Lent: 40 Days Preparing Our Family for Easter

Discipleship in the home is the primary focus of my life right now as a mom, and the Lord has filled me with great passion for learning how to disciple my children well during these little years. Kennon and I have shared in DownLine how the Lord has helped us create special traditions that fill our days and our year. Every tradition is established with the goal of cultivating a home of continual worship, teaching, and celebration of who God is and what He has done for us (Deut 6). Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and I have pulled out my Lent/ Easter basket for the kids and thought I would share in more detail some of our Easter traditions.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a season of reflection on our lives and our need for a Savior.  Easter is the highest celebration of the Christian year. As believers, our hope is in the cross! Our faith is meaningless without the atoning death of Christ for our sins and His resurrection that we might have eternal life with Him! Lent helps us prepare our hearts to more fully understand Easter as truly the greatest celebration of the year! Easter morning is full of excitement because for 40 DAYS we have been talking about our need for a Savior and the hope we have in Christ! We can finally shout, HE IS RISEN!

Our Lent/ Easter basket will sit on our kitchen counter for the next 40 days. Every day during Lent (at least once and usually more, since the basket is available anytime the boys want to look through it), we read one of the Easter books, go through the Easter story with the Resurrection eggs, and do a Lent activity. During the holiday seasons, usually Lifeway puts a few of its childrens' books for that holiday on sale for $5 which is when I  have grabbed all these different little Easter books for our basket. 

I LOVE this Lent activity book! Last year I simple made copies so that I could continue using it every year. There is an activity page for each of the 40 days of Lent. This is a fun, simple activity book for young children that helps me daily talk with the boys about the meaning and purpose of Lent in preparing our hearts for Holy Week and Easter. There is a guide inside with tips for family use, and it explains Lent, Holy Week, and Easter very well in clear and simple terms.

For the next 7 weeks the boys get to watch the following dvd every Sunday. As a 3 year old last year, Caleb basically memorized the entire movie and could tell you with great detail the events of Holy Week which start with Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter) and go through the last Passover supper, the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus' betrayal, his trial before Pilate, his cruxifiction and his resurrection. 

The boys can not get enough of the Resurrection Eggs!! They play with them constantly. Here is a video of Caleb walking us through the Easter story with his resurrection eggs last year.

I look forward to sharing more things we'll be doing as a family over the next 40 days such as: 1. How and why we teach and celebrate Passover in our home and 2. Making the events of Holy Week come alive for our kids. Really fun stuff!

Jonathan's Valentine Beat

Superheroes are a big thing around our house these days, and even 15 month old Jonathan can enjoy the Spiderman theme song. Do your thing J-train!

Discipleship in the Home: The Early Years

In October at the DownLine Women's Summit, I had the privilege of sharing in a seminar what discipleship in the home looks like for our family during these early years of childhood. Today Kennon taught a similar seminar at the DownLine Men's Summit.

During the seminar we showed a video of our family devotion to give a realistic expectation for what a family devo can look like with little ones. As requested by some of the conference attendees, here it is. This video was shot last fall, and the boys are 4, 2, and 1 yr old. No, they don't sit perfectly still! Yes, it's a little crazy! We want to keep it fun, so it's something they look forward to each night. Prepare to laugh and hopefully be inspired to be intentional with family devotion in your home, whatever it may look like :-)

DownLine Summit Seminar: Discipleship in the Home

More about our Family Devotion:
Our family devotion lasts about 10-15 minutes each night after dinner. It is a way for us to be intentional about passing on Biblical truth in the context of our home and a family tradition (Deut 6).  Our devotional time includes a hymn, Bible reading, memory verses, catechism, and developing a heart for the world through prayer for people in different countries to know Jesus. We use the  Truth and Grace Memory Book that includes age appropriate memory verses, hymns, and catechism questions starting at age two. Catechism is simply a question and answer format of learning theology. We're currently using the Read and Share Bible. While the boys look at the pictures in the Read and Share Bible, Kennon first reads the literal text from an NLT Bible before reading the short message in the Read and Share Bible.

We first used the Rhyme Bible, and then after reviewing several children's Bibles, Read and Share seemed to be the best fit for our family devotional Bible this year. It breaks down the stories to keep them short and simple for their ages, and it includes a lot of stories which enables us to use it for a longer period of time. Other children's Bibles if you read a story a night, you would be finished in a month. Read and Share includes the literal text passages that are not too long, and we wanted them to start becoming familiar with the language of scripture. Little boys are very visual, and the illustrations in Read and Share are great!

Family Devotion will look different in each home. The main idea is that there is a consistent, regular time where parents are intentionally teaching the truths of God to their children. When you follow God's command (Deut 6, Eph 6) for parents to be the primary disciplers of their children in the home, it's powerful. I didn't know what to expect when we started, but it has blown me a way how much the boys have learned and how much they love it! I previously wrote more about how we started Family Devotion.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions about how discipleship in our home is fleshed out! As parents, we're all in this together! It's a tough but worthy and rewarding job! And above all remember that though it is good we exert ourselves to help our children see and know God, ultimately nothing has any impact except for God's Spirit drawing them to Himself. So never cease praying Ephesians 1:18 that "the eyes of their heart may be enlightened..."

Our Trip to Phoenix and the Boys' First Flight

We had a blast last week visiting my sister, Morgan, and her husband out in Arizona. Jonathan stayed with my mom, and Caleb and Luke eagerly ventured out west with us. A few highlights from our trip...

The boys' FIRST airplane ride!

Looking for our airplane

Luke is buckled in and ready to go

Caleb's favorite thing about the airplane ride was the snack break

They LOVED going to the Train Park which included a train ride, carousel, huge playground, western town, model train museum, and a real train to browse inside.

Riding the kid train.

Hanging out with Aunt MoMo in the train museum.

The three story Phoenix Children's Museum was amazing!

Caleb called this the "pirate ship" and it was so tall it made my stomach turn so daddy went up!

"CACTUS!" We heard this over and over and over :-)

Caleb took his picture with the tallest cactus he could find to show his teachers and friends at school.

Desert Dirt

 The boys didn't seem to mind the lack of grass. They could have dug in the dirt for hours in their aunt and uncle's backyard. There is something about little boys and dirt!

Headed to home sweet home

Why and How We're Celebrating Epiphany Today

ABOUT EPIPHANY:
I'm not an expert on the liturgical calendar, but in studying it, I've found it a helpful tool in creating intentional times throughout the year that we remember and celebrate the life and ministry of Christ. Many Protestant churches don't celebrate the various seasons of the church calendar beyond Christmas and Easter, but there is a long history of using it in the Christian faith. "When most of the people in the church were poor and had no access to education, the church festivals and the cycle of the church year provided a vehicle for teaching the story of God and his actions in human history. Even in the Old Testament, the concept of sacred time became a vehicle for teaching the faith (for example, Exodus 12-13)." (Season of Epiphany - Bratcher) Since reading Noel Piper's book "Treasuring God in Your Traditions" I've become even more intentional in creating traditions and celebrations that tell a story as a way of teaching our kids the truths of God.
Before moving into the meaning of Epiphany, let me back up because you can't talk about Epiphany without talking first about Christmas. In the church we begin the Christmas season with Advent which is marked by expectation. We are anticipating the coming of Jesus. The traditional Christmas celebration begins on Dec 25 and according to the church calendar last for 12 Days of Christmas (ever wonder about the song!). It ends with Epiphany on January 6, today! Epiphany is the climax to the Advent/ Christmas season. The term epiphany means "to show" or "to make known" or even "to reveal." It's a time of focusing on the mission of the church in reaching others by "showing" Jesus as the Savior of all people. "As with most aspects of the Christian liturgical calendar, Epiphany has theological significance as a teaching tool in the church. The Wise Men or Magi who brought gifts to the child Jesus were the first Gentiles to acknowledge Jesus as "King" and so were the first to "show" or "reveal" Jesus to a wider world as the incarnate Christ. This act of worship by the Magi, which corresponded to Simeon’s blessing that this child Jesus would be "a light for revelation to the Gentiles" (Luke 2:32), was one of the first indications that Jesus came for all people, of all nations, of all races, and that the work of God in the world would not be limited to only a few." (Bratcher)


EPIPHANY DEVOTIONAL: (beautifully sums up the heart of celebrating Epiphany.)

And suddenly - You appeared among us! You could have stood afar off, but You came in vulnerable love, revealing the nature of the Father. You proved once and for all that God's love "reaches to the heavens" by reaching from heaven to us. What an extraordinary act of abounding grace! 
     Your birth seemed insignificant, even trivial, to most of the world. Yet Simeon prophesied You would be "a light to the Gentiles"... and the Magi were the first to fulfill that word. Overwhelmed by Your royal yet modest love, they tenderly laid gifts at Your feet. They knelt down and worshipped You, "revealing" You to the world as Lord and King. 
     I will observe these days by asking for a personal epiphany, a sudden revelation of who You really are. By bowing down, laying my gifts at Your feet, and worshiping You, let me "reveal" You as the Savior of all people. - The Book of Worship (John Randall Dennis)


ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS:

1. Read Matthew 2:1-12. Sing 'We Three Kings'

2. Make and decorate cardboard crowns and then act out the visit of the Magi

3. Let them pick out a special gift to give to someone that would honor that person as the Magi's brought gifts to honor Jesus

4. Pray for missionaries that are "revealing"to the nations Christ as King and Savior 

5. Make a King Cake (a Mardi Gra tradition as well)

6. Make star shaped cookies to remember the star that the Magi followed to find Jesus

These are just a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing!

Two of My Favorite Ladies

Beth, Me, Brandi

This picture was taken New Year's Eve and got me thinking about how thankful I am for the special friendships I have with these two ladies. I will forever be grateful that Beth and Brandi took the time to invest in my life.

You don't realize how much you have to learn as a newlywed wife about what it really means to love your husband, and Beth took me under her wing to show me the ropes of being a godly wife. I would always leave her house so excited and inspired to get home and love/ serve my husband. She was also there to shine the light of truth speaking in grace when I was blind to my own faults.

I got to know Brandi around the time I was becoming a new mom. Not only does she have a heart for young mothers but she is full of parenting insight! On several occasions, she would call me with words of wisdom and encouragement when only the Holy Spirit could have known how desperately I needed it!

My time with them wasn't a Bible study though scripture almost always was naturally in our conversations. It wasn't a how to lecture though I got lots of great practical advice. It was all about our relationship. You see they made me love being a wife and mom. Their lives and their hearts for the roles of wife and mom as God designed were contagious.  That's why it's said that discipleship is more caught than taught.

My husband and kids are probably the most thankful for Beth and Brandi! Having tangible, wise, godly women in your life is one of the most transformative things you can do. There are great female authors and speakers that have been very influential in my life as well, but if I had to choose, I'd go with Beth Bryson over a Beth Moore and Brandi Holbrook over a Stormie Omartian EVERY TIME! Praise God for discipleship and women willing to sacrifice their time and energy for the spiritual maturity of another!

Our Christmas Box

Inspired by a blog written by Francine Rivers, our family decided to make a Christmas box for a homeless person and pray that the Lord would lead us to the right person. We went shopping at Target to find things we thought someone on the streets would need and would also put a smile on their face. We let the boys brainstorm about what they thought would make our recipient "feel special." They picked out some fun Christmas socks, gloves, a hat and also their favorite Christmas candy as well as some of our homemade Ginger bread cookies. 

A few other items we included: bottle water, deoderent, first aid kit, anti-bacterial wipes, hand sanitizer, gold bond powder, multi-vitamins, energy bars, and toothbrush/paste. We used a plastic shoebox that can be reused and will keep things dry.

We taped on top of the box coupons for two nights of food and lodging at the Memphis Union Mission. These are great to keep in your car for when you see panhandlers on the streets. You can purchase the coupons here. Hopefully this will give someone a safe, warm, peaceful place to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day night where the light and love of Christ is present.

As Francine Rivers did, I wrote the following on an index ca, let the boys color the back of it, and placed it in the box:

“The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.  I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  The unfailing love of the LORD never ends!  By HIS mercies we have been kept from complete destruction.  Great is HIS faithfulness; HIS mercies begin afresh each day.  I say to myself, ‘This LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in HIM.’”  Lamentations 3:19-20

We have the box in our car today as we're out and about and trusting the Spirit to lead. I hope you will pray with us and even join us in this new Christmas Eve tradition!