Insights

My daughter, Sarah, is expecting her first baby early next year. We have been walking through all the stages of pregnancy, both good and hard. We are excited about how this baby is being knit together in her womb, how he is fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14) and how loved he already is even before we have seen him! (1 Peter 1:8) We serve a loving God who created us by excellent design! While new life is being created inside her, the Lord is also equipping Sarah and Nick to parent this baby once he is born, to train him in the way he should go. This baby will be a beautiful mix of the good and the complicated parts of both his parents with a few extra qualities created specific to this unique baby. Sometimes we get our eyes too focused on the child and think of everything through that lens instead of focusing on the Lord and seeing our children through the eyes of their Creator and King who lovingly wired them to desire a relationship with Him; remembering that fostering that is our greatest calling as parents. I love this quote by Sally Clarkson, "As lifegiving parents, one of our most important tasks is to help our children discover themselves in the story God is writing, to find their places in the unfolding tale of God's grand purpose and plan and to know that we are all, as a family, in that story together."

Parenting is sanctifying work, isn’t it? You have been given this precious gift that is fearfully and wonderfully made and you now have the privilege of raising them, although sometimes it feels like an overwhelming job that we are severely under trained and ill equipped to do. Well actually, that’s true, we are not enough on our own to parent our precious children. The Lord did that on purpose so that we look to Him for guidance and direction. Just like the compass Mrs. McIlvoy referenced in her article last week that uses magnets to be pulled in the right direction, God placed “magnets” inside of us that are pulled by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God and tell us what turn our story should take next.

Do you know there are two things that affect the ability of a compass to accurately point out directions? One, the quality of the compass and two, the environment. Since we know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, the excellent design of The Master Craftsman who doesn't make mistakes, who created us in His image and who desires to pull us close to Him; we know quality of design is not the problem, so we can safely say that the environment could be causing our magnetic pull to go awry. When we look at how to do the next right thing with our children, we should be looking at the next steps through the lens of a Biblical mindset, but sometimes our default mindset is our cultural mindset. Culture is a strong magnetic force that pulls so vigorously on our families these days. We are so tied to our electronic devices that we have begun to filter everything through the lens of “group think” on Instagram or FaceBook or YouTube, and we forget to strengthen our magnetic pull to the Father by spending time with Him in prayer and through His Word so that our strongest pull comes through our Biblical mindset and not our cultural one.

It is so exciting to raise children in this season when the world is being pulled apart at the seams because we know the One who pulls us all together! If your inner compass is feeling a bit off, strengthen your magnetic pull to your Creator by reading the Word and spending time in worship and prayer. Don’t stress about the next turn in the path or new direction in this season, just strengthen the Lord’s pull on your heart more than the culture’s pull on it and you will be automatically led to do the next right thing as that inner compass of your “fearfully and wonderfully made” heart leans into the strong magnetic pull of a loving Father desiring to lead your family in the way you should go.

Becky Ross
Primary Education Principal
Logos Preparatory Academy