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7 Ways Christian Encouragement and Secular Encouragement Look Very Different

As much as I love Facebook, I’ve become jaded lately by the onslaught of memes offering simplified life wisdom. One in particular caught my eye this week. I don’t want to criticize the work of a specific site or person, so I’m not going to post the original photo here. It was from one of many sites devoted to “positive thinking” and featured the following advice:

Tell Yourself:

Everything will work out.
Things will get better.
You are worthy of great things.
The time is now.
This too shall pass.
You can be who you really are.
You can do this.

At first glance, this looks like a simple list of encouraging (though cliché) statements. For some reason, however, I was struck by how a list of encouraging statements would look totally different if written from a Christian worldview. This list provides an excellent conversation starter for your kids and offers a great opportunity to discuss the difference between secular and Christian viewpoints in everyday living.

For each statement above, ask 1) what people typically mean when they say it and 2) how that matches or does not match what the Bible tells us. (You can tailor these explanations to any age; for younger kids, simply explain that people do make the statement, describe what it means, and discuss how that compares to what the Bible would say.)

The bottom line is that secular encouragement and Christian encouragement are rooted in vastly different worldviews.

I’ve provided a Christian “translation” for each statement and some key talking points below.Continue reading

7 Ways for Christian Parents to Grow Together Spiritually

Last week, my husband Bryan and I celebrated our 14th anniversary!

An older lady we know congratulated us on our day, noting that “one of the biggest challenges of marriage is that, as you get older, each person changes and then you end up feeling like you’re no longer married to the same person.” I have no idea why she felt our anniversary was a great time to let us know of this impending danger, but nonetheless, I couldn’t stop thinking about what she said. It made me realize that one of the reasons Bryan and I are so close is that we have changed in big ways since we got married, but we’ve changed in the same direction because we’ve been growing together spiritually.

I know, I know…the phrase “growing together spiritually” sounds like the overused subtitle on every book at your local Christian bookstore. What does that even mean, and what does it look like (aside from the book cover picture of a couple holding hands in the park)?

Here are 7 ways, based on our experience, that Christian parents can grow together spiritually.Continue reading

What Exactly is a Biblical Miracle? 3 Key Things Your Kids Should Understand

A few weeks ago in our family worship time, we were studying the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 (Matthew 14). After we finished the story, I asked what I thought was a pretty straight forward question: “So, how did Jesus feed 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish?”

Kenna responded, “He must have cut the bread and fish into little tiny pieces to feed that many people!”

It was such a simple and logical answer, but it said so much about her young understanding of miracles. A million coloring pages of Jesus walking on water (which I’m pretty sure is the count coming home from Sunday school in the last couple of years) won’t teach our kids some basic concepts central to the understanding of biblical miracles.

Here are three key things our kids need to understand about the nature and purpose of miracles in the Bible.Continue reading

Preparing Kids to Encounter Atheism Online

Today I have the honor of guest posting on the Cold Case Christianity blog, written by author J. Warner Wallace.

When I was growing up, my mom had a thick, imposing book called “Cults of the World” sitting on our living room shelf. I was fascinated by it, tentatively peeking at pages about Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists when no one was looking. In my young world, you were a Christian or you belonged to one of these other religions; that was the choice. I don’t think I realized there were people who didn’t believe in God until I was in high school.

Today I marvel at how different the spiritual environment will be for my three young kids, in large part due to the availability and nature of the internet. While only about 6% of Americans identify themselves as atheist or agnostic, their collective voice is disproportionately loud online, given that the extreme positions on issues always come to the forefront of the internet. One need only look at comments under any news story with a religious touchpoint to witness a standard internet war of atheist/Christian worldviews.

Click here to read the rest of this post on the Cold Case Christianity blog…

Parents Are Still the First Line of Defense

This is a guest post by J. Warner Wallace. He is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity. It is an honor to feature him here; according to my Kindle app, I’ve read 42 books in the last 12 months, and I can unequivocally state that Cold-Case Christianity was the best of all. It is a must-read for strengthening your faith through an understanding of the evidence for Christianity. Your kids need you to have that knowledge, as Mr. Wallace explains in today’s post.

After a recent presentation at a large church here in Southern California, a woman approached me at the book table and eagerly asked me to sign a copy of Cold-Case Christianity for her daughter. She asked me to write something compelling on the title page in an effort to encourage her daughter to read the text and reconsider her decision to walk away from Christianity. This mom’s story was all too familiar. She raised her family in the church and did her best to connect her daughter to the church’s youth leadership. She drove her to church events, prayed with her and did her best to model the Christian life. But after her daughter’s first semester at a California university, she came home with a number of questions her mom simply could not answer. At the end of her first year at college, the daughter announced that she was no longer a believer. Her mom was heartbroken.

Her mother heard about my appearance in the church bulletin several weeks earlier and tried to get her daughter to come home from the campus to hear the talk. The girl wasn’t interested. After the church service, the mom quickly asked her pastor for a DVD copy of the talk and eagerly bought a copy of my book. She planned on sending both of these materials to her daughter. As she stood in front of me to have her copy signed, I could sense her desperation. Like any good parent, she wanted to find a way to bring her daughter back. I asked her to wait for the crowd to die down so we could talk a bit about her situation; I needed to tell her the truth about parents and the role of “apologetics” material.Continue reading

What to Do When You Flame Out as a Christian Parent

I debated whether to use the words “flame out” or “burn out” in the title of this post. I went with flame out after looking up the definition:

Flame-Out: “A complete and conspicuous failure.”

That eloquently describes me as a Christian parent one day recently. Burn out implies a slow fizzle. I didn’t slowly fizzle into bad parent mode. I was a “complete and conspicuous failure.”

Maybe it was the thousandth morning I cleaned up a poopy bathroom mess. Perhaps it was finding my 2-year-old playing in the bathtub fully clothed, covered in soap (again). It could have been my other daughter’s incessant use of the word “no” lately. Or maybe it was my son’s interest in scaring his little sister the second mommy isn’t around.

It was probably all of those things and much more. But that day started with a loss of my temper, continued with a chain of less-than-ideal reactions to my kids’ (even tiny) failures, and ended with my face buried in my hands with regret.

My regret was one part guilt and one part frustration that I work so hard to raise my kids in a Christ-centered way, only to feel I ruined it all with one horrible day. It was like a big black mark on my Christian parenting report card: I despised it but couldn’t erase it. All I could do was analyze it.

My conclusion: I had gotten to a point where I had nothing positive left to give my kids, so I gave them the worst of me. I ran out of everything.Continue reading

How To Get Your Kids’ Spiritual Attention (No Yelling Required)

I was in the car with my kids recently when I flipped the radio to an 80s station. The totally awesome 1981 song, “Words,” by Missing Persons was playing. If you aren’t familiar with it, the chorus says over and over:

Do you hear me? Do you care?

While I was lost in thought wondering what happened to the band Missing Persons (pun intended), Nathan broke the silence: “That sounds like mommy.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Then the chorus came on again:

Do you hear me? Do you care?

I started laughing so hard I had tears coming out of my eyes. Nathan associated this song’s chorus with my own attempts to get his attention! While I may not say those exact words, the meaning is the same, and he knew it.

It can be ridiculously hard to get our kids’ attention much of the time. They’re in their own little worlds and mommy and daddy often get tuned out. It’s no different when it comes to getting their spiritual attention – we have to work at it.

In my professional life, I’m in marketing. One thing marketers specialize in is getting people’s attention. This little episode with Nathan made me think of the psychological factors driving attention that I learned back in business school. They are directly applicable to spiritual attention as well!

If you’d like to better get your kids’ spiritual attention, here are the three key factors to understand:Continue reading

Parents Beware: Don’t Let Simple Theology Become Wrong Theology

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the local Christian bookstore to pick out some new books for the kids. We have a lot of children’s Bibles, but I wanted to find some good kids’ fiction that emphasizes the role of faith in everyday life.

The first book I picked up was about a young girl who was being bullied by other kids. While these kids were bothering her, she prayed that God would help. On the next page, one of the bullies suddenly decided to leave and take his friends with him. The story ended with the young girl smiling, reminding us that “God loves us and protects us.”

What?!

Honestly, I was thoroughly angered that such a book would be printed. What happens when a young girl who is really being bullied comes to believe that as soon as she prays, her bullies will leave? If that doesn’t happen, did God abandon her? Did God not love her? God is not a genie! This kind of storyline creates false and harmful expectations.

With my “bad theology radar” up, I evaluated book after book and came home empty-handed. When I really paid attention to the messages of these books, I repeatedly found that theology had been simplified to the point of being flat-out wrong.

I don’t want to be overly critical, but the early messages we teach kids really do matter. We’re giving them a foundation for years to come, and need to be sure that simple does not mean inaccurate.

Here are 5 examples of simplified children’s theology gone wrong. When you evaluate what your kids read and watch, be on the lookout for messages like these!Continue reading

Teaching Kids That Faith Takes Work: 8 Lessons from Exercise

I really, really, really don’t like to exercise.

I’ve always been pretty lucky in that I haven’t had to worry about weight and could eat what I wanted without facing exercise as a necessity. The scale and I have been having conversations this year, however, and I’m starting to realize things are changing. If I want to maintain my eating habits and weight, exercise will need to become my friend.

Have I mentioned that I really, really, really don’t like to exercise?

In a rare moment of exercise inspiration, I agreed to start P90x (a popular 90-day exercise program) with my husband a couple of months ago. I must sheepishly tell you that P90x was more like P10x for me. After 10 days, I was done.

It’s just that…I really, really, really don’t like to exercise.

Despite flaming out of my first real fitness program, I learned a lot about the nature of exercise. It takes a lot of work, and if you aren’t prepared for it, you simply won’t succeed.

Exercise has many parallels with a life of faith. After 18 years of church, I left home with no notion of the work required to grow spiritually. I was wholly unprepared as a young Christian, and for many years I failed to find any real meaning in my faith. After my P90x failure, I made a mental note that when my kids get a little older, exercise will provide an amazing analogy for the work required in faith. Here are 8 parallels that can make a great conversation starter for your kids.Continue reading

How to Identify Your Future Parenting Regrets

I decided this week that it was time to sort through the vast numbers of stuffed animals my kids have. Many haven’t moved a stuffed paw from the toy chest in more than a year. I explained to the kids that we would give away some that are “less special” and everyone happily agreed it was time. I was thrilled to finish the project with three full bags of animals to give away.

Content with our achievement, we moved on to getting the kids ready for bed. When I leaned down to give Kenna a good night hug, she stopped me with an announcement. “Mommy, I really don’t need the rest of these either. You can take them all now, OK?”

I agreed, gathered an armload of bunnies, and went downstairs.

Then I burst into tears.Continue reading