MAKE YOUR VOICE LOUDER

     "He said I'm not good at running!"

     "She told me I can't play with them!"

     "They laughed at me when I was singing!"

     It doesn't matter where we live or where we go, life is not always easy when you're a kid (or an adult, either).  Day in and day out, other kids are planted smack-dab in the middle of the path that our kids have to walk down.  Criticism drips off the tongues of their peers -- in many shapes and forms, life can be just plan hard for them.

     How do we offset all the negative that our children absorb in a day?

     First, we need to be sure the message they get from home speaks value, worth and merit. 

     Second, we need to feed them with more than flighty compliments . . . they need to be nourished with God's truths. 

     Third, we need to be sure we are heard above the din of discouragement they face.

     How do we get our voices louder????  How can we be heard over the roar in their heads????

     When I think of being louder, I think of ensuring our God-given, motherly voices of encouragement are heard above the shouts of cruel voices that echo at our children every day.

     Whether they are testing out their singing voice and an older sibling laughs at them or they are on a playground and a scruffy bully tells them they're puny -- we have a job to do!  Our voices need to be in our children's heads to help them ward off these lies that threaten to plant themselves within our children's hearts.

     The enemy will do whatever it takes to tear down our children and he will use whoever is available with the words they'll happily spit out of their cruel mouths.

     I'm so thankful, that as a mom, I have the privilege of being louder than all these other voices.

     The role we play, as moms, is of utmost importance.  We have to see that our LOUD VOICE in the ears of our children is one of  the most beautiful tasks we get to carry out.  Sharing words of hope when they feel low.  Sharing truths from God's Word of their value when they feel rubbish-like.  Sharing arms to hold and ears to listen, when their hearts are needing to be mended. 

     Don't ever let the enemy tell you that your voice isn't important in the life of your child!  Even on the days that our chidlren may "pretend" they don't care what we say, they do!  No one else is going to encourage them like we will!  Get your voice heard and see it as the divine assignment that it is!

"Don't be intimidated by all this

bully talk.  You are worth more

than a million canaries."
Matthew 10:31

The Two Ditches of Personal Value

As with so many things in life, there are ditches on both sides of the road that God has for us to walk this journey of life on.  I have found that neither ditch is "healthier" than the other one and yet there is a tendency to end up in either ditch so easily.  When I think of the part of the road that speaks to the personal value we have as individuals, I see how narrow that path can be for so many of us.  Here is why...

God, in His Word, has spoken of His love and value for us, over and over.  He says in I John 4:16 that, "We know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love."  And then in Ephesians 2:4-5 it says, "Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in sin."  God loves us for exactly who we are - He made us and designed us with each special trait we have.  Even though we can hear those truths, read them, think on them and believe them in our heads, somehow we need God to help us get them to our hearts. 

The first ditch I see in the balance of our personal value is the very common view of ~ I am not good enough.  What a lie from the enemy that has been spoken over so many lives both young and old.  I have watched the effects on my own life, close friends and even traces in my children that come and go.  When we know that this is not God's truth for us, then why do we let these thoughts stay?  Simple strategy of the enemy, really.  He watches for the ways we mess up or make mistakes or choose to sin (the sin he often tempts us with in the first place), and then he jumps on our thoughts and fills us with a deluge of shame and embarrassment.  So if the LIE is "I am not good enough", then what is God's truth?  One truth is found in Ephesians 3:12 and it says that, "In Him and through faith in Him we may approach God with FREEDOM and CONFIDENCE."  It is because of Jesus Christ that we don't have to carry any shame, no matter our past or present.  What was done on the cross for us, when we accept it as a gift, sets us free from the need to "be good enough".  When the enemy throws that lie in your face, you just throw back Proverbs 3:26 says that, "The Lord will be (my) CONFIDENCE." 

The second ditch in personal value and worth, is the one of ~ I am doing pretty well all on my own.  Can you believe it?  If the enemy can't trick us with one lie, he will try the opposite approach.  He will get your eyes off Jesus and all that He is doing in and through us and try to get us to take the credit instead.  This ditch has a potentially deeper fall simply because of the danger found in thinking we are anything without the cross and all Jesus has done for us.  The lie says "I am doing pretty well all on my own", but God's truth will not let us stay there with those thoughts - it is not a safe place to be.  Instead, God brings us back to the centre of the road, when He says in John 1:3, "Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made."  We are also reminded in Ephesians 2:8-9 that, "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is NOT FROM YOURSELVES, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."  The truth pulls us out of worldly thinking and reminds us that all we have and are is because of Jesus living in and through us.

So ask yourself today?  Are you in either of those ditches?  If you aren't, don't congratulate yourself, because you will trip right into the second ditch we looked at.  Instead, thank Jesus for what He has done for each of us.  Ecclesiastes 7:18 tells us that, "The man who fears God will avoid ALL extremes." 

Let God set you in the centre and keep your feet on the path!