Parenting: It's Never an Interruption

Here is an excellent article by Paul David Tripp explaining how opportunities to parent our children shouldn’t be viewed as interruptions or inconveniences, but rather how we should always be looking for those spontaneous opportunities to speak directly to the hearts of our children and point out their greatest need.
Click Here to read.

What can we learn from Sundays in the 1950's?

I loved this post written by Courtney over at Women Living Well. There is so much about the 50's that I wish we would return to. It is a commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy, but in today's world, that seems to mean very little.
Here's a little exerpt from Courtney's post.

-"Life was different in the 50's. In Ohio, there was a Blue Law that required stores and most places of work and business to be closed. This made it possible for most people to be in church. My father recalls that almost everyone went to church. This social expectation even crossed into the classroom. My father recalls his public school 5th grade teacher asking on Monday mornings who went to church and they had to raise their hands. His family sometimes missed and he was a little embarrassed he couldn't raise his hand - could you imagine that now in our schools?"
-click Here to read the rest. :)

The Snare of Compare, by Carolyn Mahaney

This was a wonderful series on envy, by Carolyn Mahaney.
- How do we respond when someone else gets what we want? We compare
our situation to theirs. We measure our lot against theirs—especially if we
think they have it better than we do.
To read the rest, click.... Here

Great Quote from Voddie!

“We love academics enough to send them to the best schools and sacrifice to get them to college, we love athletics enough to hire a coach or sacrifice to get them involved in all the sports teams, but do we love the gospel enough to do all that we can do to raise children who love Him?” - Dr. Voddie Baucham

Cheerfulness in Parenting

Excellent post written by Michael Pearl from No Greater Joy. Note: I do not agree with all of the Pearls methods and what they say, but I do think they are right on in many areas.

Excerpts taken from, This article written by Michael Pearl.
"There are three qualities parents must possess in order to produce well trained and disciplined young adults: cheerfulness, authoritative command, and consistency.
Of these three, the greatest of these is cheerfulness. It is the first and most important quality a child trainer must possess. Young parents may not possess authoritative command or consistency when their first child comes along, but they can make a good beginning if they are cheerful. All other skills will come in time.
I say again, there is one indispensable quality you must possess—cheerfulness. It is the easiest to come by and does not require maturity or wisdom. The Bible word is “joy.” It takes a lifetime to become a library of wisdom, but God can make you completely joyful in an instant. Joy/cheerfulness is the byproduct of thankfulness and love.
I said joy is the one indispensable. It is the fertile ground of all good child training—of all good relationships. In my DVD The Joy of Training, I said, “A joyless parent can no more raise good kids than a skunk can raise skunklets that smell good.” And again, “Training without joy is tyranny.”
A young parent that is full of good cheer has 75 percent of what it takes to be a successful child trainer. Everyone is attracted to joy. Children will do anything for one who enjoys them. Once they get in the joy zone, they never want to do anything that might jeopardize that relationship.
A parent of good cheer can deliver a more effective rebuke in less time and without damaging the relationship than a legalistic grump could do with a thousand Bible verses and a hundred spankings.
If you are cheerful in the Lord Jesus Christ you will be a dynamic child trainer. You will be to children what a flower is to a bee. "
To read the full article go here, http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/articles/general-view/archive/2009/december/03/cheerful-authoritative-consistent/

Habit of Obedience

“The mother’s great stronghold is in the habit of obedience. If she begin by requiring that her children always obey her, why, they will always do so as a matter of course; but let them once get the thin end of the wedge in, let them discover that they can do otherwise than obey, and a woeful struggle begins, which commonly ends in the children doing that which is right in their own eyes."
- Charlotte Mason

Developing Character in our Children

"What we want to do with our children is not merely to control them and keep them in order, but to implant true principles deep in their hearts which shall rule their whole lives; to shape their character from within into Christlike beauty, and to make of them noble men and women, strong for battle and for duty. They are to be trained rather than governed. Growth of character, not merely good behavior, is the object of all home governing and teaching. Therefore the home influence is far more important than the home laws, and the parents' lives are of more moment than their teachings."-J.R. Miller, Home-Making