A life worth repeating?

......I realized then, as I have realized before, what my daughter really needs from my husband and me in this fallen, mixed up world. It's the same thing all my children need-and that your child needs as well.

They don't need sweet platitudes of faith that will momentarily placate their emotions. They need the authentic strength that comes from the true foundation on a biblical world view and a proper understanding of the real Christ who is worthy of their worship. They need an unwavering, internal, moral and spiritual compass that will help them weather today's storms and tomorrow's and will guide them for the rest of their lives. They also need to see what real faith looks like when lived day in, day out, so they will have a pattern to follow................

How amazed and thankful I am to see God producing in all my children's lives a love for Him and a maturity that could be cultivated only by the Holy Spirit. It all started naturally in our own home as we sought to follow God's pattern for discipleship shown through the life of Christ......It was part of God's plan that I recruit my own children to drop the fishing nets of their own lives in order to embrace God's purpose and mission. It all began when I was able to embrace with Joy the ministry of motherhood............

I realized with the passing of each day that spiritual and emotional maturity would not just happen to my children because I wished it so. It would not come just from a passive example of me being good. Effective spiritual, emotional, and social training in the lives of my children would have to be both intentional and planned.

Excerpts taken from The Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson

As my children get older it becomes ever present in my mind that they will soon leave my home and start lives of their own. This has had me thinking about what we are doing as parents to train them and instill in them an unfailing desire to follow Jesus in all that they do as adults.

I want to raise boys who will become men who will not compromise their lives because of outside influences. Men who are strong, with wisdom and love. Ultimately fathers who will live the life of Christ for their children to see on a daily basis and husbands who will take their place in the home, stand directly under Christ and lead their families.

Daughters with a meek and quite spirit. Who seek to serve others through love. Who see themselves as vessels of The Holy Spirit. Respecting their bodies and realizing the power of that body and in turn preserving it for that one man whom the Lord gives to them as their husband.
Mothers with a heart of love that withstands all troubles, pressures and circumstances with peace and patience.

I have been guilty of just thinking that these things will just happen because I wish them to. What a dangerous position to take. I of course can not force them to be these things if they choose another path, but can I influence them in staying the course? Can I show them what strength in the Lord looks like and how to live that on a daily basis. Do my kids see that I worship the very Lord I tell them to worship? Am I only hollow words with no foundation? Sometimes I am! Do my children know how to be unwavering, righteous followers of Christ because they have seen two parents who have lived a life worthy of repeating?

This is my prayer...this is my passion....this is our duty, as "step parents" to the children The Heavenly Father has so gracefully leant to us...... for such a short time!