God-focused life – EAST WILLOW PLACE

Friend or Foe? 2 Hidden Secrets for Your Parenting Success

Let’s talk about parenting. Because parents can be enormously damaging. Or enormously life-giving (but those can be more rare – just stating the facts, ma’am).

I think that the general purpose of parents has been greatly lost in recent years, so here’s my take on 2 secrets about parenting that will bring clarity to your overall perspective and hopefully remind you of the truth while giving you some hope!

On the parent’s part:

**Parenting is about being parented.** That’s it.

It’s not actually supposed to be about the child/ren much at all, especially as an end. It’s really about coming to terms with one’s own relationship with the Ultimate Father – God – and being found in a situation where one is constantly forced to face their own inadequacies, sinful selfishness, and humiliating lack of understanding and control. (Ask me how I know this.)

It’s about coming to a point of reliance on the great and merciful supply of daily wisdom and strength that God alone can give. It’s about surrendering pride and appearances and being willing to endure pain and possible rejection for another’s highest good.

On the child’s part:

Parenting is really about being stewarded, discipled, and trained toward an understanding and belief in this same Ultimate Father as their true parent – because any sort of replacement of the human parent for reliance on their Father God is going to be a letdown.

Human parents are going to disappoint their children, fail them, and hurt them – probably often, hopefully mostly unintentionally.

^{(If you are feeling reactive to that last statement, check your pride – those of us who are being honest with ourselves are nodding in rueful agreement.)}

In spite of their inherent imperfection, the parent’s true role is to provide loving care and physical, mental, and emotional nourishment in such a way that the child has no impediment to seeing their heavenly Father’s love and care reflected by the parent.

By doing so, parents are creating the opportunity for children to begin their own relationship with him, with the hope that they love Him far more than they love their parents.

This is the ultimate goal of parenting.

(And yes, teaching them to say please, brush their teeth, and wear deodorant is also helpful – but not the ultimate goal.)

Why we fail is because we keep forgetting who we are and our true role: stewards, managers, and tutors serving an all-powerful and all-knowing King. We are in charge of raising HIS children with their eternal souls to become valuable, purposeful and reverent royal citizens in the King’s eternal Kingdom – not ours. And each person who parents another will be held accountable for our stewardship to the Father-King.

We were created to find our deepest joy and richest purpose in our Ultimate Father, not in flawed human parents.

And that’s why so many well-intentioned, loving parents get it wrong.

Because it’s not about us or our children – it’s about our King. If that clarity of focus is lost – no matter how loving or “religious” or protecting – that parent has become an impediment to the child’s greatest good.

The overwhelming love and protection we feel for our children is only a microbial drop compared to the deep sea of love our Father has for us – allowing us to get a glimpse of his heart and love, enabling us to persevere in our work of parenting while rejoicing and comforted in our own relationship with him.

And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children...

- Deuteronomy 6:6-7a

_{Wear Your Crown, Carry Your Sword. – Maria Miller}

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Unlock a Life of Purpose: An Extraordinary Assignment

Around 10:30 a.m. on the morning of August 7, 1998, trucks heavily loaded with explosives parked outside the United States embassy in both cities of Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The trucks almost simultaneously detonated. In what was discovered to be a terrorist attack from a then little-known group called Al-Queda, over 200 people died, with over 4,500 injured people – mostly civilians of Kenya and Tanzania.

This tragedy took lives, property, and a sense of security from thousands. Billions of dollars of damage and years of rebuilding were required in the aftermath. Lives were changed forever.

Yet.

These attacks, while ostensibly creating the panic, chaos, pain, and loss they sought, did not result in the toppling the United States. Not the government, not the people, and not even the work of the embassies. This is because an embassy of any country, while being a physical property, is actually more of a symbol for the government of the nation it represents.

The actual embassy is the group of people entrusted with a mission to a sovereign or government, especially in reference to an ambassador and his/her staff.

Because of this, any place in which an ambassador dwells and works from can in fact be an embassy. So long as there is a ruling sovereign or government to represent, an ambassador and any other diplomatic officials appointed can still carry out their work.

In the same way, we who follow Christ have been given a mission: We too are called to represent Him and His Kingdom to the people and places we find ourselves stationed. We too are tasked with the diplomatic job of declaring the glories and policies of our King, creating connections and relationships that cause others to become familiar with our “Homeland,” our Ruler, and His important message.

Because we are the ambassadors, an embassy of the Kingdom of God is anywhere we live and work.

Each day we must be actively communicating with and listening to our King’s communiqués, training ourselves in the ways of our Sovereign, and seeking to most accurately and winsomely reflect and represent Him to others.

Each of us have been given a unique place to operate in and represent the Kingdom of God. We have also been gifted with certain abilities and strengths that were deliberately chosen for the mission we have been given.

Each of us will need insight, discernment, and an incredible amount of wisdom in correct protocol and interactions with others. Each of us are representing something and Someone much greater than ourselves – and we are strangely odd choices for the honor of these positions, with our brokenness, faults, and failings.

Yet in our dustiness and flaws, in our weakness, we have been given this incredible gift: we get to represent the most magnificent, powerful, and supreme Ruler in this and any universe. We get the astounding privilege of declaring the glorious, joyful assurance that our King has not only created a way for anyone who wishes to become a full citizen of His beautiful Kingdom, but that He wants to make every person who joins an heir-apparent, with the full rights and privileges of His own sons and daughters.

We have been chosen for this work, so that we might display our Sovereign’s beauty and love in a jaw-dropping way to the rest of the world (Ephesians 3:10-11).

And even when enemies come, even if my embassy is shaken or broken by attacks, pain, fear, and loss, even if I should lose my own life – I know my King and His Kingdom still stand, unshaken and perfect, for eternity.

This is our confidence. Our hope unshakeable.

My work, then, and yours – is to stay as closely connected to Him as possible, that we might represent Him the most accurately during the course of our sojourn here. And then – the mission’s end will be sweet, when we finally get to return to our real home, the one for which we have been homesick all our lives.

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”
(2 Corinthians 5:18-20, NLT)

Your Excellency, your assignment awaits.

– Maria

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How to Make Water Into Wine: 3 Steps to Joy

Look at these babies! (And I would do it again in a heartbeat.)

On this day, years ago, I once heard a sermon on the Wedding at Cana (John 2) which I have never forgotten. The pastor, a sweet-faced, white-haired gentleman, spoke sincerely and earnestly.

He was my grandfather, and I have always remembered this sermon because it was at my own wedding, nineteen years ago.

The story of the wedding at Cana is significant because it was the setting of Jesus’ first miracle. While attending a wedding feast with his disciples, Jesus becomes aware that the couple have underprepared and are about to run out of wine for their guests – an embarrassing and disgraceful predicament, for which there is no quick or cheap solution.

Jesus quietly tells the servants to fill six large stone jars nearby full of water – each able to hold twenty to thirty gallons – and then when they dip some out and take it to the MC to taste, it has become excellent wine. Only the servants know where the wine came from, and the celebration joyfully continues without interruption.

Like the couple married in Cana who ran out of wine for their wedding celebration, even the most prepared person will eventually run out of something in the relationships in their life.

We are imperfect, selfish and broken people, unable to maintain levels of altruistic, unconditional love and kindness for any significant length without needing to be refilled or renewed.

Pride, hurt, self-centeredness, distraction, laziness, or sometimes just exhaustion creep in and our first fiery, intense and purposeful strength begins to fade, slowly burn out, and trickle instead of pour.

Even if we try to refill the supply on our own, what we often find we have is just… water. Great for survival, perhaps, but not so much for celebration.

This is why we must invite Jesus into our lives, our marriages, and our relationships!

We need to seek His grace, trust His compassionate kindness, and ask for Him to step in and do something we cannot: transform our acts of duty, of faith, of slogging service into deeds done from love.

He comes and takes the water we have and transforms it into wine.

Something ordinary and draining like serving and caring for a husband, a wife, a sibling, a parent, a child, in the gritty, unfiltered, day-to-day scenarios of living life together becomes a beautiful, celebratory, joy-filling delight.

But this can happen only if:

1. We invite Him and welcome His presence. (Jesus didn’t party-crash. He was an invited guest.)

2. We admit our own lack and ask for His help in our need. (His mother noticed the problem and told Him about it, trusting that He could and would do something about it.)

3. We listen to His instructions and obey them quickly. (The servants didn’t balk at the strange request but chose to humbly obey, thereby earning the place of being witnesses of the Messiah’s first miracle.)

This is not some rose-colored, pie-in-the-sky pipe dream of wedded (or other relational) bliss worthy of any Hallmark movie.

This is the same miraculous, stunning alchemy that happened when water transformed to wine: Our daily lives filled with miscommunications, dirty diapers, burned pancakes and traffic lights can become times to celebrate and rejoice because Jesus is present.

God with us.

Immanuel.

It’s not just a word for a baby in a manger.

It’s for a loving Friend who comes into your home and touches your marriage with hope, joy, and fresh life when you are burning out and feeling empty.

It’s for a tender Father who holds your hurting bewildered heart when you don’t have the foggiest idea how to parent your child but He does.

It’s for a sweet freshness and renewed strength in carrying on with a work you’re bone-weary of walking in.

He can come. He wants to come! He knows our need. He can take our offered colorless normal and transform it into something intoxicating and delightful, rich and vibrant, worthy of a party.

Because if we are His followers, the life we live now should carry notes of the music in the Wedding Feast to come. We should be practicing the steps to dance now. We should be looking ahead with joyful anticipation of the celebration and the smiles of hope should be shining on our faces today.

He gives that joy – He IS that Joy. His Joy is our strength, and our water becomes wine in His presence.

Nineteen years ago I married my best friend. We invited Jesus to our wedding, and into our marriage. Despite our own brokenness and frequent failings, in His gracious kindness He meets us daily in our lack, and we celebrate our love because of His.

{To my faithful, courageous husband – I love you. Thank you for marrying me.}

Cheers!