A Favorite Book

When I found out I was pregnant with Ada, Scott and I were very much newlyweds. We were six months into marriage, and we were still figuring out how marriage worked. Let's be honest, we are now working on our fourth year and we don't have it yet, but it sure does seem easier now.

Anyway, it was quite overwhelming for us to face the task of parenting when we felt so young and insecure. How could we, hardly knowing each other yet, learn how to parent together? God has been so very gracious to us, by the way, as Scott and I seem more in harmony than ever before, and I think it is because God has used the parenting of Ada to sanctify our marriage. It has been such an encouraging experience.

So, there we were, dealing with the reality of my first pregnancy, and I was desperate for guidance and instruction and wisdom. So, I did what I always do in desperate situations, I began to read. I didn't know much about what mothering would be like, but I knew that I so wanted this child of ours to know and love the Lord and His gospel above all else. I wanted our family to be about making His kingdom known. And so I bought the book, Raising your children for Christ by Andrew Murray. It's a good one ya'll.

I sat in our tiny, concrete, basement apartment pouring over its pages, desperate to know how to be a parent. And it was as I read this book, that I first began to question what it meant for Ada to be a "covenant child." What did it mean that the Lord allowed Ada to be born into a believing family. And by believing family, I mean she is surrounded by grandparents and aunts and uncles who love the Lord with all of their heart, soul, and mind. She clearly was a blessed child.

So, as I think about Ada's baptism (and this is not that post; that will come in a few days, I think), I return to this favorite book. And now that I am once again carrying a child inside of me, I again think about what it means to parent in such a way as to bring glory to the Lord. This book is chock full of encouraging and practical words, and it opens with this thought, that I want to share with you,

The establishment of a home of love like that in Heaven was to be the highest privilege of man. However, sin came in and brought about man's ruin. The father makes the child a partaker of a sinful nature, and the father himself feels too sinful to be a blessing to the child. Then the homes become too often the path not to heaven, but to hell. But what sin destroys, grace restores! God's grace points back to the restoration of what he intended at creation. It was God's plan for the family with its love and its training of the children to reflect the fellowship of God's home and the love of the Father in Heaven.

Every parent who is aware of his own shortcomings and longs for wisdom and grace must look to the heavenly origin of family life. The God who created it has also redeemed it and makes it new. He watches over each family with tender interest, and gives his own Father-love to every parent who desires to be the minister of His holy purpose.

If this is your desire, begin by making God's thoughts your thoughts. Begin to see the fatherhood and the family on earth as the image and the likeness of the heavenly original. Look to God as the author of your family life and count on him to give you all that is needed to make it what it should be. Let his Father-heart and his Father-love be your security. As you trust in His adoring love, the assurance will grow that He will enable you to make your home the bright reflection of His own.

(Murray, 11-12)