Above Rubies Daily Encouragement Blogs
HOW HIGH IS YOUR VISION?
What is your ultimate vision for your children? To get them into the best college? Push them to get a degree and make a name for themselves? Or to see Christ formed in them? To see them walking in the truth? To see them passionate for Jesus Christ and His kingdom?
We encourage and spur on our children according to the vision we have for them. I am sure, along with me, your vision is higher for your children than the temporal things of this world. You long for them to grow into the likeness of Christ and to walk in the fear of the Lord.
To do this takes more intensive mothering. You not only care for your children physically, but you watch over their souls and their spirits. You not only encourage your children, but sometimes you must warn them. It's much harder to warn and admonish. But we do it out of our intense love for them and our desire to see them walking in holiness.
Colossians 3:16 tells us that God's Word should "dwell in you RICHLY in all wisdom." That means we must also get it RICHLY into our children's hearts. This Scripture then goes on to say: "Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." ADMONISHING one another. What does that mean? The word is "noutheteo" and means "to put into the mind, to reprove gently, to warn." In other Scriptures this same word is translated as "warn."
I love the words Paul wrote to the new Corinthians believers. He wrote from the heart of a father, but it also speaks to us as mothers too: 1 Corinthians 4:14: "I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn (noutheteo) you. For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers." Paul wrote to warn them, but do you see his heart? He wrote to them as "BELOVED SONS." He warned them because of his great love for them and his longing to see them grow in Christ.
Acts 20:31 shows us again how Paul warned his children in the faith. For three years Paul "ceased not to warn (noutheteo) every one night and day with tears." How did he warn and admonish? With tears. Tears in their presence and tears before the throne of God.
Dear mothers, let's not lack in our mothering. We are nurturing the spirit of our children as well as the physical. We cannot let sin and waywardness go unattended. We must admonish and warn, but we do it with tears. We do it because they are our BELOVED sons and daughters. We will not let them be taken over by the deceptions of the devil.
Be encouraged today,
Nancy Campbell
P.S. Have you heard of nouthetic counseling? It comes from the Greek word we have studied today, "noutheteo" meaning "to warn, admonish." Wikipedia says: "It is a form of pastoral counseling based solely upon the Bible and focused on Christ. It repudiates mainstream psychology and psychiatry as humanistic, fundamentally opposed to Christianity, and radically secular."
