girltalk Blog
2011 at 2:26 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Motherhood
Nancy Wilson is right: mothers are tempted to be worriers. And maybe our greatest worry is about our children’s salvation. We know that nothing is so important as the state of their soul before a Holy God. And if we are unsure about their salvation, or if we are sure they are not saved, we can be tempted to worry.
We easily forget that salvation isn’t something we give our kids. It is a gift that only God imparts.
Mark Dever reminds us that “According to the Bible, our repentance and faith are gifts of God to us; our conversion, our great change, occurs only by God’s grace.”
Only by God’s grace. So often we recognize and appreciate this about our own salvation. We wouldn’t dream of taking credit for our repentance and faith, and we would never credit the person who shared the gospel with us with actually saving us. We know without a doubt that the change that occurred in our soul was only by the powerful initiative of the Holy Spirit. Salvation comes from God alone.
But when it comes to our children, we can fall into thinking that their salvation is, at least in part, dependent upon us. Even though we would never say it, our worry reveals that we may actually be living as if we thought we could save our children.
We must look to God. He alone is the author of our children’s salvation. This doesn’t remove our responsibility to share and model the gospel to our children. But it does remove our worry.
So let’s not “worry our children away” but rather bring them to God in prayer. He alone can save.
8:47 a.m. Eating donuts the 3-year old way.
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Two great articles (as usual) from Nancy Wilson on “Worrying the Kids Away” and education as preparation for being a wife and a mother:
“So, young women, get yourself an education. Learn all you can because you’re going to need it. You want to be one efficient, brilliant helper so this guy you married can get it done. He needs a home and he needs a family and you are the means God has appointed to bring this amazing thing about. What a delight and privilege our calling is.”
Two great videos. One from John Piper on the power of the gospel in marriage, and another from Together for Adoption on the power of the gospel in adoption (and all of parenting!).
The Power of the Gospel and Marriage - John Piper from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.
The Stewarts from Together for Adoption on Vimeo.
4:45 p.m.
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“3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. 6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. 7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!.” (Psalm 37:3-7)
One thing above all has enabled me to dwell at peace in the midst of this trial: looking to the Lord alone, focusing “the eyes of my heart” deliberately and entirely upon God and His sovereignty, wisdom, and love.
“Look up!” exhorts Derek Kidner in his commentary on Psalm 37:
“An obsession with enemies and rivals cannot be simply switched off, but it can be ousted by a new focus of attention; note the preoccupation with the Lord Himself, expressed in the four phrases that contain His name here. It includes a deliberate redirection of one’s emotions (4a, take delight), and an entrusting of one’s career (your way, 5) and reputation (your vindication, 6) to Him. This is a liberation.”
True liberation from our troubles is achieved when we follow the steps laid out for us in Psalm 37, when we deliberately redirect our emotions to delight in the Lord and entrust our reputation and our future entirely to Him. Our preoccupation with our enemies can only be ousted by a new preoccupation: the glory and the goodness of God.
As I have sought to fill my mind—through Scripture, sermons, and songs—with thoughts of the Lord and who He is and what He has done and what He promises to do, I have been able to experience freedom, peace, and even joy in the midst of this most difficult trial. It doesn’t mean the pain or difficulty is removed, but that is not the focus of my attention. It is the Lord. To Him will I look.
4:51 p.m. Harvest Party
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After this trial broke, I spent the first six or eight weeks getting a foothold. Standing. Resolving not to retaliate, not to sin with my mouth. But as time went on, I realized that obedience to God meant more (but not less!) than outward kindness. God was also concerned with my heart.
I remember a conversation where CJ exhorted me: “Carolyn, we must not only respond with loving words and actions, but we must also honor God with the thoughts and attitude of our heart.”
This was a defining moment. I knew I must move beyond simply standing; I must cultivate a heart of love. This meant, above all, that I had to “Let all bitterness…be put away…forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:31-32). I must not harbor or cultivate angry, bitter, or vengeful thoughts and attitudes. I must not allow my soul to harden toward people or toward God.
To begin with, this meant I needed to spend less time reading, following, and focusing on the constant stream of slander against us. The more I read or listened to, and the more I thought about what I had read and heard, the more difficult it was to guard my heart, the more difficult it was to cultivate a heart of compassion and love. So I had to make a conscious choice to stop reading, stop paying attention to the words and actions against us.
This very practical advice came to me from one of the John Piper biographies about the life of Charles Simeon. “Simeon was no rumor-tracker” explains Piper:
”[He] was deeply wronged in 1821. We are not given the details. But when he was asked about his response (which had, evidently been non-retaliatory) he said, “My rule is – never to hear, or see, or know, what if heard, or seen, or known, would call for animadversion [criticism or censure] from me. Hence it is that I dwell in peace in the midst of lions” (Moule, 191).”
This is a very good, godly rule. Charles Simeon made a deliberate, conscious choice to ignore those things that would tempt him to an ungodly response in his heart or actions. And look at the fruit this simple decision produced in his life: he dwelled “in peace in the midst of lions.”
For those of us who feel that we are in the midst of lions today—-maybe your family is hostile toward you, or your co-workers or classmates are critical of your Christian witness, or you are a pastor’s wife whose husband is being slandered—we can dwell in peace. We can choose to stop tracking, following, focusing on the opposition of others. This is the first step toward guarding our heart against bitterness and glorifying God in the thoughts and motives of our heart.
8:46 a.m. Potty Training
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When this trial dropped like a bomb on our lives this past summer, it was shocking, painful, and disorienting. Slander and false accusations flew at us from all sides, shrapnel raining down on our entire family. I struggled to get my bearings in a haze of questions and grief. I rushed for cover in the Psalms. I guarded my soul with sermons and hymns. And I sought God for a path forward through this trial that would bring glory to my Savior.
Even though there was so much I didn’t understand at first, I knew from Scripture that there was one thing I must not do. I must not retaliate. I must not return evil for evil, but entrust my soul and our reputation to my faithful Creator (1 Pet. 4:19). Here was a place to simply stand.
Martyn-Lloyd Jones calls this “getting a foothold.” It is what Asaph resolved in Psalm 73 when he was downcast and perplexed and his “feet had almost stumbled” (v. 2). He simply resolved not to sin with his mouth: “If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children” (v. 15)
“He held on to what he was certain of, and he held on at all costs,” explains Lloyd-Jones:
“About his main problem he was very uncertain; he could not understand that at all. Even after he had pulled himself up, it still puzzled him…But having looked at the thing again, he realized that if he were to speak as he was tempted to speak, the immediate consequences would be that he would be the cause of offense to God’s people, and he held on to that fact” (Faith on Trial, p. 38)
When trial or temptation suddenly invades our lives, we may be knocked off our feet by the blast. The first thing we must do is simply stand—stand on God’s Word and determine what we must do, or not do, in obedience to Him. We must not despise the day of small beginnings, urges Dr. Lloyd Jones. For this is “the way in which the Psalmist managed to steady himself and arrive back eventually at such a great and firm position of faith” (p. 31).
God had much more to teach me in the weeks to follow in this trial. But it began by simply “getting a foothold.” May God help us all to stand, and eventually arrive again at a mountaintop of faith.
4:55 p.m.
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