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 )

“I’m back from the Living A Legacy conference. All I can say is WOW. What a great time we had. It was just fantastic….” -Heather

If you missed it, you can GET THE AUDIOS!

It’s the hard stuff. The stuff my mother has done over half her life, with little accolades and with no earthly payment. The mother-stuff.

And the most important of her jobs? BEING THERE. Being available….the heart of what it means to serve.

She never thought of being anywhere else. She was a wife and mother, and she was needed. Still is. And she is still there…available. Serving. That’s my mother.

My mother and I are hardly anything alike. I actually inherited far more of my father’s qualities, which made my mother’s life more…challenging, and I’ll leave it at that.

I wish so much to be more like my mother–more sacrificial, more in tune to needs around me, more willing to place my needs and wants behind those of my family.

Yes, my mother is amazing.

She’d rather be in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes than talking politics around the table. She’d rather serve the food than mingle with the guests. And regardless of what she’d rather be doing, she does what needs doing because that’s what  mothers do.

My dad is strong, wise and capable. And yet he is only half a man without my mother. She completes him because she serves him. She completes our family because she serves us.

There will be a gaping hole in our lives when my mother isn’t in it.

I’m so grateful to have had a mother available for me, willing to lose her life every day.

I rise up and call her blessed while it is Today.

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.

THE AUDIO VERSION WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON!

Here are a few pictures from our wonderful day together:

Kathy shared with us the profound work of making our homes a “mission base” for our families, neighbors and surrounding communities. Kathy and her family are a living example of this message and how far-reaching its effects can be. Truly the harvest is ripe!

This lady inspires us! She is mom to 13, 12 of whom are adopted, special needs children. She manages with a grace and joy that exudes from her.

“I am so thankful I was able to attend the Leaving a Legacy conference yesterday! I can not even begin to tell of all the ways the Lord worked through Robin Brooks White, Kathy Brodock, Kelly Crawford, and their daughters (Taylor White.Olivia Brodock. Emma, and Bria). I was especially touched also by Sherry Lee’s testimony. The Lord used this day to encourage, convict, and teach me so much! What a blessing!!!” Jeanette

So many sweet, fun ladies!

Good tears.

Robin admonished us with a contagious passion, to raise up warriors for the next generation, to answer the call to rescue the needy, to be available to the fatherless and to count it joy to die daily, as we do the “hard, messy work” of being the hands and feet of Christ in our homes. Stepping outside of our “comfortable, American boxes” brings the sweet fruit of finding our lives as we lose them.

“..how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

Part of our “nation”, waiting to come up and meet everyone.

Emma Brodock

Our girls shared their hearts for what it means to live where they are joyfully, contentedly serving the Lord.

Taylor White

Bria Crawford

A sweet sister, having just recovered from a burst vessel in her brain, and an emergency c-section to deliver her 23 wk. old baby girl during the brain surgery. God’s mercy is everlasting.

Getting to meet so many of our blog friends, adding a physical dimension to our friendships, was a little slice of Heaven.

We had so many wonderful vendors! Here, Jessica encourages aspiring film makers to join her home industry, Plant and Pillars, a young, film-maker’s festival.

Olivia “wowed” us with her amazing culinary gift, serving two meals during the conference.

My handsome husband…just because.

Sherry Lee closed the evening with a heart-warming, profoundly moving account of her recent trials as she lost her husband in last year’s devastating storm, and with poised humility, spurred us to remember that “He is enough” no matter what storms we face. She encouraged us to “live a legacy on purpose” and shared that her family’s tragedy had  confirmed the reality that her children all owned their faith personally due to her husband’s faithful legacy….the legacy of trusting a Heavenly Father who is sustaining them through the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Changing the world,  by God’s amazing grace, one home at a time.

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

“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.

My friend, Leah, is another “mother in the trenches” with a vision as big as Texas. She has written a profoundly important book for mothers who are struggling with fear, insignificance and purpose.

Diapers, Dishes and Dominion combats the destructive message of “peripheral motherhood” and replaces it with the inspiring message of what mothers can do to change the world when they grasp their influence and responsibility.

Here’s a bit about the book:

“Change your mind about changing diapers and you could change the world.

It’s hard being a wife and mother. The constant barrage of feminist propaganda tells stay-at-home moms their lives are insignificant, and inner discontentment can spring up from the mundane frictions of daily routine. From many sources, Christian housewives are under attack every day. And for some of them, a bad day has become their whole lives.

Author Leah Smith was in that boat: plagued by shapeless anxieties and prod- ded by nameless longings. She was ready to give up on marriage, family… even life. And she didn’t even know why. One night, she asked God to liberate her from her fears. Right then, she began a journey of freedom into the truth. Her life has never been the same.

Diapers, Dishes & Dominion is a product of that journey — a summary record of the truths God can use to transform ordinary Christian housewives into His weapons of mass reconstruction. In simple and straightforward language, Leah exposes some of the most prevalent lies Satan uses to keep Christian women irrelevant in God’s Kingdom, and she presents biblical truths these wives and mothers need to know in order to change the world — one diaper at a time.

Every wife and mother who wants to make an impact needs to read Diapers, Dishes & Dominion.

The first step to changing the world is changing your mind.”

Listen to Leah’s interview with Kevin Swanson from Generations With Vision!

David reminds us that one man came to tell Jesus he wanted to follow Him. We say, “Yes! Come to Him…it’s so easy and wonderful!” Jesus said, essentially, “Look, the animals have homes but I don’t even have a place to lay my head….are you prepared for the possibility of that kind of life?” He was giving this man every opportunity to turn away.

Radical.

I would love your thoughts on these quotes, just to name a few, and I encourage you to grab the book!

“We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”

“My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus’ words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to Him. ”

“God beckons storm clouds and they come. He tells the wind to blow and the rain to fall, and they obey immediately. He speaks to the mountains, ‘You go there,’ and He says to the seas, ‘You stop here, and they do it. Everything in all creation responds in obedience to the Creator…until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, ‘No.”

“Should it concern us that the bible never calls us to ask Jesus into our hearts. Should it concern us that the bible never mentions such a superstitious sinners prayer and yet that is exactly what we have sold to so many as salvation.”

It’s this that I just cannot get past…that we (as a whole) get literally angry over the blaring, obvious fact that families need mothers…that it’s good for a nation to think this way. Some of you are mad just because I said that.

It’s this excerpt from the excellent article linked below, that resonates with me. Not debating over “when and if and how” and “it’s not fair”, but acknowledging what is good for us and our families, which will facilitate a movement toward making that more possible for more women.  And when we are about what is good for all of us rather than what “I want”, it’s just makes sense.

“The mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome. This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoring work in the home…”

Hear me: it’s not an attempt to “make women feel bad” who, for some reason, just are not able to be home. It’s about a collective agreement that would cause the whole of us to do what we can to support a woman home whose family needs her. Because this is what happens…if our mentality is off-base (“it doesn’t matter–there is no change in the climate of home whether mom is there or not”, etc.), then there’s a break down of  truth that hinders mothers from even being able to do their jobs. Churches and families (the first line of defense during a financial crisis)  cease to consider their need to help and encourage mothers to be home. “Go get a job like everyone else” is the default response. But not the right one. We destroy ourselves (collectively) when we don’t promote the truth, which in turn, causes us to behave wrongly.

Do yourself a favor and read all of  Controversy over the obvious? New Cardinal says it’s best for women to stay home with their children