“The glorious freedom of the children of God.”
carol | March 8, 2010
I recently received this very encouraging email.
“WOW! You have no idea how stumbling across your website in search of one particular homeschool book has changed our children’s and our family’s life forever!”
“The Lord has been dealing with me on a handful of issues for a while now. Spanking, Vaccinating and as you put it “baby dumping”… With each baby the way we were “supposed” to do things seemed more and more wrong. After reading your sections on spanking and vaccinating and talking with my husband we have committed to gentle parenting w/no spankings or time outs or other “punishments” and to not vaccinate our baby any more… I do wear my baby as much as possible…”
“I just wanted to say thank you for this site and the obvious time, effort, and energy put into it. It’s been a turning point in my life and my children’s life.”
“I especially appreciate that you don’t act like you’ve got it all together. Saying you want your kids to ‘go play’ and things of that nature make me feel like I can do better, too.”
“I’m a stay at home mom… I breastfeed and practice natural family planning and find myself aligning (to my surprise) to attachment parenting.”
“God bless you and your work here and your new baby. Please pray for me and my husband that we can overcome our past and look toward our gentle parenting future!”
What stuck out the most as I read, was when she said, “I especially appreciate that you don’t act like you’ve got it all together.”
I could write a book on things I do wrong! I certainly don’t have it all together. Not even a little bit. Thankfully, that is where grace comes in big time.
I actually try to avoid writing about things I’ve done wrong, particularly because I don’t want to embarrass my children in this age of the internet. I do worry about the future consequences of my writing.
So far, I am fully convinced in my own mind that what I write is true. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Romans 14:5
I might be wrong about my beliefs, but on the other hand, you might be wrong.
I appreciated this recent sermon, shared by TulipGirl.
http://www.gohope.net/resources/multimedia/details/?id=58903
Among other things, I liked where the pastor mentioned that he is getting better at his parenting responses as he has grown as a Christian, by God’s grace. I have had similiar experiences. Even though I continue to do things I wish I did not do, and I fail to do things I want to do, I notice that God is getting rid of some of my old bad habits (sins). For example, when I came to my conclusions about child discipline, (after Child #2), it took a while before I lost the urge to hit with my hand. One time, when my third child was two years old, I shocked myself (and her) when I instinctively swatted her leg to get her to stop flipping over during a diaper change. Thankfully, I have never felt the urge to swat or hit her before or after and have never felt that instinct with my fourth child. Still, occasionally, I disappoint myself when I notice I am yelling at one of the children. I thought I had that under control, but it seeps out. But I am not the one in control. God is.
Remember… Grace… Forgiveness… Freedom…
These are surely the theme verses for my life:
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!“ Romans 7:21-25
TulipGirl also gave me a lovely gift for Christmas. A book! *grin* Not just any book, but a book about freedom. One that I found easy to apply to parenting freedom.
I enjoyed A Scandalous Freedom by Steve Brown very much. I hope this is an acceptable amount of quotes that one has the freedom to post from a book, but there were many more that I would love to share. You will have to order the book for yourself.
Here are a couple of interesting quotes from A Scandalous Freedom on the topic I was just discussing.
“The very fact that you want to be better – even perfect – is a sign that you belong to Christ. One of the best ways to find assurance of your salvation is not so much to examine what you do, but to look carefully at what you want to do.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 61
“You greatly diminish your freedom when you pretend to others that you are accomplishing perfection.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 64
I found the following to be the most interesting part of the book, A Scandalous Freedom, especially in regard to parenting:
“Sometimes God will gives us the gift of obedience, and sometimes he won’t. When God doesn’t, he gives us love and forgiveness. But more important than that, God gives us himself – freely, joyously, and without reservation.”
“And when he does gives us the gift of obedience, God also gives us an acute awareness that it wasn’t us; it was him. We had very little to do with obedience except, of course, that we went to him. And even that came by his bidding and through his grace…”
“If you’ve been a Christian very long, you may be wondering why I left out the guilt, the condemnation, and the promises to get better and better in every way, every day. I left them out because they simply aren’t in the Bible. I am drawn to that stuff too, but it simply isn’t there.”
“If you use the law of God to condemn yourself, go ahead, but don’t say it’s from God. If you allow others to use the law to make you guilty and afraid, go ahead, but don’t call them God’s servants…” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 233
“Something about religion will, if you let it, make you into an insecure, self-doubting, failure-producing worm. It happens with the misuse of the law…” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 234
“If something we think about God violates what we know of Jesus, what he taught, and how he acted, then that thought lies.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 40
“This is a book about freedom, but it is really more a book about God – not a god we have created from our guilt and our neurotic need for punishment, but about the real God who would have us laugh, sing, and dance.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 48
Here are some more quotes from A Scandalous Freedom. I also included some Scripture verses and a quote from another book.
“This is why ‘it was credited to him as righteousness.’ The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Romans 4:22-24
“Because of the imputed righteousness of Christ, he won’t be angry with you nor will he ever condemn you.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 14
“God loves you and will bless you without condition, without reservation, and without equivocation. You are free!” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 15
“The more I experience his love and grace, the more I want to please him.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 16
I mentioned this type of relationship in my essay on child discipline and attachment parenting. I wrote, “ The closer our walk with the Lord, the easier it is to do His will. The parallelism in parenting is similar. The better our relationship with our children, the more they want to obey. It is all about relationship.”
“Freedom threatens religious people because it takes away their leverage and makes it more difficult for them to maintain control.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 19
People are so afraid that if they take away the punishment factor in their parent/child relationship that they won’t be able to maintain control.
“Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:33-39
“Someone has described the church services of American Christianity as a nice man standing in front of nice people, telling them that God calls them to be nicer. But if the Christian faith is about being nicer, it becomes moralism; and in that case, Buddhism will probably be of more help than biblical Christianity.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 83
“Through grace, with our assent, our desire begins to be transformed. Energies that once were dedicated simply to relieving ourselves from pain now become dedicated to a larger goodness, more aligned with the true treasure of our hearts. Where we were once interested only in conquering a specific addiction, we are now claiming a deeper longing, and we are concerned with becoming more free from attachments in general, for the sake of love. What had begun as an expedient attempt to reform our behavior has now become a process of transforming a life.” Gerald May, Addiction and Grace
“The biggest battle you will fight will be with yourself, not with the people you perceive as enemies. They really don’t need fixing. And even if they do, you’re not their mother. We are the ones who need fixing… When I have enemies, I must control, change, or defeat them. That takes a lot of time; but even more important, I find that I have given my enemy the ability to control me and take away my freedom… I don’t have to fix anything or anyone. That is God’s business. When I let him be God, I’m incredibly free to be…well, his servant.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 148, 149
What? We don’t have to constantly fix our children?
On an aside, I enjoyed what author Steve Brown said about setting himself free from the fear of the West Nile virus (p. 150). Just like I felt free of the Swine Flu!
“All of the things the world feels are desperately important aren’t really so important after all.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 153
“What if I could admit to you that I’m a sinner and that the statue of limitations hasn’t run out because I committed my sin this morning. What if I no longer had to pretend to be good?” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 156
“If God loves me, you can’t manipulate me by threatening to take away your love.” Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 165
This threatening of taking away of love, comfort, and attachment is a very common discipline style in parenting. It is the worst kind of punishment, but often the easiest to employ. How many times have you been in a store and heard a parent say, “If you don’t come now, I will leave you here.” How many times have you said a similiar thing yourself? Some popular (anti-spanking) parenting programs are based on this philosophy.
I could quote so many more intersting things from the book, but for now, just read A Scandalous Freedom.
“Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” 1 Peter 2:10
“Let freedom ring!!” Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.