Too Busy: When “Giving Them Everything” is Not Enough

Busyness. It’s one of the diseases of Western society. Are we busy trying to distract ourselves from our own lack of contentment? Are we busy trying to “keep up”?

A man commented that he would never have more than a couple of children because he “wants to give them everything”.

“Everything”. Our definition of that word defines the entire essence of our lives.

Isn’t it time we scrutinize our “everything” and make sure we are giving them what they really need?

“I wonder if it occurs to Western middleclass parents that many of the activities we feel we cannot do without are unaffordable luxuries to parents in many other parts of the globe, or even in other parts of the city, and yet every nation on earth is capable of producing well-rounded, creative, and civilized human beings. How? But that’s a topic for another day….

Many North American parents feel not just a desire, but an obligation to offer their children the widest possible range of leisure experiences and activities. The choices are myriad: music lessons (Pick one—or more—of a hundred different instruments and musical styles, then decide: solo, ensemble, band, orchestra, choir, or a combination thereof?); sports (Which to choose? How many at once? Highly competitive or just for fun?); dance, drama, clubs, hobbies….

Some families do not eat even one dinner together per week; on any given evening, the mother and father are dashing in different directions. Larger families find themselves going in three or four directions, which only works if you carpool, requiring complicated drop-off/pick-up schedules, or (in my rural area) numerous vehicles (and teens who can legally drive them)….”  Read full article : Enough of Parenting Misery Lit

Activities themselves aren’t bad. Busyness that robs us of the simplicity and joys of living and serving others is. May we seek a careful balance.

(Thoughts to be continued…) What are your thoughts?

Home: The Overlooked Mission Field

When Kathy, Robin and I prepared for the Living a Legacy Conference, without really talking to each other about the specifics of our individual talks, we realized there was a common thread weaving it all together: the mission field of HOME.

I asked in one of my sessions, why we are so receptive, supportive and excited about foreign missions (and we should be), but the same things we praise about the foreign missionary we actually disdain in a mother who has given her life to mission work.

For example, the more a missionary suffers and sacrifices for the sake of imparting the gospel to a people group, the more we extol his work, never once thinking the hardship to be a “sign” that he is doing the wrong thing. Again, this is true and right.

But if a mother suffers (pregnancy hardship?) and sacrifices (gives up comforts to afford to be home) so she can disciple (impart the gospel to ) her children (people group) (so they can go out and plant mission fields), take meals to her neighbors, send cards of encouragement to her hurting friend, or walk with her through a difficult marriage, she is somehow wrong, wasting time and/or invoking her own (and her family’s) hardship by her “irresponsible” choices.

We’ve missed it. The examples I gave are all equally important, equally necessary and should be equally esteemed.

When our homes ceased to be “mission bases”, myriads of problems arose that have had to be solved by means never intended.

Kathy spoke in more detail in her session, “The Heart of Hospitality, How to Disciple the Nations, One Home at a Time”, but suffice it to say, that we need an awakening of the importance of home and its vitality to the gospel, our communities and our churches.

We need families in tune with the needs around them willing to minister in whatever way they are able.

Once you look, you’ll be amazed at how white unto harvest it is.

The Mystery of Parenting: Our Role, God’s Role

I’ve raised kids long enough to know that there is no formula for turning out great ones.

But I’ve also raised them long enough to know that “a child left to himself brings his mother shame”.

Is there a greater mystery than the fact that a heart belongs to God and yet parents have a grave responsibility to train them and bring them up in the Lord?

Where’s the balance then in what belongs to Him and what belongs to us? If it’s all Him, we have a free ride. I don’t think any of us believes that. And if it’s all us, then the formula should “work” right?

Sadly, too many of us have fallen into one of the ditches, either forsaking our careful responsibility to train “arrows” because after all, “it’s only God’s grace”, or depending on a formula and being wildly disillusioned to find that it doesn’t always “work”; and if it does, being swallowed in pride, attributing their “success” to our precision.

The answer? Just like God’s sovereignty over salvation and our responsibility to submit to His authority intersect at a mysterious, humanly-out-of-grasp understanding, so does that of the dual partnership parents and God play in the lives of our children.

We cannot escape our obligation to teach them to love the Lord, even if they don’t appear to. We are commanded to give them wisdom–the fullness of all that is written in Scripture, to help them gird themselves with the armor of God, to resist Satan, to take every thought captive, to repent of sins, to pursue holiness, to deny lusts, to love their neighbor, to walk in humility, to do good works, to flee sin, and to stand firm in the faith.

Underneath those commands we must help our children flesh them out in their lives. To speak respectfully, to not burp at the table, to dress lovingly, to pay careful attention to their recreational choices and to express kindness in a thousand ways.

And even more than all that, we must live it, demonstrating the reality of Christ and the power of forgiveness.

We must be faithful. We cannot escape our never-ending obligations.

But still they are the Lord’s. He discipled carefully and faithfully, and still one turned away. God turns the heart and He indwells His children. We must hold both, simultaneously, understood or not, in our hands.

Walking this road with you and finding it often difficult….we keeping walking.

(Thank you, Cathy, for good dialogue that inspired this post )

Disciple Your Nation

At the conference, Kathy made a profound point that encouraged me so much. So often when we hear the Great Commission–”go ye into all the world and make disciples”–we think of foreign missions. I guess it’s the word “go”.

But “the word translated as ‘go’ is a participle and thus should be translated as ‘going’ or ‘having gone’. Thus, this point of the sermon becomes: ‘As you are going make disciples.’ ” (The Great Commission)

Also, “nations” means “your people group”. I find it poignant as we compare the Great Commission to the example Christ left through His ministry on earth, that “discipling the nations” happens through building close relationships with a few people (your people group) around you, walking daily, intimately and intensely with them.

If everyone would disciple his people group–starting with his home and the few people with whom he comes in the closest contact (neighbors, grocery store clerk, etc.) the nations would be transformed.

Relationships=Nations changed.

That’s how we do it. When we rise up, when we lie down, when we walk along the way, and when we sit in our house. Without bells and whistles, no programs necessary.

Faithful lives, tireless work, eternal rewards.

What is the Message of Christianity?

“We live in a church culture that has a dangerous tendency to disconnect the grace of God from the glory of God.  Our heart resonates with the idea of enjoying God’s grace. We bask in sermons, conferences and books that exalt a grace centering on us. And while the wonder of grace is worthy of our attention, if that grace is disconnected from its purpose, the sad result is a self-centered Christianity that bypasses the heart of God.

If you were to ask the average Christian sitting in a worship service on Sunday morning to summarize the message of Christianity, you would most likely hear something along the lines of, ‘the message of Christianity is that God loves me.’ Or someone might say, ‘the message of Christiantiy is that God loves me enough to send His Son, Jesus, to die for me.’

As wonderful as this sentiment sounds, is it biblical? Isn’t it incomplete based on what we have seen in the Bible? ‘God loves me’ is not the essence of biblical Christianity. Because if  ’God loves me’ is the message of Christianity, then who is the object of Christianity?

God loves me.

Me.

Christianity’s object is me. …

The message of biblical Christianity is not ‘God loves me’, period….The message of biblical Christianity is that ‘God loves me so that I might make Him–His ways, His salvation, His glory and His greatness–known among all nations.’…

We are not the end of the gospel, God is.”  David Platt, Radical

Rest, Help and Strength? It’s Ours for the Taking.

“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

I know this. But in the grind of life, the busyness of the day, I have let the lamp go out, stumbling about this life.

“My soul is weary; strengthen me according to your word.”

Rest for my soul is ready and available, yet so often I look to other things for distraction.

“Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against You.”

How many times have I left my heart empty, instead of a deliberate filling with truth, and the enemy has filled it instead with lies that cause me to sin?

The Lord calls me, this day, to run to His Word and be filled; to drink of the fountain of life so that living waters can flow from me. Will I go? Will I meditate on His Word, His truth, will I let Him feed my soul?

It’s the reason I put Scripture to music. I think I’ll turn it on now and let it waft throughout our day, filling our hearts.