically and spiritually. When we second-guess His wisdom and insinuate ourselves into the place of His authority, we inevitably get hurt. This is true of the child who rebels against his father's rule and runs into the street, relishing his supposed freedom before disaster strikes, and it is true of all of us who test the limits by tiptoeing (and sometimes flinging ourselves headlong) over God's boundaries.

We are created to glorify God, but in our sinfulness are bent on glorifying ourselves. Herein we find most of our suffering -- as creatures foolishly pretending we can govern ourselves better than the Creator, substituting our rules in place of His.

The natural expression of this truth is all around us. God instructs us toward purity before and fidelity within marriage. Outside these loving parameters we find deep emotional fears, rampant disease, broken homes, poverty, and anchorless, insecure children who, more often than not, are described as "troubled". The same is true of those who have embraced homosexuality against God's warnings, ignoring its devastating physical and emotional consequences, the details of which I do not even want to describe here.

The point is not that God rains down these consequences purely to punish wayward humankind, but to allow the sting that would drive us back into safety, under the umbrella of blessing He promises to the obedient. Even as a child is conditioned to avoid a hot stove once he has burned his hand, God allows the pain from our sin to condition us to avoid what is destructive (even though we, like children, often don't appreciate our Father's wisdom until we've been burned).

"My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; for whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights." (Proverbs 3:11, 12)

"Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11)

The second type of suffering is that which results from doing what is right, which may seem contradictory to my earlier comment that God blesses obedience. But Scripture is clear on both points: that the righteous will suffer for doing good and that God promises good to those who are obedient to Him. One might also wonder what motivation there is for doing good if only to suffer for it. This is where I will pick up next time.

(There is, of course, a kind of pain that we learn to appreciate because it strengthens us -- sore muscles that become strengthened through exercise, hard work that rewards an honest living, an immune system strengthened by illness, etc. -- but it could be argued that this is true of all three kinds of pain discussed here. But that discussion will be included in the next post.)

Is There Any Doubt...

that pain brings about priceless blessing? Here's the proof:

Musings on God

Whether it is a product of our culture or our basic humanness, we are absolutely convinced that pain is bad. Under every circumstance, and at all times, physical and emotional pain is to be avoided. And if it becomes unavoidable, we conclude the only rational thing to do is to try to eliminate the cause, if it can be eliminated, and/or medicate ourselves into a more desirable condition.

This is manifest on every imaginable level of human life. Popular talk show hosts and other "experts" insist that it is "healthy" to end burdensome relationships in favor of maintaining only those friends and relations who give as much as they take. Marriages in which even one partner feels unsatisfied or unfulfilled are encouraged toward divorce, regardless of the impact it will certainly have on the family.

There are therapies and pills for every kind and degree of depression, no matter how clear or vague its cause. From every direction in unison voice, the culture presumes that the normative human emotional state is and should be a happy one, and that anything less is somehow symptomatic of the dysfunctional and mentally ill.

Does heartburn threaten to limit your dietary choices and quality of sleep? There's a pill to fix that. Are you worried that delivering a baby will be too painful? Let's schedule an epidural. Are Junior's feelings hurt when his soccer team loses? Sign him up for the league that doesn't keep score. If being a poor speller makes you feel lacking, there is actually a camp of people pushing to throw out conventional English spelling rules for a purely phonetic, spell-it-the-way-you-think-it-sounds method, on your behalf to spare your self-image. (I swear I am not making this up.)

Everything is engineered to promote the notion that people should not have to endure any kind of pain, and that doing so is unhealthy. And for the more academic among us, the existence of pain at all gives proof that God must not exist at all. Their philosophy rationalizes that if God were both omnipotent and loving, He would use His power to protect His creatures from suffering.

I do not mean to say that every effort at pain relief is of no value. Medication served me well as I recovered from childbirth and the early pains of nursing my babies. And I will be forever grateful for the one who made sure I felt no pain during a tooth extraction. But, when my heart has been broken by someone I love or by my own dismal failures, I didn't wonder at the acute pain I felt as though it were an anomaly. Wouldn't it be the mark of the mentally ill to smile painlessly through what any other normal human would call heartache? Who decided that feeling sad isn't normal anyway, especially when experiencing what any sane person would find regrettable?

So, by my estimation, not only is the feeling of pain is a normal part of being human (since it is safe to assume we have all experienced it), it has purpose in God's economy. After all, one must reconcile God's love and His power toward that final conclusion that if God allows it, He must in His love purpose it for the good of His creatures.

Just like toothaches indicate a problem and move us to action, God allows suffering on every other level to bring about His good purposes, whether it is to pain our consciences to our own faults or to incite the soul-ache longing for the way things ought to be when they are not. Sometimes it teaches us to simply pull our hand from the flame out of self-preservation, backing away from the more obviously self-destructive behaviors. Sometimes it is to melt away the self-sufficiency and pride that ignores one's need for God in favor of the brokenness that reveals how desperately dependent upon God we really are. Sometimes it is to demonstrate to the world just exactly what faith in God's provision looks like and to mold us more fully into the better creatures He intended for us to be... but always, in every way and in every time, with purpose and for His glory.

And what of love? If by God's love we hope to be the beneficiaries of a lifelong supernatural supply of painless contentment, then we must also hope to already be just as He intended, warts and all, in no need of His loving reconstruction toward holiness. For God to love us perfectly, in the only way a perfect God can love, He must want for us to be more like Himself, which puts us necessarily in the way of divine scrutiny and remodeling. Artists who take pride in their work take great pain and effort at perfecting their pieces. Truly loving parents are not satisfied in allowing their babies to continue acting like babies as they grow. As my mom says (quoting her grandmother, I think) -- God loves us, but He loves us too much to let us stay the way we are.

To better and further explain this reconciliation between God's love and human suffering, I defer to one whose mind and pen were far more adept at expressing these thoughts than mine. Consider the following from The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis:

"By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.' Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds... I conclude that my conception of love needs correction."

"...We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the 'intolerable compliment.' Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life -- the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child -- he will take endless trouble -- and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less."

"Another type is the love of a man for a beast -- a relation constantly used in Scripture to symbolise the relation between God and men; 'we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.' This is in some ways a better analogy than the preceding, because the inferior party is sentient and yet unmistakably inferior: but it is less good in so far as man has not made the beast and does not fully understand it. Its great merit lies in the fact that the association of (say) man and dog is primarily for the man's sake: he takes the dog primarily that he may love it, not that it may love him, and that it may serve him, not that he may serve it. Yet at the same time, the dog's interests are not sacrificed to the man's. The one end (that he may love it) cannot be fully attained unless it also, in its fashion, loves him, nor can it serve him unless he, in a different fashion, serves it. Now just because the dog is by human standards one of the 'best' of irrational creatures, and a proper object for a man to love... man interferes with the dog and makes it more lovable than it was in mere nature. In its state of nature it has a smell, and habits, which frustrate man's love: he washes it, house-trains it, teaches it not to steal, and is so enabled to love it completely. To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were a theologian, to cast grave doubts on teh 'goodness' of man: but the full-grown and full-trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-lived than the wild dog, and admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties, interests, and comforts entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no such doubts. It will be noted that the man (I am speaking throughout of the good man) takes all these pains to the dog, only because it is an animal high in the scale -- because it is so nearly lovable that it is worth his while to make it fully lovable. He does not house-train the earwig or give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses -- that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for mroe Love, but for less."

"A nobler analogy, sanctioned by the constant tenor of Our Lord's teaching, is that between God's love for man and a father's love for a son... A father half apologetic for having brought his son into the world, afraid to restrain him lest he should create inhibitions or even to instruct him lest he should interfere with his independence of mind, is a most misleading symbol of the Divine Fatherhood... Love between father and son, in this symbol, means essentially authoritative love on the one side, and obedient love on the other. The father uses his authority to make the son into the sort of human being he, rightly, and in his superior wisdom, wants him to be. Even in our own days, though a man might say, he could mean nothing by saying, 'I love my son but don't care how great a blackguard he is provided that he has a good time.' "

"Finally we come to an analogy full of danger, and of much more limited application, which happens, nevertheless, to be the most useful for our special purpose at the moment -- I mean, the analogy between God's love for man and a man's love for a woman... The Church is the Lord's bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or wrinkle is endurable. For the truth which this analogy serves to emphasise is that Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere 'kindness' which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal... he is pleased with little, but demands all."

"...You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes."

"The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love,' and look on things as if man were the cenre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.' We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased.' To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities -- no more than the beggar maid could wish that King Cophetua should be content with her rags and dirt, or a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, vernimous, polluting creature of the wild pack. What we would here and now call our 'happiness' is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy."

This Blessed Restlessness

I have obsessed for so long over the enormity of the job of parenting, my inadequacy to that task, the shortcomings of my marriage, and my longings for more than this.

Like Peter, I believe that the Lord can work miracles, that He can choose to calm the storm or choose to simply carry me through it, but I get distracted by the raging storm and I begin to drown.

Then the Holy Spirit whispers in my ear, “Do you trust Me?” followed by His gentle reminder…
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Is my anxiety evidence of my distrust? Do I know the God of all creation well enough to rest in His sovereignty moment by moment? Is it even possible to leave off our human-ness long enough to really find that elusive rest?

God alone can provide the comfort that comes in knowing that even the painful things in life can and will be used for my own good. True to His character, God plans for my life that which is better for me beyond my human understanding or imagination. But what is God’s best for me? Not a promise for health and wealth and entertainment. These are temporary diversions at most and God’s best for me may or may not include any of these things. His ultimate goal is to glorify Himself in making me Christlike, and His ultimate reward for me is Himself – the things that moth and rust cannot destroy and thief cannot steal. Indeed, the things that last forever.

Lord, grant that I might find real rest in you, moment by moment, and know in my gut that it is not up to me to make my marriage into one of Your design, make my children into godly people, make my home a place of perfect serenity and order. But if I might be a tool in your hands, Lord, work through me (and in spite of me) to accomplish these things.

And when in your plan You have ordained NOT to accomplish these things, may it be to drive each of us to the end of ourselves at the foot of the Cross, to point our gaze Heaven-ward, heightening our God-given thirst for You and for eternity with You. Remind us then in our restlessness that we are not made for the here and now, although we are temporarily and irresistibly distracted by it and bound to it. Show us our longing for Heaven where we will know You as we are known by You. Cause us to persevere through this day of battle and make us mindful of the day coming quickly on us when we will finally and joyfully bound home like school children into Your waiting arms.

Finally, Father, make me to keep a loose grip on all these lesser things so that nothing can take Your place of supremacy in my heart. In Christ, I have all I need. Make it so that You are all I want.

Purpose for Pain

There is purpose for pain.

Do you ever wonder at how easily (or at least seemingly so) Noah submitted to God's will? Or about Abraham when God told him to sacrifice Isaac on the mountain? Does the Bible record any anguish in these men? "But God, I have a five- and ten-year plan for my career." "But God, everyone's going to think I'm crazy." "But God, that doesn't make sense to me." "But God, WHY?!"

Scripture is full of examples of people whom God instructed without giving palatable, human-sized explanations. God doesn't need our understanding or our approval for His plans. He expects our obedience because He is God.

Isaiah 29:16 says, "Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; For shall the thing made say of him who made it, 'He did not make me'? Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, 'He has no understanding'?"

Isaiah 64:8 says, "But now, O LORD, You [are] our Father; We [are] the clay, and You our potter; And all we [are] the work of Your hand."

Maybe the best example of a man "dying to self" (other than Christ's own submission) is Job, who was "blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil." God loved and was pleased with Job, but God used Job's suffering to prove something to the Enemy and to present a lesson to us. Job refused to curse God even in the midst of enormous pain and loss, and God blessed Job abundantly for his steadfastness and faithfulness.

Job 1:22 says, "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly."

Job didn't suffer because he did something wrong (even though many of us do suffer because of our own sin); Job was part of something much larger than himself that he couldn't see. But, because he knew God and trusted Him, Job was able to persevere. Now, because he was just like us, he did ask for explanations -- ok, he demanded answers. "WHY is this happening to ME!?" Have you ever read God's reply? (It's LONG.)

Read it for yourself in Job chapter 38. http://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/Job/Job038.html

In a nutshell, God says, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding."

In other words, "I am God, and you are not. I keep the stars on course and the waters in the seas; trust me, I know what I'm doing."

Have you been obedient? Are you suffering some soul-ache, some heartache, some physical pain? Do you know that the God who made the heavens and the earth, and who made you, knows even the number of the hairs on your head and the number of your days before there was as yet one of them? Do you know that God also knows when even a tiny sparrow falls to the ground? Do you doubt that he cares for you?

Trust Him:

(Romans 8:28-29) And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

(Romans 8:32) He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

To trust Him, you must KNOW Him. To know Him, read His Word and talk to Him. God is not in the business of hiding from people who earnestly seek Him. There is purpose for your pain.

When Life Hurts

Today I am reminded that it doesn't really matter what happens tomorrow. I know who holds the future and I know that God is faithful to keep His promises. He gives purpose to life's pain: to mold us into Christlikeness, to minister to others, to teach us how much we need Him. I am His and He is mine.

I Corinthians 6:19-20 says, "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

Romans 12:1 says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."

I and my life are not my own. May God be glorified in how He chooses to use me.