Category Archives: Exhortations

Because We Never Stop Being Moms -Book Club- Chapter Three

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Chapter Three, You Say Good-Bye But He Says Hello, brings to our attention the generation of twixters, those in our age who are trapped between adolescence and adulthood.* Jim Newheiser quotes an article from Desiring God, and writes that this “Peter-Pan” phase is “characterized by identity exploration, instability, focus on self, feeling in limbo, and a sense of limitless possibilities. These characteristics accompanied by transience, confusion, anxiety, obsession with self, melodrama, conflict, and disappointment.” Sadly, this phenomenon is not only happening outside the church; it happens among us too. And it happens because parents allow it to.

This is a good place to stop and consider, especially if we still have teenagers or young adults at home (or college), these questions that I formulated after reading this chapter:

1. Am I always trying to come in between the actions of my children, their choices, and the consequences of these?

2. If I see that my son or daughter is instable, selfish, always confused, filled with anxiety, notable obsessed with self, egocentric, non-reasonable, do I always find myself excusing his/her behavior in one or another way? Do I always find myself giving explanations to cover up her sinful behavior?

3. Does my son or daughter who is still depending from us -the author mentions good reasons for this- have a plan that include a time table and good reasons for this? Do I find myself promoting this economical dependence in order to have always the “right to say so-and-so”?

4. How am I doing to practically teach my daughter or son the dangers of self-gratification?

5. If you are a mom of younger ones (teenagers), do you find yourself constantly contacting your child’s teachers to ask for extensions, for “one more opportunity,” or to try to explain the teacher that “she is a great student” even though the facts are shouting the contrary?

6. What practical steps are you taking to teach your son that we can’t enjoy the fruits of prosperity without having to sacrifice and work hard?

“This self-centered narcissism is at the heart of what drives this lost generation.”

7. When our children complain about hard work, do we teach them what the Bible says about perseverance or are we are prompt to encourage them to look for another job, something more fun and that would bring them pleasure, and help them to their “self-realization”?

“A Christian perspective on labor…must include a profound joy that originates in understanding that our work is for the Lord, who labored and languished on the cross for us. We work out of deep gratitude, whether our job is boring, strenuous, or dull.”

8. Am I encouraging my children to be financial and emotional independent to build their own families or to pursue their own selfish pleasures?

“Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern Seminary, warns that ‘the delay of marriage will exact an undeniable social toll in terms of delayed parenthood, even smaller families, and even more self-centered parents.”

9. Am I ready to let my children grow? If not, this is the time to seek the Lord and pray earnestly that He will give us the confidence that He has a plan for our children. Trying to hold them back (emotionally or financially) will not only affect us and our children, but also the church.

“Even though it doesn’t feel like it, and even though our hearts want to help and continue to parent our adult children, sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to say good-bye.”

The section at the end of the chapter “Let’s Talk More about It” has very good questions also. I encourage you to go through them.

Remember that I am just like you, learning how to be a good mom in this new stage of life, and so far, I can say that there is one thing I am absolutely sure is essential in parenting our adult children: prayer.

And, Sisters, it cannot get more practical than this. Prayer is where we start and where we end. “Always prayer before action,” as one of my dear friends reminded me lately.

 

 

Thank you for all your comments, they are rich, thoughtful, and are definitely making the reading of this book a more profitable endeavor. Thank you so much.

Next week: Chapter Four: Saying Hello to Pleasing God
Optional “Homework”: Read the articles and listen to the sermons under More Resources (there are six links, maybe one per day?).

Becky

* Twixters as defined by Wikipedia

More Resources:

A Church-Based Hope for “Adultolescents.”

Sermon: Get a Holy Ambition and Skip Adultolsecence.

An excellent article by Douglas Wilson: A Childish Life.

“We have entered the era where every self manufactures his or her own ethical system and hangs it from his or her very own hook in the sky. One might say the closets of our generation have a whole lot of “self space.”” D. Wilson

Sermon by Al Mohler: The Generation that Won’t Grow Up.

“Adulthood is meant for adult responsibilities, and for the vast majority of young people that will mean marriage and parenthood.” Al Mohler here: The Delay of Marriage and the Decline of Church Atendance.

 

“How do you live as a mature Christian in a culture that celebrates adolescence? How do you maintain the gravity of the Gospel in an era when the most immature person in any given room is likely to be the most celebrated?” Al Mohler (Oh, Grow up!)

Another excellent article by Matt Walsh: Adolescence: A Modern Plague, but there is a Cure.

“So, yes, adolescence can last until 25. It can last until 55. It can follow you right into your casket. We created it, and we can abolish it. And we can do that simply by expecting more out of people.”

From Diapers to Adulthood -Why Every Struggle Counts-

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Screen Shot 2019-03-22 at 7.24.06 PMGod has brought me close to three beautiful mommas of young children, three wonderful friends with whom I enjoy sharing prayers, laughs, meals, coffee, deserts that involve chocolate and berries, and messes that only 3-10 yo children can make.  Yesterday we had a conversation about the difference between the battles and struggles mommas of young children have to deal, with those that mommas of adult children face.

And you know what, momma of little ones? That conversation made think of you. Don’t feel bad when older women come to you, give you that particular look, a pat on the back, and say somehow sarcastically, “Oh, don’t fret over potty training, or school choices, those are nothing compared to what you will be dealing with in a few years.” or “Seriously? That tantrum will be nothing in a few years from now. Just wait, one day you will be wishing it all were about little things like this one…”

The seemingly small battles are not small battles at all. The problem is that sometimes we are not used to see the big picture, the whole story; we are so tangled up in our daily duties and to-do lists, that we forget what we are actually doing with those little ones we have at our table every morning spilling milk on the floor. Keep this in mind, every decision we face, every “no,” every “yes,” every step we take (or not take) is important because day after day, over and over, we are building character in our children’s lives. The over-looked tantrums of a two year old boy, will eventually turn into the slamming of a door of a teenager, and then into a husband who yells at his wife. With every decision, with every moment of discipline, with every hug, with every book we read aloud, and with every prayer we are building an adult’s character.

And if you are the mom of adult children, please, don’t despise the struggles of younger mommas. Encourage them instead to persevere, to keep pressing on. Remember that you were once changing diapers and asked in every single online forum help on how to choose the best how-to-read curriculum; remember that you didn’t know how to teach your little one how to be polite and look in the eye of the elderly woman at church; remember that every time you asked your child to turn off his game-boy when having company (iPods were not in the market yet) was a big thing.

Each struggle, each decision that my husband and I have made in the last 20 years has brought us to where we are now with our young adult children. There were no short-cuts; it has been a day after day race.

So be encouraged; what you do today is important, is your vocation, is what God has appointed for you to do in this season. You are not just doing ordinary things. You are building lives. Read that again: You are building lives. Your words and example, your time and prayers, your hugs and the correction you firmly give in love, all are needed in the process. Don’t be weary of doing what is good. God has promised that in due season you will reap, if you don’t give up.

Becky

A Christian Community is not a Dream World.

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This year I’ve decided I had to re-read some books on relationships that cannot be read only once. Face to Face by Wilkins is one of them, the other one is Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  In my opinion, these two books complement each other perfectly. Wilkins warns us about the sin of isolation, and Bonhoeffer reminds us that yes, we are called to live in community, but that “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality.”

Here are a few passages of Bonhoeffer’s book where he explains this in more detail:

“…One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood…”

 

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christan, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over like a dream… Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to him…A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community.  Sooner or later it will collapse… He who loves his dream of a community more that the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

 

“Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly  teaches me that neither of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together -the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mist of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.”

 

“What love is, only Christ tells in His Word. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is. Therefore, spiritual love is bound solely to the Word of Jesus Christ. Where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will maintain it. Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love’s sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love.”

Yes, I have many times built ideal dreams of the Christian community in my mind, and yes, the reality is different; but as I have been given the grace to see the imperfections in it and not deny them, I have loved it even more.

For grace to grow, build bridges, and edify lives today,

Becky

Well Worn Paths

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Habits, says J.R. Miller, are well worn paths.

It doesn’t matter if at the beginning of this new year you decided or not to set new goals, or to try new habits. You will, by the end of 2014, have made well worn paths. We make habits and they make us. We better be intentional about them.

One day you open your email on your iPhone first thing in the morning, and three months later you keep doing it. You skimmed through “only one chapter” of an assigned book for school,  and when the semester is over you realize you didn’t actually read one whole book. One day you eat more than you should have (hey, it’s only “once a month”), and at the end of the year you are eating in the dark, when no one else is watching. You answer with a harsh word to your husband after dinner, and four months later, you don’t know other way to answer. You are too busy to look on your children’s face when you are at the computer, and a year later they don’t remember your eyes. Habits. And not one of them was planned. Well worn paths that lead to sin, to isolation.

May I encourage you -as I preach this to myself as well-to choose carefully which path you will walk day after day this year?

Print these articles and study them. Read them over and over until you have mastered them, until they become yours:

The Habit of Prayer.

“We should form the habit of praying at every step, as we go along through the day. That was part of Paul’s meaning when he said, “Whatever you do, in word or in deed—do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” He would have us include every word we speak—as well as every deed we do. Think what it would mean to have every word that passes our lips winged and blessed with prayer—always to breathe a little prayer before we speak, and as we speak. This would put heavenly sweetness into all our speech! It would make all our words kindly, loving, inspiring words—words that would edify and minister grace to those who hear. We can scarcely think of one using bitter words, backbiting words, unholy words—if his heart is always full of prayer; if he has trained himself to always pray before he speaks.”

The Habit of Thanksgiving.

“The only way to get thanksgiving into its true place in our lives—is to have it grow into a habit. A habit is a well worn path. There was a first step over the course, breaking the way. Then a second person, finding the prints of feet, walked in them. A third followed, then a fourth, until at length there was a beaten path, and now thousands go upon it.”

The Habit of Happiness.

“The secret of Christian joy—is the peace of Christ in the heart. Then one is not dependent on circumstances or conditions. Paul said he had learned in whatever state he was, therein to be content. That is, he had formed the habit of happiness and had mastered the lesson so well, that in no state or condition, whatever its discomforts were, was he discontented.”

John Angell Adams delivered on January 4th, 1856, an address to young men in England about the force an importance of a habit.This is an excellent read for the family table (especially when there are young adult children).

“Man is a bundle of habits.”

“It is of importance to remember, that though we are made up of habits, they grow out of single actions. And consequently, while we should be careful and solicitous about the habits we form, we must be no less so about the single acts out of which they grow.”

The Habit of Diligence.

James Alexander wrote a series of letters for his younger brother, and in one of them he tells him about the importance of the habit of diligence.

“Even small things are important, when they become habitual. Plato, the Grecian philosopher, once rebuked a young man very severely for playing with dice. “Why do you rebuke me so severely,” said the youth, “for so small a matter?” Plato replied, “It is no small matter to form a habit!”

While you have your books before you—try to think of nothing else. If you find yourself beginning to be weary, rouse your mind by thinking of the value of time, the use of learning, and especially your duty to your God.”

 

“Habit will make those things easy—which at first seem very hard. By constant practice, men become able to do astonishing works”

On the Formation of Habits, from another letter of James Alexander to his younger brother.

“Every habit you form is one stone laid in your character.”

“You are young, and cannot choose for yourself what is best. But your teachers select those studies which will tend to give your mind proper habits. Pay all possible attention to these studies. Be perfect in them. Every hour now is worth more to you than a day is to me. Every day is confirming you in some habit, either good or bad. And if you are not careful to aim at those which are good, you will most assuredly fall into such as are bad. You cannot be too much in earnest then; attend to everything which your teacher advises.”

Praying that I will be faithful in making good habits this coming year.

Becky

How Do You Serve Warm Bread?

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You might be familiar with the setting: four moms waiting for their girls’ dancing class to be over while chatting about many trivial things. So, yes, I was there, except that the conversation was not trivial this time; the Lord had answered my prayer and He had opened a door for me to start sharing the gospel with them (one of them, a very nice hardcore atheist).

After many questions and many answers, I told them how the Gospel, the Kingdom of God, is like bread coming out of the oven and served with butter and honey on top, that for me that was an excellent way to describe it. They smiled, and one of them, the one who knew many “Christians” already looked at me and said, “I have never heard the Christian life, the gospel, described that way, with such an excitement, with such joy. But now I am thinking that many do not want to take that warm slice of bread with butter and honey because the hand that is offering it is so dirty, so filthy that you don’t dare to touch it, no matter how good and delicious the bread might be.”

I pray that as we have these ladies and their families over in our home in the weeks to come, as we open our lives before them, as we serve them, as we converse, as we extend our hands with the Gospel towards them, they will see clean hands reaching out to them. I pray they will have eyes to see how our hands and hearts have been cleansed by the Gospel, and then they too will take the Bread and eat, and have Life.

“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” John 6:35

 

“Scripture teaches us that the gospel must be preached to creation, and declared to every nation. From this, some have falsely assumed that in between our sermons and declarations the gospel must be absent. But the gospel is always present because the Spirit is present around our tables, in our homes, and the Spirit is present because Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. The Spirit fills the room with fumes, and gospel preaching flicks the lighter.” Grace Agenda Conference: Gospel Presence

Under His and by His grace,

Becky

Proverbs 2: Three Ifs

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Shiloh Photography

Proverbs 2 is without any doubt one of my favorite proverbs and this morning as I was reading it I noticed three important ifs (v.1-4)  that lead us to understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God (v.5-8). Three ifs that will help us understand righteousness and justice (v.9).

“My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to
understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures…”
Proverbs 2:1-4 (emphasis mine)

If you receive my words…

The only way to receive God’s Word is with a humble and quiet heart. A proud heart, an unteachable heart will never have an attitude of inclining his heart and ear to attentively listen to what God is saying.  We need a quiet heart, a quiet spirit to listen humbly to what the Lord is saying in His Word.  I have many times sinned by trying to quench God’s voice and choosing instead to listen to my own heart’s desires or anxieties. I have sinned when I have not taken heed of the warnings that God gives us in His Word, when I have been stubborn and have embraced my own thinking as the correct one. And you know what? Those times I have sinned in this area is because I did not come to the Word with a humble and a quiet heart that is always ready to listen both the encouragement in God’s Word as well as His warnings and admonitions.

If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you…

Again and again, we see this principle all over. How can I possible treasure up God’s Word within me if  don’t purposely do something about it? Memorizing the Word is the only way to meditate on it day and night. And if you think you can’t memorize it, well, read it all day long. Carry the Word with you, have it open on your kitchen counter, on your coffee table in your living-room, download Apps on your mobile that will help you treasure it all day long. As John Piper said, “Let the Bible bring you back to reality over and over during the day.”

If you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding…

James told us the same thing: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” The key word in both passages is “call.” We must call, we must ask God for it, knowing that He is the source of all Wisdom. There is no wisdom apart from Him. Let us not deceive ourselves, sisters, we know no better than God. Before calling your friend asking her for an advice, first search the Scriptures and go to your Heavenly Father in prayer. He has promised to generously give us the wisdom we need to live in this beautiful, crazy, and at times confusing world when we call for it, when we diligently seek it in prayer. The more wisdom I need the more prayer and the more reading of the Bible I need.

If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures…

So we need a humble heart to receive and treasure God’s Word, we also need to call out to God for wisdom. Now how are we going to do this? Diligently, putting all effort in our quest for wisdom. It doesn’t just happen. It is not like our justification in which we don’t have to do anything to become children of God, no here we are called to action. We must seek it and search it as for silver and hidden treasures. It is a life long pursue, it a day to day endeavor. It is hard work. It means that we might have to wake up earlier to make time for reading the Scriptures and praying. It means that we must purposely bring our heart and thoughts in submission to what God says throughout the day. There are no shortcuts. If we want to grow in wisdom we must strive for it and seek it with all diligence.

Then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God…

Please read verses 5-8. See? Isn’t it amazing that the Lord does give wisdom? He has stored  sound wisdom for simple women like me!  When we listen attentively, when we call for it, when we search for it as for hidden treasures we come to understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

Then you will understand righteousness and justice…

Now read verses 9-22. Look at these promises: wisdom will sure come to our heart and knowledge will be pleasant to our soul as a result of God answering our prayers. Discretion will watch over us and understanding will guard us (and watch and guard are strong verbs, they are definitely not passive ones!)

In verses 12-29 we see that when wisdom comes we will be able to discern and be delivered from the way of the evil and of men of perverted speech that deceive with their many words.  We will be delivered from the forbidden women (who always leads to idolatry and foolishness that drives men -and women alike- away from the covenant).

The last three verses give us a glimpse of the end of both the wise and the fool. And I know I want live and end my days walking in the way of the good, keeping to the path of the righteous. I long to live uprightly and in all integrity before my God. I want to live a wise life, so I will remember to listen humbly, to search the Scriptures, and to pray.

May God help us,

Becky