Posts Tagged ‘children’
Curly Q’s Special Day
She is finally four! She has been counting down and the day has arrived at last! We celebrated with friends and siblings at Chucky Cheese. She was thrilled with her gifts! She especially likes her big doll. Happy birthday to our sweet, spunky, curly headed little BIG girl! We love you!!
Baby Powder Bonanza
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put a three (almost four) year old, a twenty month old, and a full container of baby powder all together in a tiny one person shower stall completely unsupervised? Well, me neither! BUT, I found out!
Apparently, when I thought the children were all downstairs playing nicely, I was correct but missing one vital piece of information. The older siblings were not actually paying attention to the younger ones as they played. I think I would have been angry if it hadn’t been such a funny sight!!
Now the three year old didn’t look too bad. Either it was because she was smarter or maybe just taller, or even maybe because she may have been the instigator(first thing she said was her little sister wanted to play with it–hmmm) but she only had baby powder on her clothing. The shower stall and the few other items they took with them were completely covered! The one year old on the other hand, my oh my!
She even had it caked in her eyelashes!! I carried her up the stairs and down the hall to the bathtub in record time leaving a trail of baby powder behind. I had to have someone vacuum up the hardwood flooring fast because people were trying not to slip on the baby powder as they traveled in to see the sight. I think there may even still be baby powder footprints on the carpeted stairs! All I have been able to smell for two days is baby powder. I am thankful, there are definitely worse things to smell.
I did manage to get a photo of my one year old. The photo doesn’t even do the situation justice though because of the level of powder that fell off of her from the carry upstairs and her realizing something was wrong and trying to wipe it off. BUT to answer the question of what would happen if you put a three (almost four) year old, a twenty month old, and a full container of baby powder all together in a tiny one person shower stall completely unsupervised, I will share the photo. Don’t you just love the look? I love the expression even more, it is as if she is asking, “What?????” LOL!
Beautiful Baby….what???
Back and forth, back and forth. If you have been following along you will know that I have been trying to guess the sex of this little bundle that I am carrying. My gut instinct has been that we were having a boy. I have guessed all but one child correctly. Testing the heart rate has always worked for me. Even the one I guessed wrong had been confirmed via ultrasound. Only when I was told the heart rate later did I tell the doc that it could not be what I had been told. The heart rate actually did win over the original ultrasound. So I am convinced that for me heart rates can tell you the sex of the baby.
This baby has had me a bit confused. The heart rate was high, then borderline, then high again. All over the board. My gut was saying it was a boy but I just couldn’t believe that it would be so. After all, we have so many girls and my boys are now 19 and 14. The odds are against us and the heart rate was not something that had been very consistent.
I went in for my ultrasound last week. The heart rate was at 138. I began to get a little excited thinking that just maybe my gut feeling was right after all. The tech asked if I wanted to know the sex it was all I could do to keep from saying, “Heck yah, why do you think I’m here!?” But instead, I very politely said, “Yes, I would love to know.”
He scanned over my belly and before he even said a word, I KNEW! I responded before he could even tell me himself what we were having! If you know much about pregnancy ultrasounds you will understand this….
There were no three little lines! There was a turtle instead! Yes, indeed, my gut was correct! We are having a little boy!!!!! Oh boy, A BOY!! And isn’t he the cutest little guy ever?
Catechism Resources
I am interrupting the series which I am blogging to share this with you. Jennifer @ Quiverfull Family left me a comment the other day about catechism resources.
I’ve been feeling led towards catechizing lately (I don’t come from a Christian background, so this is really totally foreign to our family.)
Do you use the Westminster Shorter? Any specific resources that you can recommend?
I decided it would be good to share the information with all of you. Thank you Jennifer for asking!! These are resources that I love and am so excited to be able to share them!
First, yes, we do use the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
Second, here are a few resources that we use with our family! I am also listing a few others that are out there that we have not tried just in case you want to check them out! I hope that these resources are helpful to you in training your children.
Training Hearts Teaching Minds
Vic Lockman’s Catechism in Cartoon form.
Songs for Saplings by Dana Dirksen
I know that Veritas Press also has a catechism songs collection and a song book but I have not heard them yet…they are on the order form for us to try out this school year.
We also have some of THESE children’s catechism books…they were used along with their Sunday School curriculum a few years ago.
Covenant Home also has a catechism course which my hubby has used for youth group sessions. It is designed for 5th grade and up.
The Importance of Catechizing
Today’s focus is on catechizing. I have met many who dislike the idea of using catechism to teach and train their children but it is a very effective way of teaching and training our children and even ourselves in the doctrines and truths of the Lord. Catechism is not meant to be a substitute for the word of God by any means. All catechism questions and answers are drawn from the scripture and point to the scriptures. Anyone who uses them correctly would never seek to replace the word of God. That being said let’s move on!
I will continue to reference the booklet Bringing the Gospel to Covenant Children: In Dependency on the Spirit by Joel R. Beeke.
In his booklet, Beeke takes the time to explain exactly what catechizing is and how and where it is mentioned in the New Testament. He then goes on to say the following:
Parental catechizing is almost a lost art today, to the great loss of families and churches. John J. Murray writes, “We believe it is the discontinuance of this practice [of catechizing] that we can trace much of the doctrinal ignorance, confusion, and instability so characteristic of modern Christianity.”
Some have said that using a catechism is focusing too much on the teachings of men rather than Christ. I would like to challenge that! That is so far from the truth. Beeke puts it this way.
Their goals were to explain the fundamental teachings of the Bible, to help young people commit the Bible to memory, to make sermons and the sacraments more understandable, to prepare covenant children for confession of faith, to teach them how to defend their faith against error, and to help parents teach their own children.
Who would not want to use such a tool? Especially one that has shown itself effective over the centuries? Of course, it is a lot of work. Anything worth value usually is a lot of work.
Puritan evangelism, carried on by preaching, pastoral admonition, and catechizing, took time and skill. The Puritans were not looking for quick and easy conversions; they were committed to building up lifelong believers whose hearts, minds, wills, and affections were won to the service of Christ.
Beeke also references a man named Baxter who was installed at Kidderminster at Worcestershire. He tells of how it was rare for families in his area to honor God in family worship but by the end of his ministry there were streets where every family did so. Beeke goes on to say…
He could say that of the six hundred converts that were brought to faith under his preaching he could not name one that had backslidden to the ways of the world. How vastly different was that result compared to the results of today’s evangelists who press for mass conversions, then turn over the hard work of follow-up to others.
There are many resources for catechizing your children and ones that are easy to use. It is definitely a tool that God has used and blessed throughout many years. Let me end with one last quote from the book.
May God help us today to view the evangelizing of our covenant children as a task that involves both bringing the gospel to them and so presenting Christ and the doctrines of grace that believing children may grow in Him. We need to recover the vision of our forebears in our catechizing, such that we view evangelism as entailing both how to come to Christ and how to live out of Christ.
Prayer and Family Worship
In the last post, I left you with a list of things to ponder. Ways in which we can bring the gospel of Christ to our children. In the next couple of posts will touch on those. I will continue to reference the booklet Bringing the Gospel to Covenant Children: In Dependency on the Spirit by Joel R. Beeke.
- Prayer
How should we pray for our children? We should be praying for them in a habitual way. Set a specific time aside to pray for them but also be spontaneous and pray for them whenever the need arises. Pray also for them covenantally, specifically, and earnestly.
I would like to share a few quotes with you about praying for our children.
“A family without prayer is like a house without a roof, open and exposed to all the storms of heaven. Thomas Brooks.
“You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you can’t do more than pray until after you have prayed.” John Bunyan
“O Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, give us a seed right with Thee! Smite us and our house with everlasting barrenness rather than that our seed should not be right with Thee. O God, give us our children. Give us our children. A second time, and by a far better birth, give us our children to be beside us in Thy holy covenant. For it had been better we had never been betrothed; it had been better we had sat all our days solitary unless our children are to be right with Thee…..But thou, O God, art Thyself a Father, and thus hast in Thyself a Father’s heart. Hear us, then, for our children, O our Father…..In season and out of season, we shall not go up into our bed, we shall not give sleep to our eyes nor slumber to our eyelids till we and all our seed are right with Thee.” Alexander Whyte
- Family Worship
Beeke mentions four aspects that should be included in family worship and also gives some very practical ideas on incorporating those four aspects. They are as follows:
- Scripture reading
- Biblical instruction
- Prayer
- Singing
Let your family worship be regular and sincere. As Richard Cecil said, “Let family worship be short, savory, simple, tender, heavenly.” God requires such family worship, the Lord Jesus is worthy of it, Scripture demands it, conscience approves it, and children profit from it.
