November 2007 Pearls of Encouragement for CWMs
Welcome
Blog/Online Bible Study
Prayer Partners
Article – What is your purpose?
Final Thoughts

Welcome

Can you believe it is all ready November? This year has flown by. The older I get the quicker the year passes, is that true for you?
Welcome to all the new CWMs. More join us every day. If you have not filled out the CWM survey go to www.christianworkingmom.com and click on Survey on the home page. We have had over 1600 women fill out the CWM survey. As I have said many times the CWM community is a warm and welcoming community.

Blog/Online Bible Study

A recent post on the CWM Blog at http://christianworkingmoms.blogspot.com is about how you teach your children to be thankful. We are coming up on Thanksgiving (in the United States) and Christmas. Often are children can forget to be thankful and greedy when it comes to Christmas. So, please share ways you teach your children to be thankful. Lesson 8 is posted on the CWM online Bible Study. The lesson is entitled, “How do you handle trials?”. You can find the online Bible Study at http://cwmbiblestudy.blogspot.com.

Prayer Partners

We have had several women say on the Blog they would like to have a prayer partner. I have tried to figure out a way to do this. Several have said you would like to be matched with someone who has children about your age. I think we can try to do this, but it may be really difficult getting a clear match. The most important part I think is just praying for one another. So, this is how I think we can make this work. Send me an email to Kimberly@kimberlychastain.com and put Prayer Partner in the Subject heading. In your email you can list the ages and sex of your children. What I will do is then send you an email with another person’s name. You can then proceed to decide how to contact one another whether through email, phone, or however you would like to do it. We will see how this works. Please be patient and we will try to work out the kinks. If anyone has a better idea, please let me know.

Article – What is Your Purpose?

Recently Dr. Ken Hemphill came to my church to speak about our life’s purpose. At the end of the sermon, he summarized his main points by this statement, my life purpose is “I will advance His kingdom, by His power, for His glory.” Pretty neat and succinct. His sermon made me pause and ask myself some questions. I would ask you to consider them as well.

1. What am I doing in my daily life to advance God’s kingdom?
Is my faith evident to co-workers, neighbors, and family?
Do my children see me looking to God for direction?

2. Am I doing things in my life in my power or God’s power?
We often say there is no way I could do a certain thing,
you are right there is no way you can complete some tasks
unless you do it in God’s strength and not your own.
Do you access God’s power or is it there for use in
emergency situations only?

3. Is everything I do for God’s glory?
1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “So, whether you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” This is a
radical way of living. We can wash clothes for God’s glory,
we can discipline a rebellious child for God’s glory, we can
be patient with an irritable co-worker for God’s glory.
We need to be aware of praising and glorifying God in the
mundane tasks as well as the big tasks.

The world will not understand the above and will think we are foolish for making our life’s purpose to advance God’s kingdom. When we live with an eternal perspective, we make decisions that have an eternal impact. Are you doing things in your own strength or in God’s power? Believe me it is a lot easier when you do them in God’s power. Are you glorifying God in everything you do? What can you do today to advance his kingdom?

The other part of his sermon that was convicting was asking me if I am parenting with a kingdom focus. Do I model and teach my children these above principles? Dr. Hemphill has written a book with Richard Ross, entitled Parenting with Kingdom Purpose. The book is somewhat aimed at parents with teens, but I found a lot of the principles work with younger children as well. In the back there is a chart of small things you can do as a parent for your children to show them you love and care for them. You can also find a 30 day prayer guide and it will give you things to pray for your children every day. The phrase on the back of the book is startling, “What if we raise our children to gain the world but in the process they forfeit their souls?”
You can find more out about the book by clicking here.

My dear sisters in Christ, as Christian Moms, we are held to a higher standard. We don’t just want to raise “good” children. We want to raise children who worship and glorify God in everything they do.
We need to teach them that is the highest calling.

Final Thoughts

I am convinced more and more each day that ultimately my children are God’s children. We need to daily point our children to their heavenly Father who is always perfect and never lets them down.

Till next time,

Kimberly M. Chastain

Email Kimberly

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