Tell the Coming Generation

Lately reading the Old Testament has been so fun! There have been amazing pictures of Jesus and continuous themes of God being holy, good and gracious-not to mention his faithfulness. It’s equally exciting to read through scripture like the Psalms and see verses that command us to tell the coming generation of his glorious deeds. So since I’ve been lacking in posts lately, whenever I find one, I’ll share it here. Today is one of my favorites (that’s actually titled “Tell the Coming Generation) Psalm 78: 2-7:

I will open my mouth in a parable;

I will utter dark sayings from of old

Things that we have heard and known,

that our fathers have told us.

We will not hide them from their children,

but tell to the coming generation

the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,

and the wonders that he has done.

He established a testimony in Jacob

And appointed a law in Israel,

which he commanded our fathers

to teach their children,

that the next generation might know them,

the children yet unborn,

and arise and tell them to their children,

so that they should SET THEIR HOPE IN GOD

and NOT FORGET THE WORKS OF GOD

but KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS…

May we all have children in our life so that we can tell the coming generation of God’s glorious deeds, his might, and His wonders so that eventually they would put their hope in the glorious, mighty and wonderful God & keep his commandments…

Prayer & Preschoolers: Part II

Well "Part II" is going to be from the Children Desiring God curriculum I just bought. I was so excited when I read it that I just had to share it! This particular part is taken from Sally Michael’s Preschool Curriculum; He Established a Testimony. It can be found in the introduction to the lessons. Enjoy:

“Unless taught differently, preschoolers tend to pray the same kind of prayers-‘Thank you for the nice day, ‘ or “God bless mommy and daddy…’ Young children can be taught to share prayer requests and pray for each other. They just need some modeling and some encouragement…

Young children can also be taught to pray scripture-‘Help me to trust in you with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding’ or ‘Thank you, God, that you watch over the way of the righteous.’ They can also be taught to use scripture in praying for other people-‘Dear Jesus, please help Jimmy in the hospital. When he is afraid, help him to trust in You.”

Preschoolers can also be encouraged to pray aloud in front of the class. When it is someone’s birthday, ask a child to pray for that child and then you pray for the child. Preschoolers can lead the class in praying for a special need.

Instruct the children that there are four kinds of prayers:

1) “I Love you” prayers (Adoration)- These prayers tell God how wonderful He is. These are praising prayers-telling about the greatness and goodness of God.

2) “I’m sorry” prayers (Confession)- These prayers tell God about the wrong things we have felt and done, and then ask God to forgive us.

3) “Thank you” prayers (Thanksgiving)-These prayers thank God for His goodness and for answers to prayer.

4) “Please” prayers (Supplication)-These prayers are when we ask God for something. God’s answer can be “Yes”, “No”, or “Wait.” But God always answers prayer.

Children may be shy about praying in front of others at first or their prayers may be trite repetitions. But as you model real prayer to them & encourage them, they will little by little grow in their understanding of prayer.”

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Hope this was as  helpful & encouraging to you as it was for me!

Prayer & Preschoolers: Part I

Each month during the regular school year, I sit down with each child and we talk to God together. Usually it goes something like this:

Me: Sarah, what would you like to talk to God about? What would you like to pray about?

Sarah: My dog pixie to go to heaven.

I try to talk about how God shows us his goodness through pets and then we thank God for little Pixie. I haven’t prayed for any dead dogs to go to heaven yet J

More recently, I’ve been trying to give them more options for prayer. For example “Sarah, when we talk to God, we can tell him He’s good, we can say sorry for something, we can thank Him for something or we can ask about something.” Since doing that, I’ve been getting a little more from their hearts. Though simple gratitude’s like “I thank God for circles and squares” still seem to be awesome things to tell God.

Stay tuned: tomorrow, I will post Part II of Prayer & Preschoolers. Hope you stop by for that as well.

Kings of the OT & Jesus

Warning: Likely to be many grammar mistakes-leaving for work in 45 min.

 Since I’ve been learning about teaching children bible stories and also being gospel centered, I’ve really been trying to see Christ in the Old testament. About a week or so ago I started reading 1 Samuel. This book is loaded with awesome stories but trying to Jesus in the Old Testament is a new thing for me-so I’m always so excited when my eyes are enlightened. I want to train my mind this way so I can see His beauty more!

This morning I was reading a sermon by Piper on 1 Samuel 15 titled “The Sinful Origin of the Son of David.” From it Piper lists 6 things we can learn about the great wickedness of the people wanting a king & God’s plan despite the wickedness. Skipping 1-4 and getting straight to #5 says that we can learn that “ A God-Man must be king.

When reading through Judges and 1 Samuel-we can see that judges and kings were imperfect-that those men failed, they never quite “cut it”. But there would be One who would. The God-Man. Piper really helped me see Jesus in the OT story. Check it out:

“Therefore, we should learn from God’s way of installing a human king that his purposes are to inaugurate a line of human kings who would all fail until the king came who was not only man but also God, for only God can be king of Israel. In giving Israel a human king, God did not change his mind about only God being the rightful King of Israel. The point is that God alone is King of Israel, and there is coming a king, a Son of David, who will not fail like the others. He will not be just another sinful man. He will be the God-man.”-John Piper

May you too see the Beauty of Jesus as you read the Old Testament!

Living on the streets for a week

The pastor of the church we attend, Kaleo, is living on the streets for a week. Each day he will be blogging about his experience. This is some of his first post:

“Jesus was led by His love for others into the world, to forget himself in the needs of others… Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs… It means that we should not live one life, but a thousand lives—binding ourselves to a thousand souls by such a loving sympathy that their lives become ours” (B.B. Warfield).

5 Reason why Tim is living on the streets:
1.We want to show the homeless that we love them
2.We want to get to learn the stories of the homeless in our community
3.We want to offer them something precious.
4.We want the church to grow in her love and understanding of the homeless who live among us.
5.We want to better understand our Savior.

Personally, I found number 5 to be so beautiful and encouraging! Check out his experience here!

Psalm 88 & Suffering

Out of the whole year, summer is when I get to spend the most time with my husband. That means instead of writing posts in the evenings I’ve been spending time with my hunny-bun. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had things that I’ve been wanting to write about though! Today I want to tell you guys just a bit about a book I just finished reading. OMG (and I don’t use that often) it was amazing! Suffering and the Sovereignty of God is the name of it (Piper & Taylor). Basically it answers these questions: Is God really in control when bad things happen? Is God still good and perfect when those things happen? To put it simply: Yes & Yes.


But not only is God in control and good and perfect he is there in the pain and suffering. Up until recently the biggest pain that I’ve had in my life had been the death of my grandpa in high school and a bad break-up a few years ago. You may be able to relate. It was God’s word-specifically the Psalms-that kept my head above water. I couldn’t get enough of them. They described exactly what I was feeling.

David Powlison discusses suffering, psalms, and God in a chapter entitled “Waiting for the Morning.” He uses Psalm 88 to talk about the depth of pain. In the psalm, one can see the writer is so full of troubles he feels near his death. His eyes even grow dim through sorrow. In his sorrows and pain he feels helpless. This chapter is pretty depressing b/c it doesn’t end with a “Yet you are the God of my salvation.” Nope, no joyful triumph here. It ends with the author describing how God has caused his friends not to just leave him but shun him-they are as darkness to him. Powlison goes on to say what is remarkable about this Psalm is that it seems right-on with pain. Are these not the things that grief and pain do to us? They are. But why is something so depressing in the bible? Well, in short it’s so that when we doubt that God is listening, we will see “that what we are feeling is normal.”

Let me leave with you with this excerpt from the chapter:

"God cares about us in the midst of pain. His goal isn’t just to get us out of the pain to joy; he also wants us to see that he is for us and with us in the pain. It is true that weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning (Ps. 30:5). The morning will dawn and God will remove every tear (Rev. 21:4), but God is not just concerned about the morning, the new day when you can shout for joy. He is with us even in the night when there is nothing but weeping, when the tears are so think that we can’t see. When we are in the deepest pit and darkness weighs on our souls and God feels so absent that we wonder if he is even real, this psalm reminds us that he is with us even then."