Sunday, September 11, 2016

Sermon Notes...I Can't think of a better title right now




Of course, my soul is again overflowing with restful goodness after another blessed time in the Word at church today.  It brought a definite, final shove in the direction that God is taking us in for this coming school year.  You see, for the first time in maybe the past seven years, we have no extra curricular activities planned for the kids.  No ballet.  No wrestling.  No homeschool co-op.  No clubs of any kind.  It feels very weird.

Hold up...I need to add a couple of disclaimers to what I'm really trying to share here.  Firstly, I LOVE extra curricular activities.  I am a very extroverted person and love to be around people and bring my people to people and have people pour into my life and me pour into their people's lives.  It energizes me and excites me.  I thrive on teaching.  If I don't have something to plan feverishly for and have students gathered around me, having their mind blown by my wisdom then I go batty.  Secondly, I think activities away from their mother provide growing in many, many areas of life for our kids.  My daughter recently spent a very intense year of ballet training and I was very pleased with the maturity that came from it.  Same thing with my boys in wrestling.  It provides a challenge and kids need to taste failure and hard work and learn to respect coaches and teachers.  It's a training ground for overcomers.  I hereby state that I will put them right back in all those activities when the time comes.

So here I am on this day, in this year.  The year of staying home.  The year of the library.  The year of hikes through the woods and throwing rocks into the Puget Sound.  The year of my daughter and I learning the guitar together in the quiet of our living room.  The year of flashlight tag and taking the kickball to the small field next to our house.  I know this sounds like a dream come true to you introverts but you need to consider the shakers and movers in this world...and also the show offs which is glorious me.  This year I will be learning what a quiet schedule looks like.  It's a little unnerving.

It's also humbling in its own way.  I want my children to get really good at things.  I don't know if you are aware of this, but my children are the most talented, the most intelligent and most assuredly the most ridiculously good looking children in all the land.  I mean in all the northernly, southernly, and all that lies inbetweenly land.  It's probably the cod liver oil.

I started the year kinda bummed for the lack of extra learning...

And in walks the Lord and His steady TRUTH and His reminder of what is TRUTH.

 John does not say that he has no greater joy then to hear that his children are walking on the floor of the Lincoln Center.

 John does not say that he has no greater joy then to hear that his children are walking on the stand of the olympic podium.

John says that he has no greater joy then to hear that his children are walking in

 

It is this TRUTH that gives a child the groundwork to be a godly leader, a loving spouse, a servant in the church body, a submissive worker, a patient parent, a man and a woman of honor.  It is this TRUTH that they will need to fall back on in the ups and downs of living in this fallen world.

It is in this learning to LOVE GOD and LOVE OTHERS that they will live out loud to their peers when they pick up their extra activities again.

Don't be discouraged if you are not able or are not called to give your child activities to excel at.  Be blessed and rejoice if you can and you are.

The TRUTH is free and it's right there in your home, accessible to all.

If they excel in LOVE and TRUTH, then that is a good life.

"...walking in truth..."

What a lovely place to walk.