Disciples of all ages

I love hearing the wisdom of older sisters who are moms. I had the great privilege over the last couple of years to soak up the benefits of some very wise sisters' experiences. Though, until the Restore Conference last Feb, I looked at it more as information for the future. In a general session on parenting, the speaker, Dr. Liederbach, made an excellent point that has changed the way I reflect on parenting wisdom. Whether married, unmarried, parents or childless, all believers are to be living out Titus 2. We're to be submitting to the council and accountability of other believers while pouring into others as well. I've heard parenting described as the most important discipleship responsibility anyone can undertake. If parenting is discipleship, many of the aspects of discipleship should be applied to parenting. Likewise, aspects of Biblical, God-honoring parenting may also be applied to discipleship. The main point to his advice, therefore, was for those who did not have children not to tune out! The lessons of parenting in that session could be applied to discipleship-something every believer is responsible to do! Since then, I've had a new appreciation for the wisdom of parenting. Of course, I still do also appreciate it as helpful information for the future but with thankfulness that it may also be applied now!



This is an excerpt from a recent girltalk blog post on parenting/preaching the gospel to the littlest of disciples:

Monsters Under the Bed by Janelle Bradshaw

So how do we help our small children deal with middle-of-the night fears?

Dr. Russell Moore—himself a father of small children—recently offered this insightful answer:

“The kids know—they instinctively know—that they're living in a universe in which something's gone awry. It's not our job—as parents, or as Sunday school teachers—to disengage that. It's our job to come in and to provide an answer to that. Yeah, you're living in an enchanted world. Yeah, you're living in a haunted world. You're living in a world haunted by demonic powers. That's exactly right—what you deeply fear is indeed the case... Your worrying about the monster under the bed isn't unreasonable; there's a monster under the fabric of the cosmos. Instead, we give them a story that provides the only comfort that really is lasting comfort; it's a comfort that the enemies have been defeated."

I am going to add a few words to my middle of the night hugs and kisses routine. Yes, Caly-girl, we live in a scary world, but we don’t need to be afraid. The monster has been crushed. And the One who crushed him, He’s right here in this room.