Category Archives: God
Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family – Preview #1
Spiritually healthy families come from spiritually healthy individuals who, on their journey together, seek to live “on script” each day. Spiritually healthy families are not made up of people who never mess up their lines, or forget whether to enter stage left or stage right – they are not perfect performers. But they are families working together as loving case members, discovering the intimate beauty of watching the character development of each person unfold-in the midst of the messiness.
Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family, p.13
Next week we begin a book club to help us learn to live “on script.” When we realize that we cannot have spiritually healthy families without being spiritually healthy individuals, the pressure is really on. If we desire our families to be living the abundant life that Jesus offers, we have to take an honest look at the habits we have that keep us from joining the story God has planned for us!
I hope you’ll consider joining us for this book study. We will read a chapter a week and I will write an initial response on this blog to each chapter. If you care to share your own thoughts or responses, you can do so through the comments!
Get the book now on Amazon or at a Christian bookstore in order to begin reading on April 12th! The first chapter response will be posted on the 18th! Click here to read the post with complete reading schedule.
I look forward to learning to live “on script” with you!
~JK
God Made You Good!
“This only have I found: God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes.” Written by Solomon in Ecclesiastes 7:29
God
made
you
good.
If we do not begin at a place where, from the very start, all God saw in us was perfection we are doomed to always see ourselves as not good enough. Because “God created mankind upright,” He sees in us something that we rarely see in ourselves. That in our core we were made to be in perfect fellowship with Him.
Sadly, we go looking for ways to make life “better” for ourselves without realizing all our efforts are in vain.
Life is never better than when we see ourselves as God made us and take joy in being nothing more.
The many schemes we devise to become enough in the eyes of the world simply lead to our destruction. Its only when we surrender our search for more that we find the one truth Solomon was able realize –
God made you good.
~JK
White Flag Parenting
“You mean we get to take her home?” I remember my wife, Krista, putting into words the very thoughts I had been having since the nurse told us that we would be discharged from the hospital. Our daughter had been born not even 72 hours before we got into our Ford Focus and headed home. Were we ready? We thought we were…
Until we realized that “getting ready” meant much more than baby showers, putting cribs together and stocking up on diapers. In reality, our efforts to make our home a place that was absolutely perfect for our baby girl were vain attempts to control a situation that was out of our hands to begin with. What we only realized in part, was that God was yearning for us to fully surrender our newborn baby over to him. He was still certainly going to use us to raise her, but He had something very important for us to learn that we could not find in the pages of a self-help book. We would learn it by raising the white flag.
In the single act of surrender, we were doing more for our child than years spent striving to be a better parent or know enough about child-rearing. Our surrender meant that we believe God holds the victory in our daughter’s life and that we can choose to join him in it or be his adversaries. Whether or not we were enough as parents didn’t matter if we had gone “palms up” and handed her over. This surrender meant that we would have to become better listeners. We wait for God to speak. He does and we hear, then choose to continue on with the white flag raised. This surrender means that we may not have clear answers. We do not negotiate the terms, we simply trust.
When we raise the white flag and surrender our parenting over to God, he takes us where we are and begins the victory dance. In fact, he invites us to join in with him. When you dance with the Victor, the parenting battles become boogies, the tantrums become tangos, the wrestling turns to a waltz. We dance with God in the joy of surrender and let him take the lead.
~JK
A Little Boy and a Little Girl Connected Through Compassion
This is Jhulon. He is an 8-year-old little boy from Bangladesh. He has made a huge impact on my daughter. We have been sponsoring him for about two years. Technically, our 6-year-old daughter is sponsoring him – it’s her name he sees when he gets a letter from us. She is also the one in our family that most fervently prays for him. Every night his name is the first thing that comes out her mouth when she starts her prayers. A letter we received from him describes his home life and living conditions and our compassionate daughter desperately wants God to give him running water in his house. She wants God to give him a house made of bricks instead of leaves. She wants him to have carpeted floors and an education. She never finishes a prayer thought without praying for the most important thing she desires for him…
That he would know how much God loves him.
We thought it would be a good idea for us to sponsor a child with Compassion International because we knew it would change the life of a someone. It has been amazing to see the role praying for this little boy has played in our daughter’s walk with God. She has a global perspective of what God is doing to redeem the world. Because of Jhulon, I am able to see just how God is working in my own daughter’s heart. Growing her. Stretching her.
September is blog month at Compassion. I have agreed to accept four blogging assignments from them in hopes that throughout the month, more children will be sponsored than ever before. If you blog, consider blogging for them. If you can, consider sponsoring a child. It’s made a big impact on a little 8-year-old boy in Bangladesh and a little 6-year-old girl in middle Tennessee.
~JK
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