9Marks Family & Parenting E-News

The latest e-newsletter from 9Marks is available with some reviews and articles on Family and Parenting. You can download the whole thing on PDF here or follow these links:

• Wanted: Kingdom Families
• Why Families Matter to God
• How Families Minister to the Church & the World
• Raising Boys vs Raising Girls
• Learning to Multiply
• 39 Lessons, 20 Tips & 10 "Don'ts" for Parenting
• Favourite Children's Bibles

• Book Review: Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham Jr
• Book Review: Practicing Hospitality by Pat Ennis & Lisa Tatlock
  

The Single Woman as Homemaker

Yesterday the Girltalk blog addressed the following question from a single woman regarding homemaking.

I honestly don't know what I'll do if I don't get married - being a stay-at-home-mom is all I've ever really desired to do as a "career"!....Do you have any encouragement for the single woman who desires to be a wife and mom, but...is not?

Read their response here.

Don't Try this at Home

None of us are being incredibly creative here at titus2talk these days. I guess that's due to the busy lives we are all leading. In saying that we've always got time to link you to some good listening or reading and if that serves you here at our blog, then we're happy with that!

So today's recommendation is a talk given by Carolyn McCulley called Don't Try this at Home: Feminism's Wide-Ranging Influence. I found it helpful as Carolyn not only offers some words of testimony about her own experience as a once-feminist-turned-Christian who clearly is passionate about biblical womanhood, but she also gives a good foundational talk on feminism itself and its far-reaching effects. So if that interests you I encourage you to take 40 minutes or so and have a listen here.

Watch Your Man!

We're married to sinners, right? There are times when we want our husbands to change for the better, right? There are times when we want to correct our husbands and all too often we go about it in the wrong way, right? I've just listened to this helpful talk from Carolyn Mahaney called Watch Your Man! You might want to listen in if you find yourself not going about this task of faithful, gentle correction with the respect and grace you should. Interested in finding out more? Here's the blurb and you can download the talk here.

Part of a wife’s biblical role is to bring faithful, gentle correction to her husband when necessary. True friends are willing to humbly correct one another, but if a wife does this poorly, she can damage her marriage.

In this seminar for women, Carolyn Mahaney explain’s a wife’s responsibility to lovingly watch over her husband. She gives biblical advice on questions such as how to correct in humility and love, when to forbear patiently, and when to prayerfully persist and appeal for change. Most important, Carolyn encourages wives to rely on God to change their husbands’ hearts and actions. It is God’s favor and approval—not change in their husbands—that wives must ultimately seek.

Two Quotes

I'm re-reading Susan Hunt and Ligon Duncan's book, Women's Ministry in the Local Church. It's a must read if you are seeking to set up a ministry for women in your church. I just want to leave you with two quotes which I believe are primary - the first which challenges our commitment to church in general; the second which challenges us to 'do' women's ministry in the context of the whole church.

"Dr Edmund Clowney wrote, 'If we lack interest in the church we lack what for Jesus was a consuming passion. Jesus loved the church and gave himself up for it'. (Ephesians 5:25)"

"Approach to women's ministry is not consumer-oriented ('we deserve a ministry that focuses on us'), but kingdom-oriented ('how can we invest in women in a way that equips them as disciples, for their own spiritual maturation, for the good of the marriages and families of the church, for the betterment of the total ministry of the church, and for their life in the real world?')"

Home-work

My husband has being doing a bit of home-work recently, listening to a few talks that focus on family life. He's listed a few good resources for guys, but here's a list of some of my home-work assignments, some completed, others I'm keen to give due attention.

Loving My Husband by Carolyn Mahaney
Loving My Children by Carolyn Mahaney
Celebrating Marital Love by Carolyn Mahaney
Wisdom for Women from Titus 2 by Susan Hunt
A Fresh Look at Titus 2 by Carolyn Mahaney
Sarah Edwards: Jonathan's Home & Haven by Noel Piper
Marriage: Forgiving & Forbearing by John Piper
Honouring the Biblical Call of Motherhood by John Piper
To Be A Mother is a Call to Suffer by John Piper
The Centrality of the Home by Voddie Baucham
Shepherding Your Child's Heart 0-5 by Tedd Tripp
A Wife's Responsibility to Help Her Husband by Barbara Hughes

The gift of the present

As much as I love my job, one of the benefits of being a primary school teacher is definitely the 7 week holiday period of the summer! Being the kind, ‘looking out for others’ type of person that my mothers is, she had offered to take some children from church to the movies, so I tagged along too. As well as being really funny and full of impressive martial arts, one of the lines in Kung Fu Panda stuck in my mind.

Without spoiling the movie, Po’s wise master encourages him with these words,

Yesterday is history...tomorrow is a mystery...today is a gift...so that’s why it’s called the present.

This got me thinking; firstly about yesterday. Yesterday has gone. Things have been said, things have been done, things have been thought. They are all in the past now. Have I taken time to think back and learn from the mistakes I’ve made? Have I confessed the sins of yesterday? Then I started thinking about tomorrow. Things might be said, things might be done, things might be thought. They are all in the future. Am I worrying instead of trusting? Am I going to make wise choices today that might influence tomorrow? Only God, the immortal, invisible one, knows what will happen tomorrow.

James wisely writes,

Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.' (James Ch 4v14-15)

So I started thinking about today. A gift? Is that really how I appreciate each precious present day? Or do I continually look back and dwell on past regrets? Do I continually look forward and long for what has not yet come? Or do I really thank God that today I have air in my lungs, today I have a job to go to, or in my case a holiday to rest and use wisely for Him? Ask yourself these questions and if you go and see Kung Fu Panda, listen out for those carefully placed words and thank God for the present...it is a gift!

titus2talk worldled

Since wordling things is the thing to do at the moment, here is what happened when I pasted in our very first post about what we're all about.

I promised I'd post, so here it is!

Nearly two weeks ago before Nicki went on holiday I said I would post something, and I'm only getting around to it now. Sorry Nicki! Rather than come up with something serious and weighty I'm just going to pass on a couple of random humerous moments from my kids, one which happened recently and another that it reminded me of.

Random moment #1:

Me: So, Erin, who is our bible story going to be about tonight?
Erin (age 2): Jesus.
Me: Yes, and which story about Jesus do you think we'll read?
Erin (thinks for a moment): Jesus and the socks.

Nope, I've no idea what she's thinking of either - the mind boggles. This reminded me of something that her older sister said when she was about the same age.

Random moment #2:

Daddy: So, what were the names of Issac's children?
Dutiful daughter: Jacob and...(pause followed by triumphant look) Eeyore!

Hmm, I could have sworn that the Hundred Acre Wood isn't in the bible.