Personal Development on Challenges Of Parenting

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Fostering Shame in a Little Girl

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I was standing in line in a crowded public rest room engaged in one of my favorite hobbies, people watching, when I observed a brief interaction between a mother and daughter. Mother looked harried an...

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A Question of Motivation

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Proverbs 22:6, Hosea 1:1-4, Matthew 18:1-5, Ephesians 6:4, Psalm 127:3

There’s a story about philosopher John Dewey walking with his young son on a cold, wet, and windy day. The boy, barefoot, was gleefully splashing in a puddle despite the weather. A concerned friend pa...

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Our Father, Lord, the world is sometimes a dragon

Author

Calvin Miller

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Scripture

Ephesians 6:4, 1 Peter 5:8, Deuteronomy 6:6-7, 2 Corinthians 3:18

Our Father, Lord, the world is sometimes a dragon with teeth set to devour the dreams of our children. Help our little ones go softly from our homes remembering all we taught them of your great love a...

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Enduring Our Sinful Behavior

Author

Carolyn Mahaney

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In her book, Feminine Appeal , Carolyn Mahaney pontificates on the relationship between God’s providence and the guilt we often experience as parents who often fall short in our parenting: We can ...

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God’s Gifts to Immature People

Author

R. Paul Stevens

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Scripture

Psalm 127:3, Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21

Children are God’s gifts to immature people to help them grow up. They are also God’s gifts to help parents go deep with God. . . . Parenting is not for anything. It is not a contract with God in whic...

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Author

Genny Monchamp

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Show your children God’s love by loving them and others as Christ loves you. Be quick to forgive, don’t hold a grudge, look for what’s best, and speak gently into areas of their lives that need growth...

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The Bible and Christian Parenting Books

Author

Gary L. Thomas

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Have you ever noticed the severe discrepancy behind the very few verses in the Bible that discuss the “how-to” of parenting and the hundreds of Christian books that confidently proclaim “God’s plan fo...

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Author

Jim Gaffigan

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Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about...

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Author

Josh McDowell

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We do not develop habits of genuine love automatically. We learn by watching effective role models – most specifically by observing how our parents express love for each other day in and day out.

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Different Seasons, Different Challenges

Author

Ronald Rohlheiser

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Scripture

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Luke 15:11-32, Proverbs 20:29, Psalm 90:10-12

Someone once quipped that we spend the first half of our lives struggling with the sixth commandment ( Thou shalt not commit adultery ) and the second half of our lives struggling with the fifth comma...

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Desire is part of what it means to be a child

Author

Curt Thompson

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Scripture

Genesis 2:18-25, Exodus 16:2-12 , Proverbs 3:11-12, Psalm 1:4, Matthew 18:1-4, Luke 15:11-32, Matthew 18:3

Desire is part of what it means to be a child, as implied in Jesus’ words to his disciples when he tells them, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never ente...

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Parenting and the Sabbath

Author

MaryAnn McKibben Dana

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Our Sabbath project grew out of a desire to reclaim some of the unhurried wonder of those early days of parenthood—to see what would happen if, on one day out of seven, we stopped working, striving, a...

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Lifting the Rock

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short tim...

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Heavenly Father, you are faithful, even

Author

Austin D. Hill

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Heavenly Father, you are faithful, even when we are not. We look to the examples of our parents, and they often fall short. We, too, fall short when we consider the legacy we pass on to our children, ...

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Prayer for Young Persons

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God our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing a...

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Encouragement Can Make all the Difference

Author

John C. Maxwell

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Scripture

1 Thessalonians 5:11, Romans 15:2, Proverbs 12:25, Ephesians 4:29, Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

There is no better exercise for strengthening the heart than reaching down and lifting people up. Think about it; most of your best friends are those who encourage you. You don’t have many strong rela...

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Author

Gary Smalley

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Affirming words from moms and dads are like light switches. Speak a word of affirmation at the right moment in a child's life and it's like lighting up a whole roomful of possibilities.

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Now You Do It: A Good Parent Enables the Child

Author

Mia Levetan

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Scripture

1 Corinthians 3:2, Hebrews 5:12-14, Luke 10:25-26, Deuteronomy 6:7, James 1:22

[M]y husband, Nick, tells a story of when he was a teenager riding his bike with his friends, and his chain came off his bike. Nick took the bike to his dad, who said, “I'll fix it, you watch”. Hi...

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Balancing Home and Career Gracefully

Author

Tom Nelson

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Scripture

Proverbs 31:10–31, Genesis 2:15, Nehemiah 4:17–18, Colossians 3:23–24, Luke 10:38–42, Psalm 128:1–2

Contemporary society assumes that we make a choice: one member of a household will be the “homemaker” and the other the “breadwinner” (i.e., in the marketplace generating income to sustain the home). ...

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Author

Nicki Koziarz

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Life can often feel like a bully, throwing punches at us we didn’t see coming. We get taken out, for a moment. But how we jump back in becomes our decision.

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Behaving in God's Family

Author

M. Craig Barnes

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When I was a child, my father brought home a twelve-year-old boy named Roger, whose parents had died from a drug overdose. There was no one to care for Roger, so my folks decided they would raise him ...

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Author

Benjamin Franklin

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Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their f...

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Desire is something no child has to be taught

Author

Curt Thompson

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 21:8-21, 1 Samuel 1:9-20 , Proverbs 22:6, Psalm 37:4, Matthew 18:1-5, Luke 11:9-13

Desire is something no child has to be taught. Early in the developmental process, most of a child’s desires center around physical needs being met or objects that attract interest. If a child is secu...

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Prayer for Families

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Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who who creates families for our belonging: We ask for your continual care for the homes in which your people live. Keep them from all bitterness, arrogance, and the...

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Genes on a Razor's Edge

Author

David Dobbs

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Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming sp...

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Reaching Further than your Grasp

Author

Darren Pollock

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 7:24-37, 1 John 5:14-15

Once when my daughter was six and my son was two, my mother-in-law noticed my daughter holding a favorite toy just out of my son’s standing reach, and she gently scolded her for teasing him that way. ...

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Control Issues

Author

M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:9, Jeremiah 29:11, John 15:1-27, Proverbs 3:5-6, Galatians 2:20, Matthew 6:25-34

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

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Author

Alan Redpath

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Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

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The Patient Father

Author

Source Unknown

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There is a story about a man who stopped in the grocery store on the way home from work to pick up a couple of items for his wife. He wandered around aimlessly for a while searching out the needed gro...

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Learning by Example

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 18:15-17, Luke 15:11-32 , Hebrews 12:11, Genesis 18:19, Psalm 25:4

The late comedian Sam Levenson enjoyed sharing funny anecdotes about his childhood, especially his early school days. One of his favorite stories was about his first day of school, when his overly pro...

personal development on Challenges of Parenting

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