I was re-typing portions of our book, Mighty Acts of God, and reading all the Bible story act-out suggestions. They brought up some spicy memories…like Benjamin scrawny and whining, an inside-out T-shirt on his head, stomping his foot and yelling “No” at a half-sized Moses. Johanna, giggling while she pretended to drive a stake through Sisera’s head (my dad’s hair before it was completely white). Yeah…I got a little nostalgic. […]
Read More →Category: Encouragement
Becoming Like Jesus
I reread Mere Christianity this summer, and I as I was tearing through, I could barely believe I’d heard this stuff before, even though other people besides C. S. Lewis have been trying to smash these ideas into my concrete noggin. I recently got over my qualms about writing in books, which means my copy is now crowded with underlines, exclamation marks, smiley faces, lopsided stars, scribbled margin notes and […]
Read More →Why God’s Word Is Essential in Child-Rearing
We can’t change hearts. Our words can’t change hearts and our actions can’t change hearts. We can’t change our children’s hearts, and we can’t change our own hearts. We might be able to affect our children’s behavior. We might be able to make them to do the right thing. But we can’t change their hearts. Only God can transform a sinful heart into one that loves Him and longs to obey Him. […]
Read More →Homeschool Superheroes
When Kerry Beck asked if she and her daughters could include me in their Homeschool Superheroes interviews, I was quite certain that I do not qualify as a “super-hero,” (and I certainly don’t look like the superhero ladies in her graphics!) But I agreed to join in on the interviews because I do serve a God who is stronger than any superhero, and His love and grace are the reasons […]
Read More →For the Joy That Is Set Before Us
Praise God! A new little man-child has joined the family! Little James Sterling is the first child of our second-born son and his wife, and he actually isn’t so little. He weighed in at 9-1/2 pounds! His birth was painful. It was hard work. Jesus’ words from the gospel of John kept going through my head as I watched our precious daughter-in-law (and our son) labor to bring their firstborn […]
Read More →In Love with Love
“Even a beautiful God-scripted love story can never satisfy the way Jesus does. Even the most heroic and Christlike man on earth can never fulfill the longings of our heart like the true Prince and lover of our soul (Jesus Christ). And until we are able to truly make Him our first love, until we are willing to give up our dream of an earthly love story for His sake, […]
Read More →God’s Faithfulness Through the Generations
Last week I traveled back more than a hundred years as I sat in our dining room. I saw grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and lots of other people that I’m somehow related to. My mother’s cousin, Tom, had spent more than a year planning a family reunion, and I was helping organize a notebook full of family photos and history for the event. There’s Alice, who worked so hard on her […]
Read More →Putting Off and Putting On
It’s easy to focus on the “don’ts” in our parenting. We invest a lot of time in disciplining our children for their misbehavior, for their bad attitudes, their sinful words, their disobedient and unloving actions. But teaching our children to get along with each other involves more than breaking up fights and taking away coveted toys. We know that they need to “take off” the impatience and pride that so often […]
Read More →Helping Our Children Remember God’s Hand in Their Lives
Last night we watched reminders lighting up the sky all around us. Fireworks, sparklers, booms, and cracklings all helped us remember the battles that men fought to earn our country’s freedom. Independence Day commemorates the beginnings of our nation, and if we want to do our job well, we will take advantage of the holiday to teach our children about God’s hand in our country’s history. Memorials are powerful teaching tools. […]
Read More →God Rebuilding
I love this quote from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about […]
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