I would love to say that my days are consumed with imparting rich wisdom to my children, quoting Scripture, discussing great doctrinal truths with my 5 year old. Lest you be fooled by the content of this blog, if I charted out the content of my words throughout the day it would probably look something like this.

I’d say I was completely unrealistic with “profound teachable moments”- it should probably be a MUCH smaller slice!

Moms, have you ever thought of yourself as a wise woman? An imparter of wisdom? A mentor? A discipler? In the midst of finding missing shoes or practicing spelling lists or negotiating with a picky eater – does your role of imparting wisdom to your children seem far from what you dreamed of when you held that first precious newborn in your arms?

The book of Proverbs has so much to say to us regarding our role as wisdom-givers:

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
They will be a garland to grace your head
and a chain to adorn your neck.

Proverbs 1:8-9

The whole book of Proverbs is written as an address from a father to a son – a vast array of advice that the young and foolish are begged to heed. What if we started really weighing the words we speak to our kids, considering each day a new chance to impart wisdom and teaching?

I’m not just talking spiritual wisdom, here. A lot of wisdom is practical, make-your-life-better teaching. You’re probably already doing it and you don’t even know.

• “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?”
• “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
• “Try it again, and this time ask me the right way.”

We are constantly teaching our kids. Teaching them to brush their teeth and pick out clothes that match. Teaching them life skills like organization and time management. Teaching them to maneuver social situations, answer the phone politely, conduct and dress themselves modestly.

Why?

As we discussed yesterday, the goal of our parenting is not to raise “successful” kids who are happy. The goal of Godly parenting is to disciple our children, to teach them to know and obey the Lord Jesus Christ and to train them to live a holy life. What if we thought about everything we impart to them through that lens?

• I want my children to be good and generous stewards of their time, money, talents, resources – knowing that all things have been entrusted to them by God, and that from those who have been given much, much will be required.
• I want my children to relate respectfully and politely to those around them, learning to submit their will to others, even when it’s hard – they are servants of the Lord and are called to walk in a manner worthy of this calling, making truth attractive by living it out with grace.
• I want my children to apply themselves academically not for degrees on the wall, letters behind their name, or zeros in their paycheck – but because they have been given an eternal mission to know, study, articulate, defend, explain, illustrate, translate the Truth of God to a culture blinded to His message.

A lofty ideal? Perhaps. But maybe, just maybe, we would speak different words if we kept the eternal goal in mind. We’re raising the next generation of Christ-followers – how do we disciple them, teach them, equip them, prepare them to impact this world… even as we teach them to brush their teeth, discuss for the millionth time when we will have a snack, or remind them to finish their homework?

Your words matter, mom. You can impart wisdom to your children all day long, even when it doesn’t seem terribly profound. In all areas of life, we must equip our kids to know and serve Jesus Christ!

Lord, put your Word in our hearts and pour Truth from our lips!

A shy request: would you take a moment to vote for KristiStephens.com as one of the top 25 faith blogs for moms? Help get the word out and get women into the Word!

Also – did you know that KristiStephens.com has a mobile app? Keep up with this series and other content on the go – download FREE here! All the posts in this series will be indexed here for future reference, as well.

Image by …-Wink-… via Flickr

Yesterday we talked about instilling the importance of diligent work in our kids. I said that in our next post we would discuss how much they learn from their mothers modeling this trait, and to give backbone to this discussion we’re going to flip over to Proverbs 31.

Wait, wait! I see your eyes glazing over… stay with me!

Proverbs 31 is probably the most quoted, most referenced, most discussed passage on being a godly wife. I must confess, though, that every time I study this chapter I come away feeling defeated and discouraged – this woman who apparently never sleeps, is completely organized and can spin and sew and cook and organize and run a home-business while managing her home in a way unmatched by the rest of the feminine world (oh, and she helps the poor and plants vineyards in her spare time) is completely and totally intimidating to me.

A few months ago in our class at church, we had split men and women and the guy who was teaching that day gave us a list of verses to look up. He was wanting to encourage us, apparently, by having us read Proverbs 31. We were supposed to read it and feel good about all we do. Unlike what he intended, we read it and felt like big fat failures!

Because of this history of feeling like a loser every time I picked up this chapter, I found it refreshing and liberating to learn that this chapter is more than an impossible to-do list for a woman who wants to honor God and her husband. The fact that this amazing chapter is written in an acrostic form (each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet) is so important to understanding what we are being told here! I will quote from Dr. Seuss and Bible Trivia:

Another form of Hebrew poetry is the acrostic form, where each line of poetry begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It carries the idea of totality, ie: “As we have exhausted the alphabet, so we have exhausted the subject.”

This section of Proverbs 31 is the last portion of the book of Proverbs, the premier book about living wisely. Written in an acrostic form, this poem is not just giving you a to-do list. This poem is describing a woman who is the quintessential wise woman. As you read through the preceding 30 chapters of Proverbs and glean all kinds of nuggets of wisdom, you might wonder what a wise woman would look like. How would she act? How would she manage her time? Well, you are invited to take a seat and watch her – this Proverbs 31 woman is wisdom lived out.

I take comfort in that. Why? I still want to learn to be a diligent, skilled, capable woman like this woman described for us in chapter 31. But, instead of focusing on the particulars of her habits and trying to be just like her, it shifts my focus back to fearing God and searching for wisdom like a hidden treasure.

Ladies, no matter how hard we try to copy this woman and be just like her, we will fail. And we will feel defeated and never want to look at it again. But the search for wisdom is a life-long quest. And the best part is, the Proverbs tell us that if we search for it, we will find it!

James 1:4-5 says, “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

Feeling defeated? Ask God for wisdom. Submit to His teaching. Search it out, find wise women to learn from, ponder on His Word, develop your skills.

Now, with that said, let’s take a look at our Proverbs 31 woman. I think of all the aspects of wisdom that we find in Proverbs, none is so vividly illustrated in this ultimate wise woman than the trait of diligence and hard work. Consider the following verses:

•She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands. 31:13

•She gets up while it is still dark;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her servant girls. 31:15

•She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks. 31:17

•She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night. 31:18

•When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet. 31:21

•She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come. 31:25

•She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness. 31:27

She is a busy lady. She works hard. She doesn’t waste her time. She is the definition of being “busy at home!”

So much of what I share on this blog is simply an expression of my own journey, my own learning, what God has challenged me about. I’m going to ramble for a bit – know that this is coming from my own process of learning wisdom. PLEASE don’t get the impression that I have this mastered. Yeah, right!

Over the past few years since I started my job as a full-time homemaker, God has really challenged me in the area of being busy at home and developing skills to truly be a home-maker. I think many of us look at our job as “keeping the kids out of daycare” rather than being homemakers. There is a big difference.

My job is not to be an activity director, supervision that allows us to legally keep our kids at home.  Taking on the mantle of being a home-maker is a huge, HUGE task.

Honoring our husbands and being wives that they can trust in as their capable help-meets is time consuming and humbling – for me, that means that I take seriously my ministry of creating a safe haven for him, making sure he has a nicely ironed shirt to wear to work, a delicious and healthy lunch to eat, a nutritious meal and an peaceful home to return home to. It means that I am his biggest fan, the one he can count on to listen to him, pray for him, and notice and be proud of his hard work. If that makes your skin crawl, I understand- like I said, this has been a journey God has had me on! (and I don’t always do it well!!)

Managing my home takes time and skills that I am still learning. It takes time and discipline to clean when I would rather watch Bonnie Hunt, and I have found that the “quick” way is not usually the best way! It takes time and discipline to plan our meals, carefully watch our budget, learn about nutrition and “bring our food from afar.” I use cloth diapers, bake bread, make yogurt, clip coupons, etc not because it is easy, or even because it is fun (although, sometimes it is!) – I have begun to do these things because I have found them to be the better, although harder, way.

Being a mother takes skill and discipline! It takes discipline to, well, discipline! There are so many times when it would be easier to placate them then to insist that they obey and follow through with consequences. It takes discipline to watch their eating habits and sleep schedule and make sure that they aren’t rotting their brains in front of the TV all day instead of having engaging and creative activities to enjoy. Someone has to plan those engaging and creative activities, after all!

And you know what? Our kids are watching. If we want them to learn to be diligent workers, we have to model it. We have to be life-long learners at the hearth of the wise woman, and constantly pray, “O Lord, please teach me your ways! I long for wisdom more than silver, more than great treasure!”

Isn’t it interesting that James connects perseverance with maturity and wisdom? There is no overnight fix to gain wisdom. Discipline and skill take large quantities of time invested in order to master them.

Never, NEVER think that being “busy at home” is a small or menial task. Roll up those shirt-sleeves, girls – we have a huge job to do. Let’s do it well.

Image by ETicas via Flickr

Our next topic regarding Parenting in Proverbs: diligent work.

The Proverbs are full of admonitions to work diligently and honestly and to avoid slothful laziness. It seems to me that diligent work was a more automatic thing to teach children when we lived in an agriculturally-based society. Kids grew up working hard to help contribute to the family’s financial success. They saw the immediate connections between hard work and profit and laziness and hunger. Our society has shifted to a much more entertainment centered culture where our goal is to work as little as possible and get what we want handed to us! We want everything to be easy, and if it’s not easy, it must be bad!

[Our society's obsession with working as little as possible and yet "deserving" to be helped out of our earned consequences is showing it's ugliness clearly in the school system. I enjoyed this teacher's response to a school district's new no-zero grading policy.]

Training our children to have diligence and work hard is vital to giving them the skills they need to prosper in relationships, finances, and be good stewards of what God entrusts to them. Consider the following:

10:4-5
Lazy hands make a man poor,
but diligent hands bring wealth.
He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son,
but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.

12:11
He who works his land will have abundant food,
but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.

13:4
The sluggard craves and gets nothing,
but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.

14:23
All hard work brings a profit,
but mere talk leads only to poverty.

18:9
One who is slack in his work
is brother to one who destroys.

19:15
Laziness brings on deep sleep,
and the shiftless man goes hungry.

20:4
A sluggard does not plow in season;
so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.

These are certainly not all of the references – notably, a great “concrete” object lesson for kids [and adults!!] is found in 6:6-11, the “go to the ant, you sluggard” passage! Take them outside and literally watch the ants and talk about hard work!

There are some obvious ways to implement the teaching of diligent work with our kids. First of all, we can start teaching kids to contribute to the running of the home when they are small!

Now, to my fellow perfectionistic mothers, this is a struggle for us, isn’t it? When my 3 year old daughter announces that she is going to make her bed, why do I want to object deep down and tell her to “help me” rather than doing it herself? Who cares if her bed has big lumps in it? She can set the table… and I need to bite my tongue if the placemats are all wonky. ;) We’ll work on doing it well as she gets older, and in the meantime, there is value in her labor!

One thing I’m planning to do with her when she gets a wee bit older is to make a “photo chart” to put in her room of step-by-step how to clean her room with pictures of what it should look like. (Step one: books on the shelf like this, Step two: toys into bins, like this, etc.) To help kids learn to set the table correctly, you can make laminated placemats with outlines of the plate, flatware, and cup. Be creative, and get your kids involved in the housework – you’re teaching them diligence and also life skills!

Courtney has an easy and creative method for teaching her kids to do daily chores, and it’s fun, too!

When the kidlets are older, I am a big believer in allowance being connected to work. The Proverbs scream out to us that work is profitable, and that slothfulness will result in want. Kids learn early on whether or not they’re going to get what they want regardless of their behavior, and this can be a powerful aspect of developing character and diligence or laziness and a feeling of entitlement.

Another deeply impacting aspect of teaching diligence is modeling it, but I will save this for a second post. Apparently I’m feeling wordy today.

I am obviously still at the early, early stages of teaching these things to my kids. Do you have any methods you have tried or great ideas you have heard to implement principles of hard work and diligence? Do share!

We were finishing up a more extensive look at foolish anger in comparison with the wrath of a holy God against sin. I never did finish up the discussion about dealing with anger in our children.

I’ve been browsing around some articles about teaching anger management to kids. Personally, one of the big takeaways that I’d like to start working on more specifically with AG is identifying what makes her angry and labeling the emotion she’s feeling. Anger isn’t a huge problem for her at this point, but she does quickly escalate from slight disappointment or frustration to a full-out angry, screaming fit! Lovely! [Hmmm... that's happening right now, actually.]

I’m planning to get one of those “emotion charts” with all of the faces and the different emotions (frustrated, disappointed, overwhelmed, jealous, etc.) written underneath to start labeling and defining, labeling and defining, and pointing out to her what is making her act out in anger. Obviously a 3 year old only has so much impulse control, but it’s one step in the right direction.

Rather than pretending to be an expert on this, which I am not, check out this article about teaching our children self-control, or in other words, how to “be angry and sin not”!

And I might as well confess, I know that I don’t always model godly anger management myself. Like when I stomp my foot and yell in frustration. Yep, I did just admit that to the world. Little eyes are watching us – O Lord may we follow closely after you, and may you continue to transform us by your Spirit and your Word.

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.
Proverbs 16:32