“Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night,” Deuteronomy 5:6-8.
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I’d heard it before, but this time the Sunday morning message was branding my soul with a scarlet letter G --- GUILTY! “It is not the job of the church, the youth pastors, or the Sunday school teachers to disciple your kids and teach them the Word of God. We get them for 1 to 2 hours a week---you’ve got them full time. The Bible commissions parents to get God’s Word into their children.”
I knew what the Bible said; I knew what I was hearing was true; I knew what my best intentions were. But none of this ‘knowing’ trumped the exhaustion that loomed large in my life, consistently sabotaging all my best ‘knowings’ and intentions. I daydreamed of the day I’d have the energy and patience at the end of the night to send the boys off to slumber with cuddle time in the rocker, prayers and Bible stories to replace the unceremoniously plopping into their cribs/bed that was current protocol with a quick goodnight hug and kiss. Many nights I found myself escaping their bedrooms like an illegal immigrant crossing the border trying to avoid detection! I was desperate for some time that did not involve anyone tugging at me, for anything. Freedom lay just on the other side of that door and the quicker I got there, the better for my sanity!
I longed for our final conversations of the night to center around things that mattered, but my final words always seemed to, ‘no, you cannot have a drink, you’ll pee the bed,’ ‘bedtime is not time to see how high you can jump,’ ‘well of course your head hurts-- you conked it into your brother while wrestling which you weren’t supposed to be doing,’ and my personal favorite, ‘why is there a puddle of pee underneath the trashcan?’. Add into this mix a husband whose job kept him working way too much, mountains of midnight pee soaked laundry and attempts to de-saturate a urine soaked carpet, stuffed animal chairs, toy bins---you name it, they peed in it or on it! I was one tired Momma.
Yet, I clearly remember the day when the scarlet “G” reared it’s ugly head and guilt packed its bags to make room for a new occupant--- Relief! Reading Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren proposed that fulfilling the roles God had me in, in a way that honored Him, was worship! Wow! Every spill/face/bottom/floor and table I wiped was worship (when done in an honoring way)?! Holding my boys quietly in the middle of the night while doing nebulizer treatments, humming a favorite worship song (because I didn’t have enough energy to mouth the words!) ---this was worship! Playing nerf baseball during long winters cooped up inside---this was worship!? I was blown away!
An honest evaluation of what I was able to do and not able to do was key for me to realize where my gaps were. I predicted the season would come when I would be able to make the regular deposits of God’s Word into the boys’s lives (thankfully it has but not without its hurdles). I wanted them to come to know the Lord through His Word, not by other people’s experiences. I wanted to see His truth soak into their impressionable little lives and claim the promises of how strong His Word is in a life, but I was not able to do it at the time. I heard a sermon reference to place fillers ‘standing in the gap’ (Ezekiel 22:30, “I looked for someone to stand up for Me against all this, to repair the defenses of the city, to take a stand for Me and stand in the gap to protect this land so I wouldn’t have to destroy it”) and knew I needed gap fillers in my own life.
I put patterns in place that were filling in the gaps left regularly in my wake. Community Bible Study (CBS), became my life raft in so many ways over the 5 years I was involved with the program. I had not started attending with the intention of it being a ‘stand in the gap’ discipler for my boys. I started attending because I needed the discipline in my life to be in God’s Word regularly and the encouragement of women who had walked this road before me. Wednesday mornings meant a 2 hour break when someone else would be responsible for my boys and I could sit without mediating or wipe anything. I will never underestimate the value of that two hour weekly block in my mothering! The first year the boys and I attended my twins were newborns. I remember nursing one baby, holding a Bible, and trying to placate the unheld baby with any sort of rocking motion I could muster. Fortunately I was in a nursing mother’s group so this was all par for the course!
Little did I realize that as we headed off to weekly CBS meetings, God would grow a love and a hunger for His Word in my boys’ hearts. I credit CBS for helping to lay a foundation of God’s Word in my boy’s lives when I simply could not. CBS places a high value on depositing Scripture into those tender little lives, even when those tender little ones are more likely to be found bopping someone on the head with a Tickle Me Elmo than they are to be sitting quietly during Bible story time. I clearly remember the twins being 2 and reciting Bible verses---verses that I did not possess the time or patience to teach them at that time. CBS understood the eternal value of placing truth into children’s lives. I am thankful for the diligence of the teachers who showed up every week prepared to speak God’s Word into my boys’ hearts.
MOPS (Mother’s Of Preschooler’s) was another part of my defensive standing in the gap discipling for my boys. MOPS gave me 2 hours, every other week, to talk uninterrupted with other moms, hear from veteran moms who had walked through this journey and grown in wisdom, grace and humor and it provided an outlet for creativity. There were many days when I dropped my boys off that I joked, (only to veil the seriousness) that if not for MOPS you’d have seen us on the news that night! The women who stepped up to speak often breathed just enough reserves into me to make it to the next meeting. I was seeing women who’d ‘been there, done that’ with several little ones and they survived, emerging more rooted in the Lord and encouraging me to see I would too.
Having children has truly brought home the truth of the Scripture, ‘to everything there is a season.’ Linking arms with a Father who is ferocious for His children’s devotion allows beauty (aka fruit of the spirit) to emerge from these seasons we’d just as assume click the fast forward button on. When your season is exhaustion and the commission that God lays on your heart is beyond your ability to meet, who or what is your ‘stand in the gap’ place holder?
Something will always fill the gaps we leave. I felt God asking me when I had a choice between Elmo and the Parables of Jesus Bible video---which would fill a gap? Nothing against Elmo, he just wasn’t the gap filler I needed for my boys when they were young. I had a definite sense that the years for me to govern the content of these deposits would be very small so I felt/feel an urgency to make the most of these deposits. Since starting these discipling logs many have inquired re the resources I’ve found most helpful in this discipling journey. Some of these ‘gap fillers’ have made their deposits totally independent of my involvement; others have been with my direct involvement. There’s no magic bullet/recipe for discipling, these are just some resources we’ve loved over the last 9 years. Gap fillers will look different in each family but the deposits they make have potential to pay eternal dividends!
This little Bible was given to all my boys in their Sunday school class and was a favorite of theirs for many years. William fell asleep at quiet time one day while “reading”----love this moment!
************************************************************
I’d heard it before, but this time the Sunday morning message was branding my soul with a scarlet letter G --- GUILTY! “It is not the job of the church, the youth pastors, or the Sunday school teachers to disciple your kids and teach them the Word of God. We get them for 1 to 2 hours a week---you’ve got them full time. The Bible commissions parents to get God’s Word into their children.”
I knew what the Bible said; I knew what I was hearing was true; I knew what my best intentions were. But none of this ‘knowing’ trumped the exhaustion that loomed large in my life, consistently sabotaging all my best ‘knowings’ and intentions. I daydreamed of the day I’d have the energy and patience at the end of the night to send the boys off to slumber with cuddle time in the rocker, prayers and Bible stories to replace the unceremoniously plopping into their cribs/bed that was current protocol with a quick goodnight hug and kiss. Many nights I found myself escaping their bedrooms like an illegal immigrant crossing the border trying to avoid detection! I was desperate for some time that did not involve anyone tugging at me, for anything. Freedom lay just on the other side of that door and the quicker I got there, the better for my sanity!
I longed for our final conversations of the night to center around things that mattered, but my final words always seemed to, ‘no, you cannot have a drink, you’ll pee the bed,’ ‘bedtime is not time to see how high you can jump,’ ‘well of course your head hurts-- you conked it into your brother while wrestling which you weren’t supposed to be doing,’ and my personal favorite, ‘why is there a puddle of pee underneath the trashcan?’. Add into this mix a husband whose job kept him working way too much, mountains of midnight pee soaked laundry and attempts to de-saturate a urine soaked carpet, stuffed animal chairs, toy bins---you name it, they peed in it or on it! I was one tired Momma.
Yet, I clearly remember the day when the scarlet “G” reared it’s ugly head and guilt packed its bags to make room for a new occupant--- Relief! Reading Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren proposed that fulfilling the roles God had me in, in a way that honored Him, was worship! Wow! Every spill/face/bottom/floor and table I wiped was worship (when done in an honoring way)?! Holding my boys quietly in the middle of the night while doing nebulizer treatments, humming a favorite worship song (because I didn’t have enough energy to mouth the words!) ---this was worship! Playing nerf baseball during long winters cooped up inside---this was worship!? I was blown away!
An honest evaluation of what I was able to do and not able to do was key for me to realize where my gaps were. I predicted the season would come when I would be able to make the regular deposits of God’s Word into the boys’s lives (thankfully it has but not without its hurdles). I wanted them to come to know the Lord through His Word, not by other people’s experiences. I wanted to see His truth soak into their impressionable little lives and claim the promises of how strong His Word is in a life, but I was not able to do it at the time. I heard a sermon reference to place fillers ‘standing in the gap’ (Ezekiel 22:30, “I looked for someone to stand up for Me against all this, to repair the defenses of the city, to take a stand for Me and stand in the gap to protect this land so I wouldn’t have to destroy it”) and knew I needed gap fillers in my own life.
I put patterns in place that were filling in the gaps left regularly in my wake. Community Bible Study (CBS), became my life raft in so many ways over the 5 years I was involved with the program. I had not started attending with the intention of it being a ‘stand in the gap’ discipler for my boys. I started attending because I needed the discipline in my life to be in God’s Word regularly and the encouragement of women who had walked this road before me. Wednesday mornings meant a 2 hour break when someone else would be responsible for my boys and I could sit without mediating or wipe anything. I will never underestimate the value of that two hour weekly block in my mothering! The first year the boys and I attended my twins were newborns. I remember nursing one baby, holding a Bible, and trying to placate the unheld baby with any sort of rocking motion I could muster. Fortunately I was in a nursing mother’s group so this was all par for the course!
Little did I realize that as we headed off to weekly CBS meetings, God would grow a love and a hunger for His Word in my boys’ hearts. I credit CBS for helping to lay a foundation of God’s Word in my boy’s lives when I simply could not. CBS places a high value on depositing Scripture into those tender little lives, even when those tender little ones are more likely to be found bopping someone on the head with a Tickle Me Elmo than they are to be sitting quietly during Bible story time. I clearly remember the twins being 2 and reciting Bible verses---verses that I did not possess the time or patience to teach them at that time. CBS understood the eternal value of placing truth into children’s lives. I am thankful for the diligence of the teachers who showed up every week prepared to speak God’s Word into my boys’ hearts.
MOPS (Mother’s Of Preschooler’s) was another part of my defensive standing in the gap discipling for my boys. MOPS gave me 2 hours, every other week, to talk uninterrupted with other moms, hear from veteran moms who had walked through this journey and grown in wisdom, grace and humor and it provided an outlet for creativity. There were many days when I dropped my boys off that I joked, (only to veil the seriousness) that if not for MOPS you’d have seen us on the news that night! The women who stepped up to speak often breathed just enough reserves into me to make it to the next meeting. I was seeing women who’d ‘been there, done that’ with several little ones and they survived, emerging more rooted in the Lord and encouraging me to see I would too.
Having children has truly brought home the truth of the Scripture, ‘to everything there is a season.’ Linking arms with a Father who is ferocious for His children’s devotion allows beauty (aka fruit of the spirit) to emerge from these seasons we’d just as assume click the fast forward button on. When your season is exhaustion and the commission that God lays on your heart is beyond your ability to meet, who or what is your ‘stand in the gap’ place holder?
Something will always fill the gaps we leave. I felt God asking me when I had a choice between Elmo and the Parables of Jesus Bible video---which would fill a gap? Nothing against Elmo, he just wasn’t the gap filler I needed for my boys when they were young. I had a definite sense that the years for me to govern the content of these deposits would be very small so I felt/feel an urgency to make the most of these deposits. Since starting these discipling logs many have inquired re the resources I’ve found most helpful in this discipling journey. Some of these ‘gap fillers’ have made their deposits totally independent of my involvement; others have been with my direct involvement. There’s no magic bullet/recipe for discipling, these are just some resources we’ve loved over the last 9 years. Gap fillers will look different in each family but the deposits they make have potential to pay eternal dividends!
This little Bible was given to all my boys in their Sunday school class and was a favorite of theirs for many years. William fell asleep at quiet time one day while “reading”----love this moment!
We have just started our 4th read through of this daily reading Bible and love the realistic illustrations. My sister-in-law Amy gave this to us as a gift and I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know this looks to old for them,’ but I went with her veteran experience in discpling and am so glad I did. A simple statement she made to her children years ago while I was over one day has always stuck with me and been an encouragement to me at our often hectic table time devotions, ‘you can cooperate while we have our Bible time and we’ll get to school on time. You don’t cooperate and we’ll be late, but we will have our Bible time.’
These “Little Blessings” books take such a great approach by asking simple questions from the mouths of babes like “Jesus did you have a favorite toy” and “what did You say when You talked to God.” Great, great conversation starters! The next two are right on line with life for little boys, full of scrapes, mishaps, bad decisions and God’s forgiveness!
This book provides model prayers for moms to pray through 12 biblical character traits for their kids to help guide prayers out of generic ‘bless my children’ and into the promises in God’s Word. Traits are kindness, humility, teachability, forgiveness, obedience, discernment, purity, responsibility, courage, servanthood, contentment and endurance. I love the idea of short, specific prayers, accompanied by supporting Scripture and ideas of how to connect with kids over these topics. What’s missing---the simple prayers for children. On my ‘to do’ list is to one day create prayers to accompany this book that would be kid friendly. The idea is great behind this book, it just needs that one addition to make it really practical and helpful to parents so you don’t feel like you are praying the same prayers for obedience with your children. The prayers are mom friendly, just not kid friendly for understanding.
Pinocchio’s great, but not why I included him here! We had a whole set of these Dollar Store books on CD of Bible stories my mom found for us, published in this same line as these fairy tales. The boys LOVED these stories and would listen to them over and over again at quiet time. There were also cute silly songs at the end of each story that would crack them up. We have since passed them onto our dear friends the Butlers for Izzy. If you ever see these at the Dollar Store---definitely grab them! I also burned CD’s of worship music for the boys to play in their rooms.
Another Dollar Store find thanks to my mom! There are a whole set of these Children’s Scripture on CD that Tad loved listening to at bedtime. I would often come into his room and find him conked out with Scripture playing on his cd player! Hearing snippets of it when I was in his room, I would have thought this series was way too old for him (despite the childlike cover) but he loved them.
Max Lucado is a masterful story teller, creating stories that pull children into understand the greatest Biblical truth of all---God’s amazing love! (Another gift from my sister-in-law---how cool to have family vested in the spiritual development of your kids!). Three Trees---awesome classic book helping children (and adults!) to see why God’s plans for our lives often mean our vision for what we think is best often has to be laid aside.
Ok, my boys love this Narnia series and we finished book 5 a few months ago. We started reading these when the twins were 5 and that was a stretch. C.S. Lewis writes for adults but his stories can be enjoyed by all ages. These books require a LOT of explaining as you go along BUT have generated some amazing discussions about topics like, ‘why God allows pain in our lives’ and what heaven is like. This series has been very slow going for us but totally worth it!
I still have these “The Beginners Bible” series of Bible stories on tape. My boys love these stories and reference them a lot in our conversations. I would love to have them digitized and then pass them on to a friend with young children.
Favorite cartoons depicting the persecution Christians faced during the Roman Empire---StoryKeepers. Highly recommend anything in the StoryKeepers line---for sure favorite of the boys. Veggie Tales were great when they were younger, singing and dancing fruit enacting Scripture! Adventures in Odyssey---great cartoons set in modern day, exploring biblical virtues in our everyday.
Hope this may help generate some ideas for gap fillers for your family as you ride this discipling roller coaster!
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