Traveling Light for Mothers

I have known about Max Lucado for years, but never read any of his work until recently. Netflix has a video of 3:16 (the link is an audio message though) which I watched. I also read Safe in the Shepherd’s Arms. So when I came across Traveling Light for Mothers I was intrigued. I will say that something about the way Mr. Lucado explains our relationship with the Lord, well, his words bring soothing hope and encouragement.

He covers moms' amazing purses, the burdens of self-reliance, discontent, weariness, worry, hopelessness and guilt.

So, here is an excerpt from this little gift size book....you might want to look it up for a mother in your life...

Haven't you been known to pack your bag with some unnecessary items? Odds are, you did this morning. Somewhere between the first step on the floor and the last step out the door, you stuffed your bag full. It wasn't a bag made of leather, but the one of the mind. And you didn't fill it with books or BandAids or Binaca, you filled it with burdens. The kind of burdens that moms carry. The suitcase of guilt. A sack of discontent. You drape a duffel bag of weariness on one shoulder and a hanging bag of worry on the other. No wonder you're so tired at the end of the day. Toting those kinds of bags is exhausting. What you were saying to me, God is saying to you, "Set that stuff down! You're carrying burdens you don't need to bear. 'Come unto me,' he invites, 'all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest' (Matthew 11:28 NLT)

If you are like me and carry the "weight of the world" sometimes, you might enjoy this book! There is a whole book with this same title (minus the For Mothers part) . (I haven't read it yet!)

Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot

On the heels of reading The Great Divorce by CS Lewis I came across a used copy of Passion and Purity which my friend Julie had told me about. The subtitle is Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control. I believe it could also be subtitled, Learning to bring your life under Christ's control and be content with His plans for you!









I have been married for many years now. I definitely see the benefit this book has for the unmarried adult or teen, however, I believe it would benefit anyone who wants to understand what a life sold out to being an ambassador for Christ looks like.

Elisabeth Elliot was married (by the end of the book) to Jim Elliot, the famous missionary martyred along with four other men in the jungles of Ecuador. The story of the sacrifice these men made all so that some how the Gospel could be told to this unreached tribe has overwhelmed me for quite some time. The men in fact had guns, but refused to use them for protection because it might have meant the tribe would never be reached with the gospel.

I will not give you much more about that part, but you can see it for yourself in Through Gates of Splendor or End of the Spear.

So, knowing the end of their lives as a married couple, it was beautiful to read of the leading up to that relationship. Jim and Elisabeth both felt called to ministry and especially missions before they met in college. They fell in love with each other, but Jim had felt clearly that the Lord did not want him to marry yet. He wasn't sure if it meant ever, or just until some point in his life was reached. So Passion and Purity deals with the years that they stayed apart waiting on the Lord and each other. Now, I know that this is very valuable for those who are awaiting the possibility of marriage, but I also was struck throughout the book with the fact that all of us as followers of Christ must be willing to lay aside all that we think we desire to following Him first and foremost. We are called to spread the Good News of Christ with everyone around us and to the uttermost parts of the Earth. How many things do we allow to come before that call?

I will not summarize their whole romance, but I will share a few quotes (my favorite part!)

If there is an Enemy of Souls (and I have not the slightest doubt that there is), one thing he cannot abide is the desire for purity. Hence a man or woman's passions become his battleground. The Lover of Souls does not prevent this. I was perplexed because it seemed to me He should prevent it, but He doesn't. He wants us to learn to use our weapons.


What kind of a God is it who asks everything of us? The same God who "...did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all; and with this gift how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?" He gives all. He asks all.


I knew, and I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done. Acceptance of whatever that means is the great victory of faith that overcomes the world.

This book left me really wanting to read Jim Elliot's journals, which Elisabeth also published!

Finally back....and CS Lewis "The Great Divorce"

I have missed sharing for the last several months. November was apparently the last time I both had time and could sit in my chair to write. December found me mostly in the bed with back problems. I am thankful to be able to sit and share once again!

I have had CS Lewis' The Great Divorce on my shelf for sometime in line to read. Recently, I felt led to pick it up. I am so very glad I was blessed with the chance to read it.

The story is a dream. Only a dream. Lewis makes clear that He is not "claiming knowledge of what no mortal man knows." (chapter 14)

Having understood that, the story begins as a young man from the Grey City enters the line for the bus. The bus takes air and carries them to "another" place. After disembarking from the bus, they are each met by "bright people". The man observes encounter after encounter of the passengers as they are offered the chance to climb the mountains and press on (to heaven). I see myself and/or others (saved and lost unfortunately) in each encounter.

The first encounter is of a "moral man" (in his own estimation) who's "bright person" was a murderer on earth. He cannot imagine how the murderer could possibly be there. Says the "bright" man to the moral,

"That is a little hard to understand at first. But it is all over now. You will be pleased about it presently. Till then there is no need to bother about it."

"No need to bother about it? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"No, Not as you mean. I do not look at myself, I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began."

The "moral man" goes on and on about how good he was and how he deserves his rights because of it. The bright man responds:

"Oh no. It's not so bad as that. I haven't got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You'll get something far better. Never fear."

Another encounter deals with our thinking that as long as we live by our "honest opinions" all will be well in the end. Yet another just wants to "have a look around", our modern version of "try God" I suppose, expecting God to entertain him.

Our main character finally meets with his bright person (a rather famous one who had quite a mark on the salvation of CS Lewis). He explains that the visitor cannot understand heavenly things until he arrives there,

"That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness..."

"There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy-that is, to reality."

Several quotes I love sum up so much of what I took away from this reading.

Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the things he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.


'But of course!' said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. 'That's what we all find when we reach this country. We've all been wrong! That's the great joke. There's no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin to live.'


There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks at Him and bad when it turns from Him.


How very many ways we find to reject God as He is, not as we want to make Him out to be. When all along, He stands, with loving arms, ready to be all He is in us every hour of every day. I guess that is what I take away from this book. Lord, open my eyes. You are God alone!

Uncle Tom's Cabin/ Thanksgiving

I have just finished reading Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. On the eve of Thanksgiving, I haven't much time to write, but must put this down while it is all fresh.

The subject of slavery and the mark still carried by black people of African decent has always been a concern to me. Harriet Beecher Stowe did an amazing job of showing the evils and humanness of everyone involved, from the traders, to the owners and their children, to the abolitionists and the northerners who in their silence did nothing to the Christian slaves and the ones in more bondage than their physical bodies.

One of the many things that will stay with me about this book, is what an amazing job Stowe does of describing the sins done under the "protection" of "Christian" churches in total contrast to that of what she correctly understood a relationship with God Almighty to be.

I have marked many passages in this book and will carry them near to me. Not in anyway to diminish the message of the slavery of African's in our country and the subsequent treatment afterward to this day, but how many times over we see these scenes in the way we all think and treat others as less than what God created them to be.

This scene is from chapter eleven in a tavern where a notice has just been read of the running away of George.

"These yer knowin' boys is allers aggravatin' and sarcy," said a coarse-looking fellow, from the other side of the room; "that's why they gets cut up and marked so. If they behaved themselves, they wouldn't."

"That is to say, the Lord made 'em men, and it's a hard squeeze getting 'em down into beasts," said the drover, dryly.

(the previous man goes on the say that talents are wasted on them)

"Better send orders up to the Lord, to make you a set, and leave out their souls entirely," said the drover.

Said of Evangeline's mother who is always self-absorbed...

"Marie was one of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose eyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in possession. Whatever she had, she seemed to survey only to pick flaws in it; but, once fairly away, there was no end to her valuation of it."

Father, keep us all from this terrible sin. Help us love all you put around us while there is still life in them.

This one cuts to the heart of all our sin...

"...It is no more true of this race than of every oppressed race, the world over. The slave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one."

And to be sure we have a correct picture of how the Lord sees our suffering, Tom instructs us...

"Missis," said Tom, after a while, "I can see that, some how, you're quite 'bove me in everything; but there's one thing Missis might learn even from poor Tom. Ye said the Lord took sides against us, because he lets us be 'bused and knocked round; but ye see what come on his own Son,--the blessed Lord of Glory, --wan't he allays poor? and have we, any on us, yet come so low as he come? The Lord han't forgot us, --I'm sartin' o' that ar'. If we suffer with him, we shall also reign, Scripture says; but, if we deny Him, he also will deny us. Didn't they all suffer? --the Lord and all his? It tells how they was stoned and sawn asunder, and wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, and was destitute, afflicted, tormented. Sufferin' an't no reason to make us think the Lord's turned agin us; but jest the contrary, if only we hold on to him, and doesn't give up to sin."

I would love to listen to the sermons men like Uncle Tom could have preached. I leave now to spend time with my family, thankful, that despite suffering and loss, Jesus has endured all suffering such as is common to man and is well acquainted with all our sorrows and even endured the cross. We are free in Christ! Therefore do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery, but in love serve one another!

Already Gone

I've been reading a very thought provoking book called "Already Gone" by Ken Ham.

Several things I've gleaned so far...by college age when we "think" we are loosing church kids, most of them were "already gone".

They say they are turning away because of "hypocrisy" in the church, pastors who preach one thing but live another and a myriad of other reasons.

Ken (Answers in Genesis) and Britt (America's Research Group) wanted deeper answers. From their survey they began to uncover patterns in the stats that showed a large number of these 20's returned for Holiday Services and/or planned to return when they married or had kids.

So, why did they leave? The survey also showed that these kids did not have solid beliefs about the Biblical account of Creation and it went down hill from there. Many of them attended Sunday School and/or Youth Group, but didn't gain a firm grasp of the historical accuracy and the real relationship they could have with a personal God. I would add that maybe parents still struggled with this and neglected, or just didn't know how to teach these things at home. (Not judging...something of which we've been personally convicted and are working to correct).

"They see a great discrepancy between what the people are saying and the way that they are living; they may have been torn by what they heard a preacher preaching and what they saw him doing. I believe it very likely they have heard the pastor compromise in some way on Genesis - and they see this as hypocrisy when the Church claims to believe the Bible as the Word of God. These people want authenticity. They want grace, truth and RELEVANCY in the Body of Christ. They're not going to come back unless something changes on this level."

Post Darwin, "The Church began to make a disconnection at this point. It was the beginning of the road to irrelevancy: the Church gave up the earthly things (e.g., the biological, anthropological, astronomical, geological history as recorded in Genesis 1-11) and focused on heavenly things (spiritual matters, relationships, the gospel). When it came to science, the Church gave in to human notions. It was now acceptable to use the Bible to judge man's ideas to re-interpret the Bible, rather than to use the Bible to judge man's ideas."

"Churches today in America are not a place where one talks about geology, dinosaurs, fossils, or the age of the earth - that is left up to the schools and colleges. Effectively, the Church basically hands over the history of the universe to the secular educational institutions, and concentrates on the spiritual and moral aspects of Christianity. The Church actually disconnects the Bible from the real world. The children (and everyone else, through Sunday School lessons, youth studies, ect.) in the churches are really taught that in church, one doesn't deal with geology, biology, and so on - that is for school. In church, we talk about Jesus - we deal with doctrines and we study moral and spiritual matters - but anything pertaining to understanding geology, biology, astronomy, anthropology, and so forth is left for school."



The point I glean so far in my reading is what a pastor recently said to us. He said he believes the problem is we have compartmentalized our "spiritual lives", or work lives, our home lives, our fun lives...ect, ect...But God, the Creator of the Universe and every intricate thing in it, has placed answers for all of these things in His Word. He is real! He longs to have a real and personal relationship with us! They must be told this...we must stand on the truth...on His Word! If they are not, the church buildings are irrelevant.

The Prodigal God Part 3 - The elder brother...

"He's adding things up, "I've worked myself to death and earned what I've got, but my brother has done nothing to earn anything, indeed he's merited only expulsion, and yet you lavish him with wealth! Where's the just in that?" (from Prodigal God by Timothy Keller).
The father makes known to the elder son his desire for him to join in the celebration of the lost son. We do not know what he chose. Jesus left the story open for the Pharisees to respond.

Will we accept God's ways over our own? Will we be happy for His will?
In a recent sermon at the Ligonier Conference, Burt Parsons said, ": "If you don't believe that Osama Bin Laden could be the elect of God, then you don't believe the gospel."

The Prodigal God Part 2 The younger brother...

Luke 15:11-32

Jesus tells a parable that begins with the younger of two sons asking for his father to give him his portion of the family estate. "...this division of the estate only occurred when the father died. Here the younger son asks for his inheritance now, which was a sign of deep disrespect. To ask this while the father still lived was the same as to wish him dead. The younger son was saying, essentially, that he wants his father's things, but not his father."

This statement really strikes me, because I think believers in Christ and unbelievers a like do this. We want God to be what we want him to be, when we want him to be, but want to stop short of giving him the honor He is due as creator and sustainer of all.

The younger son was asking his father to tear apart his life, his land and his identity and the father seems to do it without question.

The son leaves home and squanders everything until he finds himself feeling a bit jealous of the pigs lunch. He decides on a plan to beg to serve as a hired hand in the father's house.

The response he finds as he comes in sight of his father's estate is astounding. His father sees him coming and RUNS to meet him. Just as amazing he sends for the robe! "The father is saying, 'I'm not going to wait until you've paid off your debt; I'm not going to wait until you've duly groveled. You are not going to earn your way back into the family, I am going to simply take you back. I will cover your nakedness, poverty, and rags with the robes of my office and honor."

This shows how lavish and prodigal (prod-i-gal: 1. recklessly extravagant. 2. having spent everything.) God's grace is. "Jesus shows the father pouncing on his son in love not only before he has a chance to clean up his life and evidence a change of heart, but even before he can recite his repentance speech. Nothing, not even abject contrition, merits the favor of God. The Father's love and acceptance are absolutely free."

This story in no way is over at this point. Remember, Jesus is telling this parable in response to the snide comments of the Pharisees. Part 3 next time...

The Prodigal God Part 1

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

"Most readings of this parable have concentrated on the flight and return of the younger brother- the "Prodigal Son". That misses the real message of the story, however, because there are two brothers, each of whom represents a different way to be alienated from God, and a different way to seek acceptance into the kingdom of heaven."

Two groups of people are present at this teaching..."Now the tax collectors and 'sinners' were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law..."

The younger brother is the sinner or tax collector. They have left "home" or "respectable society" to live however they want...wild living. The older brother is the religious leaders. "They held to the traditional morality of their upbringing. They studied and obeyed the Scripture. They worshiped faithfully and prayed constantly."

The sinners "were gathering" to listen to Jesus. The religious were scrutinizing every move Jesus made, in this case, why he was eating with sinners and tax collectors. It is in answer to this question that Jesus tells this story.

"Through this parable Jesus challenges what nearly everyone has ever thought about God, sin and salvation. His story reveals the destructive self-centeredness of the younger brother's moralistic life in the strongest terms. Jesus is saying that both the irreligious and the religious are spiritually lost, both life-paths are dead ends, and that every thought the human race has had about how to connect to God has been wrong."

I love this quote!! "So whose side is Jesus on? In Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits ask the ancient Treebeard whose side he is on, he answers: 'I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side...[But] there are some things, of course, whose side I'm altogether NOT on'."

"...religiously observant people were offended by Jesus, but those estranged from religious and moral observance were intrigued and attracted to him." (Luke 7, John 3-4, Luke 19 and Matthew 21:31) "If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think."

The Prodigal God

I have just finished my first reading of The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. I usually soak a book up slowly, but I felt compelled to keep reading to the end of the "story". As a result, I plan to go back through and process in order each point to ponder and hopefully blog as I go. If you have read this book before, PLEASE comment. If you haven't read this book, get the book and PLEASE comment. :-)

All I can say at this point is that according to Timothy Keller's explanation of the story of the Prodigal Son from the Scripture (he says more appropriately called The Story of the Two Sons), I find myself to have acted out the part of both the elder brother and the younger brother.

Until my next blog, I'll leave with this quote from Jonathan Edwards' sermon "A Divine and Supernatural Light".

"There is a difference between believing that God is holy and gracious, and having a new sense on the heart of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. The difference between believing that God is gracious and tasting that God is gracious is as different as having a rational belief that honey is sweet and ...having the actual sense of its sweetness."

Lonia: A Conversion Story

I found a great little resource for helping kids and teens understand the process of conversion of a believer. It is called Lonia: A Conversion Story. It was written by James Greendyk and put out by Reformation Heritage Books.

Lonia is a young girl orphaned. This is the story of how she comes to understand her sin and her need for a Savior and learns how to give herself over to the work of Christ in her life.

Stepping Heavenward

I knew when I read this book the first time that it would not be my last read. So, here I am again. Stepping Heavenward was written in 1869 and is the story of one girls process of sanctification. The account begins when she is 16 years old and unsaved. She is well aware of her sin and yet struggles with a lack a desire to mortify it. Through conversations with her dear pastor, his wife and her mother, she begins to understand what it is to follow the Lord. The story follows her throughout her life as she grows in grace and truth.

I do not know about everyone else, until the day I read Romans 7 and found I was not the only one who struggled again my flesh to do the things of the Father, I was in awe! I was just a teenager, but it was quite a load off of my heart! Through the years since that time the Lord has patiently and lovingly continued to guide me to Him...stepping heavenward.

Shepherding a Child's Heart and Study Guide

I cannot recommend Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp and the study guide that goes with it enough!! I am learning so much. I am receiving Biblical answers to things I have struggled with the whole 13 years I have been a parent! I have a feeling I will need to do this study more than once, because I have much to learn and repent of!!

One more quote today from Mere Christianity

"Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disquise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage."

Quote From Mere Christianity

I was sure I had blogged about Mere Christianity. I have been trying to read it for some time. But, it looks like I haven't. Well, I just came across a quote I'd like to share!

God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: The thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from!!! He is our only possible ally and we have made ourselves His enemies.

More to come!!!

Not a Tame Lion

My favorite quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is from the conversation between Susan, Lucy and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver when they meet. Susan asks if this Aslan is quite safe because she feels she'll be rather nervous about meeting Him. Mrs. Beaver says that only a silly person could stand before Aslan without their knees knocking.

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

(This has sunk into the being that is me and often recalled. This notion is even more understood from reading Book 1 in Mere Christianity, also by Lewis, which I and a friend are reading together.)

(Thanks for indulging me :-) ) So, I said all that to say that I found a book called Not a Tame Lion which OF COURSE caught my eye!! It is a book about the Spiritual Legacy of C. S. Lewis by Terry Glaspey. (For those George Grant fans, Grant wrote the forward!!)

I love the angle of this book. It is part biography intertwined with the messages of the writings of Lewis. What a brilliant idea!

So, I'll probably comment more about this book, but I'll leave Chronicles of Narnia fans with this one fact. Did you know that Lewis and his housemates opened their home to evacuated children during the war? (just like in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe!!!) Glaspey states that this is probrably the insite it took for Lewis to be able to write such wonderful children's Literature!

The Village on The Hill: A Story of the Church Conflict in Germany

I have just finished a very moving and perhaps even convicting book published in English in May of 1940. The Village on The Hill: A Story of the Church Conflict in Germany is a true account of the village of Lindenkopf just before and after Hitler came to power and the Nazi regime began to control Germany.

The old pastor of the local German Christian Church retired and a new younger pastor was sent to the village. Peter Holzschuh, a woodman and member of the church council, had been in the military with Pastor Stefan Grund during the first world war.

The church had previously been content to attend services on Sunday with little or no impact on their daily lives, though they are upstanding people. However, Pastor Grund began to call their attention back to the Word, eventually even holding extra Bible classes to teach the people.

Slowly, but surely, this town, fairly disconnected from the outside world before, began to see the effects of the Nazi regime in their small village. Gradually, the German Christian Church was infiltrated and the upper leadership replaced with members of the National-Socialist Party. A separation became necessary and the Confessing Church was formed, which declared that it stood on the Word of God alone. I will not spoil the story for any who have the opportunity to read this book, so, this is my only introduction!

I have never read anything about the Christian church during this time, I confess. The story of their struggle is amazing. It reminds me that we must all "be prepared in and out of season", learning to love God and studying Him through His Word. We must be ready to stand on His Word and trust him alone for our salvation, else we also could fall prey to looking for the salvation of our nation and all that we hold dear in man and government. We pray for our government and obey its laws to the extent that they do not go against the Word of God. His Word endures forever.

I leave with one quote from the book:

This was the sort of thing we felt that our fathers had endured; they, too, had gathered together that God's Word might not be taken from them; they, too, had sung the battle-songs of the Gospel in the face of their enemies. Hundreds of years had passed since the Reformation, floods of water had rolled down our millstream since then, plagues and wars and revolutions had broken over our village, new things had come in and old things died out; but the Word of God had not died; we could see once again how much it was alive.

Knowing God by J I Packer

Some things really struck me just now as I am reading the preface and Ch 1 of J I Packer's Knowing God. He writes:

In A Preface to Christian Theology, John Mackay illustrates two kinds of interest in Christian things by picturing persons sitting on the high front balcony of a Spanish house watching travelers go by on the road below. The "balconeers" can overhear the travelers' talk and chat with them; they may comment critically on the way that the travelers walk; or they may discuss questions about the road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen for differnt points along it, and so forth; but they are onlookers, and their problems which, though they have their theoretical angle, are essentially practical-problems of the "which-way-to-go" and "how-to-make-it" type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too.

Balconeers and travelers may think over the same area, yet their problems differ. Thus (for instance) in relation to evil, the balconeer's problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can consist with God's sovereignty and goodness, but the traveler's problem is how to master evil and bring good out of it. Or again, in relation to sin, the balconeer asks whether racial sinfulness and personal perversity are really credible, while the traveler, knowing sin from within, askes what hope there is of deliverence. Or take the problem of the Godhead; while the balconeer is asking how one God can conceivably be three, what sort of unity three could have, and how three who make one can be persons, the traveler wants to know how to show proper honor, love an dtrust toward the three Persons who are now together at work to bring him out of sin to glory. And so we might go on.

I am really struck by the explanation of this. It makes perfect sense to me as a traveler. Balconeers might say, "How do you know that God is even there?" But His children say, "I just know He is!" Even when I struggled as a child with doubting my salvation because of the wickedness I still saw in myself, when I stopped worrying and looked to God, I had no doubt that I knew Him and had sensed his Presence and known His work in my life. The thing is, one can never know this from looking on "from the balcony" so to speak. But those who truely know God, though doubts and fears may assail us from time to time, know that we know.

And then Packer goes on tosay:

My proposal is this. You will know how (John) Bunyan's pilgrim (in Pilgrim's progress), when called back by his wife and children from the journey on which he was setting out, "put his finders in his ears, and ran on crying, Life, Life, Eternal Life." I ask you for the moment to stop your ears to those who tell you there is no road to knowledge about God, and come a little way with me and see. After all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and anyone who is actually following a recognized road will not be too worried if he hears nontravelers telling each other that no such road exists.

Her Children Arise Up and CALL HER BLESSED

I just finished a good book on Motherhood. It was published by Castleberry Farms Press, the people who brought us the wonderful courtship series. Mr. and Mrs. Steven Castleberry write of memories of their own godly mother and grandmother and the examples they lived. There are chapters on motherly attention, being compassionate to others, showing genuine love for your children, fearing the Lord, being content with what you have, being cheerful, being home, loving your husband, prefering others and children's praise of their mothers.

The Spiritual Power of a Mother

I haven't blogged in awhile; my reading has been a little scattered. But, last night I finished Michael Farris' (President of HSLDA) The Spiritual Power of a Mother. I was very encouraged!



The mother child relationship is something that has always intrigued me. And I have observed very destructive use of the spiritual power that a mother has. So, the title is what drew me to this book.

As mothers, we have an unprecedented opportunity of influence in children's lives. But, Mr. Farris points out one big thing that really struck me; I have mulled it over since I read it. He says, that our primary job as mothers is NOT to teach them not to pick at scabs and wear clean underwear (no matter how much they need to hear that...HA HA). Nor, is it to teach our children ABOUT God.

"Teaching about God is important, but the most important thing you can teach your child is to believe in God....We teach our children to love God through the course of everyday living by having them watch us as we live a life of faith. This is God's ordained teaching method for obeying His most important command to parents: teach your children to love God."

Ouch. So, no amount of preaching AT them will develop a love for God (kind of sounded better in our heads huh?), but mostly, the faith we live in front of them. He goes on to give examples of poor behavior that we often exhibit in front of our children which teaches them the opposite of loving a Sovereign God.

He goes on to walk through many of the daily battles Homeschool Moms face with fatherly advice and humor and realistic goals. I have been very encouraged by this book and hope you will be too!

CHRISTmas

We talk glibly of the "Christmas spirit," rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But...the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing of human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.
J.I. Packer, Knowing God