“No scream.”
“You may not hit.”
“No throw.”
“Come to mommy.”
I spend all day saying stuff like this to my two-year-old son Hudson—simple sentences that rarely get above three words together. That’s why, when I brought up the topic of gospel-centered parenting back in October, I admitted that I can find it overwhelming at times.
You see, we’re just trying to survive around here. If I can keep Hudson out of the pantry, get my afternoon nap, and keep the highchair tray wiped clean, it’s a successful day. Because Hudson’s behavior demands my constant training and discipline, the thought of trying to deliver mini-sermons on the wonders of the cross is enough to send me back to bed.
That’s why I’m so grateful for my mom’s encouragement. (Another reminder to me of why God’s Word in Titus 2 instructs the older women to train the younger women—we need it!) She has been faithful to provide a freeing and biblical perspective to her exhausted and sometimes guilt-ridden daughter: if I am faithfully disciplining and training Hudson to obey—with the ultimate goal of preaching the gospel to him—then I AM practicing gospel-centered mothering.
As Mom reminds me: Obedience is the gateway to understanding the gospel. An obedient child is a receptive child, a child who is prepared and positioned to receive the good news of the gospel.
For although it’s not intended as an explicit promise, this maxim of Scripture does hold true: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).
My two and three word sentences aren’t an evidence of my mothering failure (although there are plenty of those!). My efforts to consistently train and discipline Hudson are preparing him to one day (soon, I pray!) understand the demands of God’s holiness, the depravity of his heart, and the astonishing mercy of God.
P.S. Go Redskins
Sinclair Ferguson offers some wise advice in his comments on Psalm 55 in his book Deserted by God:
“Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice.” (Psalm 55:17 ESV)
“When we are overwhelmed by our circumstances, our whole life tends to become disordered. This is one of the obvious signs that a person can no longer cope. But we do not always make the connection we should between these basic rhythms in our lives and our personal stability. David kept fixed points in his life. When everything else seemed to collapse, a basic strict was still left, and therefore recovery and rebuilding were still possible.
Remember that, when things overwhelm you and you want to flee. Keep up your basic disciplines and duties. They may seem pointless, like bones without flesh; you may lack the emotional energy to enjoy them or even do them with vigor. You may no longer have a taste for them. But you must not let them collapse. If you do, your defenses will be broken down, and rebuilding will become almost impossible.
It is too late to think about this when we feel overwhelmed. We cannot start to build foundations in the middle of a storm; it is too late. Make sure you have begun to build these basic disciplines now. David had obviously done that. He had built strong foundations. When the storm came, of course his instinct was to flee; but, as we shall see, that was not his actual response.”
Why I love Christmas shopping by myself:
May your weekend be full of joy in the miraculous grace of our Savior!
Nicole for the girls
Do you ever feel like you don’t know what to say to someone who is suffering? Are you ever tempted to avoid the person who is going through a trial? Do you worry about saying or doing the wrong thing?
In her second breakout session at the Sovereign Grace Pastors Conference, Nancy Guthrie offered some practical advice for how to serve the hurting. This is one of the most helpful talks I have ever heard on this topic and I hope every woman will listen, take notes, and seek to grow in love toward those who are suffering. Nancy offers six ways to walk with people through loss:
“Sometimes we see people struggling and we want them to come so quickly to resolution, to figure everything out. The truth is, as we minister to other women, we do want them to come to resolution, we do want them to come to some peace, figuring things out. But sometimes I think we are in a much bigger hurry than God is Himself. What a gift it is to other women to be willing to sit—not forever, but at least for a while. To just go, “Wow, this is hard isn’t it?”“
“Don’t think tears are the problem. Tears are a gift that God gives us to help wash away the deep pain that we feel and experience from living life in the brokenness of this world. There are some things worth crying about. There are some people worth crying about.”
10 purposes in the Bible for which God wants to use suffering:
“If that is the fruit of the suffering in the people’s lives you minister to, that’s really good fruit: to know God as he is, not what we’ve tried to make him into.”
“Grief puts a lot of pressure on a family.”
“So often we think: when I get this figured out, when I feel better, I can turn toward ministering to other people. I want to say: The way we begin to feel better is to begin to minister to other people uniquely out of our loss.”
You can listen to Nancy’s message, “Learning to Walk with Each Other Through Loss” here.
So if the pain can’t be prayed away, how do we pray? If the answer from God seems to be “no,” should we keep repeating the same requests? Or should we just stop praying?
A friend and I were talking about this recently. We’d both reached this point in our lives. We had prayed those “righteous, rigorous, repeated” prayers Nancy Guthrie talked about, but the answer from God still seemed to be “no.” Uncertain of how to pray, we each returned to God’s Word, and in particular, to the Psalms.
When we feel like don’t know how to pray (and even when we think we do!) we must rely on the prayers given to us by God. Throughout the Bible, but especially in the Psalms, God has provided relevant, profound, infallible prayers.
Here we cannot go wrong. Here we can pray each and every word with confidence—certain that God is pleased to hear the prayers of His eternal Word, prayed in faith, in the name of Jesus Christ.
And these prayers are not lifeless or detached from the struggles and stresses of real life. They are waiting for us in the depths of human grief, confusion, and uncertainty; they pull us up to the heights of praise.
So when you can’t pray away the pain, pray through the pain. Pray through God’s Word. Pray through the Psalms.
“The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer.” Psalm 6:9
