Grace for stay-at-home moms

Trevin Wax has a must-read for “stay-at-home” moms.  An excerpt:

The last thing you consider yourself to be is a “good mom.” And you think to yourself, It’ll be a miracle if my kids turn out okay.

And – surprisingly – that’s right where God wants to meet you. The place where you admit your powerlessness and your need for Him.

It’s only by God’s grace that any kid grows up to be a force for the kingdom.

You see, there are no perfect kids and no perfect mothers. No matter what you read in blogs, see in magazines, and learn in books. There are sinful kids and sinful moms and dads.

And the only thing greater than both is the grace of God. The God who says “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The God who loves to forgive, to transform, and empower.

God loves you – not because you are a good mother but just because you are His precious child.

God loves you – not because you’ve mastered all the skills of parenting but because He has.

It’s divine grace that will transform your parenting – not guilt.

It’s grace that will keep you going and serving and scrubbing when you’re exhausted and worn out.

It’s grace that will conquer your feelings of inadequacy and remind you of God’s love for you in Christ.

It’s grace that goes for the heart of your kids, not just their behavior.

Read more from “Dear Stay-at-home Mom” and pass it on to a mom who may need it today!

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Start today praying for the nations!

“Frontline Missions has produced a simple way to pray for the spread of Christ’s fame among thirty-one of the gospel-hungriest nations. The free pdf includes a map of the 10/40 window identifying thirty-one countries with some key data about which to pray. All we need to do is pray for the one corresponding to today’s date. You can certainly find other tools that give much more information (most notably Operation World), but this single-page map gives a quick, easy, and focused way to pray.

Download it today. And let us pray.”

–Matthew Hoskinson

 

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Gabby Douglas: what you won’t see on mainstream media

Watch Gabby Douglas talk about her faith before the Olympics.

Gabby Douglas gives glory to God after her amazing performances at the Olympics

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Holiness is seeking a person

From Kevin DeYoung’s forthcoming book, The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway; August 31, 2012), page 123:

We must always remember that in seeking after holiness we are not so much seeking after a thing as we are seeking a person. The blessings of the gospel — election, justification, sanctification, glorification, and all the rest — have been deposited in no other treasury but Christ. We don’t just want holiness. We want the Holy One in whom we have been counted holy and are now being made holy. To run hard after holiness is another way of running hard after God. Just as a once-for-all, objective justification leads to a slow-growth, subjective sanctification, so our unchanging union with Christ leads to an ever-increasingcommunion with Christ.

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Finding hope in joy

“In the midst of pain and persecution and all the trauma and weariness this life brings, Paul tells us [in 1 Corinthians 4] to look to the future and the sure hope of the resurrection. And not just in a time of persecution. Even as your body ages and succumbs to the march of time, even as you grapple with sin, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, even as you bury people you love, even as you watch your children rebel against God, you can look to the future and know that you will be resurrected to something so much better and in that moment all the pain—physical, emotional, spiritual—will be gone forever.

Paul had joy because he had hope. In all the weariness of life, Paul found joy in the sure hope of the resurrection. He looked to the joy described in the book of Revelation: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning no crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” There is no greater joy and no greater hope than that.”

Tim Challies in “Finding Hope, Finding Joy.”

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