Tomorrow, our pastor will be preaching on the first week of our Season of Seeking Him study.

In our family, we are choosing to do the study during the week in preparation for Sunday’s sermon and Sunday school classes.

So this week, my husband and I did the studies each morning from the first chapter of the book (Revival), and our 7-year-old worked on her Bible Quest.  I’m anticipating the Lord using this in our lives to unify us as a family and draw us closer to Him.  It’s not like He’s hiding from us as we seek Him.  He wants to be found!  The Bible promises that those who seek will find.  So, we’re counting on our faithful God who keeps His promises.

As we have been preparing for this series, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do the fasting as a family.  My husband and I have talked about what we want to do personally, but I think it will be important to prep our kids for what’s ahead.

I’ve been thinking in particular of the electronic media fast that coming up the first week of September.  Considering we are a family who tend to fill our days with e-mail, youtube, facebook, xBox, Netflix, Wii, blogging, computer games, smart phones, etc., etc., etc….. it’s probably safe to bet cutting out all of that will be a huge shock for my kids (not to mention me!).  I know that it will be important for them to understand this is a time to look for God, not sit and pout because we can’t play Lego Star Wars.  Have any of you had success with this?  What has worked? What hasn’t?

Join me in praying for the Lord to not only reveal Himself to us during the next 3 months, but also to our kids!

Here is the kids’ study for Week 2 – Seeking Him.

Our church is about to embark on a 12 week journey towards personal revival.

We feel that it is so important for families to do this together.  So, while the adults and teens in our church will be going through the workbook Seeking Him by Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Tim Grissom, our Faith Quest team has written a weekly study for kids (aimed at grades 2-6, but anyone can do it!).

This is the first installment.  Look for a new one each week!

Seeking Him – Week 1

Each week’s study will also be available on our Bible Quest page.  I can’t wait to see what God has in store for each of us, our families and our church.

This summer at our church, we will be welcoming our grade-school aged children into the adult service to worship with us.  Honestly, I need to stop calling it the “adult service” if we going to change our thinking about having kids in church.  I’m excited to see how God will use the kids in our body.  I think it will be awesome!

I’m trying to come up with a list of ways to get the kids to engage in the service and things parents can do to help their kids engage.  We don’t want kids that are “seen and not heard”.  We want kids to be a vibrant part of our service.

So, do you have any ideas that have helped you and your kids in the worship service?  Share them, please!

I was chatting with a couple of the moms from our church yesterday as one of our toddlers was melting down… we started talking about our mom anthems.

They mentioned that they really like the song “This is the Stuff” by Francesca Battistelli.  I hadn’t heard it before, so I went searching this morning.  You can listen to the song for free on her website here.  Here’s the video with the lyrics.

I love this because as moms neck-deep in the little (or big) annoying things of life, sometimes we lose the perspective that all of this stuff is what God uses to mold us and shape us and make us like Him.  In Philippians, Paul commands us to “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Then he really emphasizes it with “I will say it again: Rejoice!”  We say to our kids in the midst of complaint that the Bible tells us to be thankful in everything (which is true), but I know I forget to do that when I’m cleaning up the 8th potty-training accident of the day or am leaving the grocery store – and the cart full of groceries – while I carry a screaming, thrashing toddler out to the car.

There is a song I just love to listen to when God has stopped me in the midst of the craziness to quietly say to my heart, “Even this is sacred.” “Sacred” from the Overdressed album by Caedmon’s Call gets me every time.  The lyrics shoot right to my heart like a laser beam:

My cup runneth over
and I worry about the stain.
Teach me to run to You
like they run to me for every little thing.

When I forget to drink from you,
I can feel the banks harden.
Lord, make me like a stream
to feed the garden.

Could it be that everything is sacred?
And all this time
everything I’ve dreamed of
has been right before my eyes?

What are some songs that draw you back to God when things get overwhelming?

Well, once all the excitement and ready-made ideas of Advent and Christmas were finished, I got writer’s block (blogger’s block?).  Not because I didn’t have any ideas or things were not happening in my family or at our church… but because I’m a perfectionist.  I am the first born of 6 children, and I bleed first-born responsibility and perfectionism issues.  Usually I deal with that by faking my way through and getting as close to perfect as I possibly can.  (Maybe then you all won’t realize my glaring imperfections.)  In recent months, I’ve taken to apologizing for my imperfections (my failures) by telling people I really was trying to appear perfect and have now gone and messed it all up.  Tongue-in-cheek, but really I’m hoping they are amused enough to not notice how I’ve messed up and in turn hate me for it.

So, I started this blog with great aspirations of it being a resource for parents in our church, and promptly realized I have little-to-nothing to offer.  I’m limping along attempting to parent my 6 and 3 year old daughters the best that I can, shepherding their hearts and teaching them to love Jesus and love others.  (It would be nice if they also learned to read, write and do arithmetic, make their beds, clean their rooms, wipe their own bottoms, make their own sandwiches, pour milk without spilling, be contributing members of society, etc, etc… but I could be asking too much.)

Each time in the last month I wanted to blog, I couldn’t do it.  I was afraid of rambling about nothing helpful, and being wrong or appearing foolish or *gasp* imperfect.  As the children’s director at our church, I should have all my stuff together, my parenting should be perfect, and I should have all the answers to every problem, right?   The truth is that I am a hack at just about everything God has called me to do.  The only reason anything I attempt succeeds is because God with His gift of grace has called me, empowered me, guided me and cleaned up the mess that I would have made of things.  PRAISE THE LORD FOR HIS GRACE!

I don’t really get into the whole new year’s resolutions thing, but I do try to listen to what God wants to work with me on.  This year it’s faithfulness.  Let me be clear: I know nothing about faithfulness.  I am the least diligent person I know.  (Seriously, just come to my house unannounced… you’ll see.)  I’m pretty sure the only reason I finish anything is my issues with perfection.  Praise God that He has spent 2 years working with me on obedience; I can now see His desire for my faithfulness in that obedience.  But, because God is just that awesome, it’s not just my faithfulness He wants.  He is revealing His faithfulness to me, as well.

I’m not usually one for bearing my soul on the internet, but yesterday a friend challenged me on pretending like everything is okay.  So, today, I am trusting in God’s faithfulness and this is what you are getting.  I’m also trying to follow through on what I think God is calling me to do. Faithfulness.

I have recently been reading in Philippians.  I am claiming this passage, praying it and praising God for it. Phil 3:12-14.

¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Today, I was searching the internet for biblical parenting blogs and twitter accounts and resources for you and for me.  I came across two articles that spoke to my heart.

This article by Chris Spradlin lists 10 ways to connect with your kids’ hearts.  For me, I think connecting with my daughters’ hearts is my primary role.  Behavior modification and consequences will only get me to adolescence if I’m lucky.  But making my girls’ hearts the top priority will last forever.  (You can check out more of Sprad’s parenting journey at his blog, epicparent.tv.)

After a year of sad circumstances and difficult decisions, I also found this article by Mark Merrill of Family First helpful.  It is about helping your kids grieve.  I appreciate that although divorce and death are two of the hardest things to explain to our kids, they are not the only things kids grieve about.  It is so important to give our kids the space and also the guidance to work through their feelings about everything including a friend moving away or a failed test at school.  Listening to our kids is the key to this, I believe.  And not just listening to their words, but also the heart that is behind those words.  Helping our children identify and name the feelings will give them more tools to deal with them as they grow up.

Okay, this is the last thing.  I need your help.  Do any of you have any parenting or family websites, blogs, twitter feeds, facebook pages that help you out?  Or at least entertain you as you walk along each day muddling through parenthood?  The internet is huge, and my ability to use it well is limited at best.  So, if we all pool our resources, I think we could come up with a pretty extensive list of helpful sites.  So, can you comment here with where to find the sites you like?

Today, I am praying for you – that you are blessed with God’s grace in a tangible way.

Advent is quickly approaching. (It starts on Sunday, November 28th.)  I have been hoping to really get our church involved in readying our hearts for the coming of Christ, especially the Sunday School classes and families.  So, prepare yourselves because this blog is about to become HQ for the Advent Crusader.

“Who is this Advent Crusader?” you say.

Well, it’s the new nickname I’ve coined for myself.  It might not catch on, but I will at least entertain myself for a few weeks.  Seriously, though, I didn’t realize that it is not the norm for people in evangelical Christian churches to celebrate Advent (the coming of the Christ child).  It was something my family did every year.  So, my quest has been laid out for me: to teach our families about Advent and give them some resources for how they might celebrate it with their families.

We want to bring Christ-centered meaning back to Christmas.  We want to put a time in each day during this season where we take a deep breath, sit down with our kids and remember that Christmas means that God, Creator of the Universe, came to Earth as a tiny, helpless Baby to forever restore mankind’s relationship with Him.
…because that was how God had it planned all along.
…because He promised it from the creation of the world.
…because He loves us so much that we were worth His one and only Son.
God sent us His Son… Emmanuel, which means “God with us”.  Okay, how can that NOT make you excited about Christmas??? (I can barely type because I’m shaking with excitement and my eyes are welling up with tears!)

So, this morning in her quest to get the Body of Christ excited about the Christmas season, the Advent Crusader (heretofore to be known as the AC), met with the ladies of Moms Connect.  This was a joyous adventure which included yummy food, lots of laughter and great community (all power-ups for the AC).  The ladies shared ideas for Advent that had worked in their families, and hopefully many hearts were sparked to pursue their own Advent celebrations.

One mom talked about story books that her family has read that help them to prepare for the coming of the Baby Jesus.  She said that all her kids enjoy them (preschoolers up through teens).  Here are the links for the three books she mentioned:

Jotham’s Journey

Bartholomew’s Passage

Tabitha’s Travels

Thanks for the suggestion!  Please, everyone, feel free to comment and share what your family has done to celebrate Advent.  We can all benefit!

There will be much more Advent stuff coming on the blog and on my Twitter feed @fcovkids!  So, keep on coming back!  The AC will return!! [insert gleeful, yet slightly mischievous, laugh]

After years of having the to-blog-or-not-to-blog discussion, the moment of truth has finally arrived! (Thanks for being a part of it!)

Through many discussions and much prayer, I feel like I finally know why I want to blog.  I have always thought that, as a parent and children’s director in our generation, a blog would be a great way to communicate with the families I minister to.  I just couldn’t quite come up with a clear purpose.

You see, although getting out information about programs and events is important, that wasn’t enough.  It needed meat.  Over the last year (or so), God has really been impressing on me the need to minister to the family unit.  We are really good at segregated ministry (men, women, children, youth, singles, singles with children, seniors, young marrieds, college… need I go on?), but we miss out on something amazing when we stop ministering to the family. It is our job as parents to disciple our children, but that doesn’t mean that we stop ministering to one another.  There has to be a way to care for each member of the family, while ministering to that family so it is intact and functioning the way that God designed.

Being a mom of small children, I understand the need (yes, NEED) to be mentored and equipped and encouraged to raise our children in godly homes, to love Jesus and to love others.  It is not easy!!  Yet, so many of us are trying to figure things out on our own, succeeding and failing by trial and error.  God has stirred my heart for our families, particularly the parents, of our church.  We can accept this responsibility that God has given us and do it well.  By the power of the Holy Spirit in us, and the unity of the Body of Christ, we can be the disciplers of our children!

So, now that my little soapbox is done, here’s the purpose that I have finally come up with for this blog… for Faith Quest Children’s Ministries… for the families of our church.

1) Information about our programs and events. You can download the latest Bible Quest.  You can access our calendar of events.  You will get updates about who won Orange Day or when an offering project is ending.  You can find out what all our confounded abbreviations mean.  All that stuff is important and this is a fun way to get it out to you!

2) Resources for parents. You will find ideas for engaging your family in spiritual discussions and activities, ideas for having fun as a family and resources that you can use to help you feel equipped for discipling your children.

3) My thoughts on parenting. I’m parenting right alongside you.  Sometimes I have victories and sometimes defeats.  Often times God teaches me something through my own children that is amazing, convicting, encouraging… you name it!  I want to share those with you.

4) Your thoughts on discipling  and parenting your children. Please join in the discussion.  This blog by no means is to become “Sermons by Liz”.  We function best when we work together as the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12-27). I’ll just provide the platform.  Let’s work together to encourage and challenge one another (Heb 10:23-25).

I’m excited to see how God uses this to grow us each into His likeness, to make us fall more in love with Him and to guide and mold us as we raise our precious children.

Watch for advent and Christmas activities for families in the coming days!  You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog.  Also, you can follow @fcovkids on Twitter.