From my heart  Parent to Parent

I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a friend. I am a church worker. When we are asked to define ourselves, we often use words or phrases that highlight what we’ve accomplished, what we do or our positions within our families. Often times, we do the same to our children. When my boys were little, they were frequently labeled by their traits – the eldest was the responsible one; the middle was the smart one; and our little guy was the cute one. Don’t get me wrong, these were fairly accurate, if myopic, one-word descriptions of our boys. The eldest has always been the stereotypical first born, the middle son does have a genius IQ, and little Logan was a darling boy with golden curls, long black eyelashes and an impish personality.

As friends and family continued to use similar language to describe their differences, they seemed to grow and adapt into the labels that had been placed on them. I will never forget the day that Logan came home from school flushed and excited. He had been invited to join the advanced reading group at school and had a fancy book bag to prove it. As he hopped in the car with first grade exuberance, he uttered a phrase that both warmed my heart and horrified me at the same time. “Look mommy, I’m smart too!” My little guy had gotten so used to people commenting on his looks that they became an obstacle for him to hurdle. It was like his little voice was crying out for people to notice something more within him.

I never meant to label my kids. They were, and still are, beautifully individual. However, that day I realized how I’d allowed my children to be pigeonholed into narrow descriptions that merely highlighted a small aspect of who God created them to be. Around that same time a dear friend of mine gave a devotion in one of our women’s Bible studies where she spoke about her own son. Her boy was a star football player in high school when a severe injury sidelined him. Angry and in pain, her son felt his entire identity had been stripped away. Imagine going from a star football player to maneuvering through crowded high school corridors in a wheelchair! With tears in her eyes, my friend recalled sitting in her son’s room and allowing him to vent.

Finally, as his ranting subsided, she put her hand on his chest, looked him in the eye, and asked him if he remembered what her nightly mantra was to him all through his early years. His expression changed from angry to questioning, and then the dawning of understanding gave way to a look of wonder as he repeated her good night blessing from years past. “Never forget to Whom you belong. You are loved, you are cherished, you are bought and paid for because you are His.” Those words were meant to remind her young child that his identity wasn’t tied up in what he could accomplish, how well he performed in school or whether or not he was an obedient son. His identity, first and foremost, was in Jesus Christ.

My friends, how often do we pigeonhole ourselves and our children? Trying to keep homes that look like Pinterest pages, comparing our successes and failures as parents to those glossy commercials in parenting magazines and wondering how everyone else seems to have it all together. Give yourself grace because try as you might, you are not going to be perfect parents. Instead, remind your children that they are wholly loved, redeemed, new creations in Christ. Let them know that you will let them down. Their friends and teachers and coaches and every other human they encounter will at some point let them down because we live in a fallen world. And then lift their eyes over and over again to the One perfect father and help them see that their identity is in Him. He is steadfast, His love is a perfect love, He knew what He was doing when He gave you your amazing children to parent. Over the next seven weeks, we will be following the sermon series on the I AM statements of Jesus during our Sunday morning connect services from the nursery through the Cornerstone. As we dig deeper into the radical claim that changes everything as a church, I pray that you find peace and hope in the promises of the great I AM.

In HIS love,
Lara Kaufman
Director of Children’s Ministries and child of God :)

Try this object lesson:

Supplies: a Bible, two 9 x 12-inch aluminum baking pans, two boxes of flavored gelatin, two cups of marshmallows and a box of toothpicks.

Preparation: prepare a pan of flavored gelatin (use two boxes ). Chill the pan overnight.

Ask: What causes earthquakes?

Say: earthquakes are caused when the tectonic plates under the surface of the earth shift. Sometimes they run into each other, and this causes the ground above the plates to shift and shake. We’re going to experience miniature earthquakes today.

Starting with the first pan of prepared and chilled gelatin, say: the gelatin in the pan represents the earth and the marshmallows are the building materials. Using the marshmallows, let’s try to build a house that can stand up by itself.

After you have finished building the house, test it by shaking the table. The marshmallow structure will not stand up.

Say: This time we’re going to use toothpicks along with the marshmallows to build our house.

Help young children secure the marshmallows with toothpicks, they are sharp! Once you have finished building the structure, test it by shaking the table.

Ask: which building didn’t fall or didn’t fall as easily? Why?

Say: some places on earth sit on the place where tectonic plates come together. These places are called faults. In fault areas, it’s important to build buildings with special reinforcements to keep the buildings from falling down during an earthquake. The toothpicks we used were kind of like the special reinforcements put into buildings in a fault area.

Ask: what kinds of situations in your life might feel like an earthquake?

Read: John 20:30-31 and 1 Corinthians 15:2

Ask: How can Jesus reinforce our lives?

Say: Just as the toothpicks reinforced our marshmallow “buildings,” God wants us to reinforce our lives with faith in his Son, Jesus. No matter what “earthquakes” or problems we may come across in our lives, God will strengthen us through our faith in Jesus Christ.

Family Play Time!

SHOE RELAY: Each family member will take off their shoes/sandals and put in a big pile at the end of the room. Each person will run to the pile and grab their OWN shoes and put them on and run back to the starting line. Family challenge: break into teams. Have each team member run to find their own shoes, put them on and run back to  their team lines. See which team can find and put on their own shoes in the quickest time.

Family Devotion

What if someone asked you your name and you said, “I Am.”  They would say, “You are what?”  “I am,” you say.  “You are what?”  “I Am.”  They would probably be very confused, right?  This is what happened to poor Moses in Exodus 3.  Moses is minding his own business, keeping watch over sheep, when all of a sudden he is staring at a bush that is on fire.  But this bush is different.  This one doesn’t burn up.  So he goes closer.  And God calls Moses’ name.  (Yes!  The bush is talking!) God asks Moses to not only take off his shoes (that was the easy part), but he asks him to save His people, the Israelites, who are slaves in Egypt.  Moses is scared and doesn’t think he can handle such a big job (remember, he is just taking care of sheep!)  So he says in Exodus 3:13, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘the God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’  Then what shall I tell them?” Do you know what God says?  Let’s look up Exodus 3:14 together and read it aloud. God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites:  I AM has sent me to you.” Poor, poor Moses!  Can you imagine what the Israelites may have thought of him?  (This guy takes care of sheep and he is supposed to save us?  He hears God talking from a burning bush?  And God’s name is ‘I AM?’  I AM what?) But God had a very good reason for this name.  I AM means that God was and is and is to come.  He has always existed, even before any ocean or star or person.  He still exists now.  And He will always exist and be there, forever and ever and ever.  In Hebrews 13:8, it says that God is the same, “yesterday and today and forever.” That’s what I AM means.  Maybe Moses wasn’t so crazy after all.  Turns out, the leaders of Israel did trust him, because they knew the I AM God.  Unfortunately, the leaders of Egypt did not trust him, because this God wasn’t their own.. God says that, “I AM” is His name forever, “by which [he is] to be remembered from generation to generation.  In the Old Testament, God called Himself, “I AM.”  In the New Testament, over a thousand years later, Jesus says in John 8, “before Abraham was born, I AM!” twenty three times in the book of John, Jesus says “I AM.” Each time letting the people know that He is God the Son.

Let’s talk!

What do you think the people listening to Jesus thought when he said, “before Abraham was born, I Am.”?

Do you believe that Jesus is who He says He is? Explain.

Jesus has a lot of names. Can you share some of them that you know? What do those names mean?

Who would you like to pray for today?