I think I have finally figured out the secret to parenting.

Okay, when I say “figured it out,” I don’t mean that I have a 100% perfect understanding of it. But I think I have enough of a concept to apply it and to share it.

And it wasn’t my original discovery. It comes from the book Parenting Your Infant/Toddler by the Spirit by Sally Hohnberger. And “it” is the parenting pyramid.

In my own words, this pyramid means that God is at the top, desiring to communicate to my child and me. Because I am the parent, I need to open up the lines of communication–two-way communication. I need to make sure my heart is fully surrendered in the moment. And let me tell you, lack of surrender on our part is a big reason why we fail to bring our children to true obedience. Just try making a child obey cheerfully by yelling at them!

The second aspect is that God also wants to communicate directly to the child. However, the rebellious, tantrum-throwing two-year-old isn’t listening. So we as the parent, now surrendered to the Lord, will communicate to them, and direct them to listen to what God is saying to them. Then we lead them to surrender as well. Once they surrender, the lines of communication are open between both parent and child and God and child.

Now, that’s good in theory, but let me make this practical with some illustrations from my life today.

It was time to pick up the toys and get ready for worship. But neither of my children wanted to pick up the toys. Manny tried to throw a tantrum and Gislaine started to cry. Because I couldn’t deal with them both at once, I sent Gislaine to her room and told her to wait until I called her. Then I told Manny that he needed to surrender his heart to Jesus and put the toys away. I said, “Let’s pray,” but he jerked in defiance. So I took his hand and said, “We need to go for a run.” We ran the length of the house and back. Then I knelt again and asked him to pray with me. He knelt, folded his hands, and closed his eyes. Then he repeated after me. “Dear Jesus, please help me to put my toys away happy. Amen.” Then I showed him the toy, and repeated my instruction. He put it away. At first he was just compliant–putting it away under protest. But as I directed him to put more and more away, his heart softened until by the time he was done, he was a cheerful, happy little boy. And Daddy noticed later, after I had gone to the gym, that he was the happiest, most obedient, surrendered little boy that he had been for a long time, and commented on it to me when I got back.

Once he was busy putting his toys away, I called his sister out. We knelt and I led her in a similar prayer. Then I asked her, “What is Jesus saying to you?” She said, “To obey.” That just warmed my heart! Jesus was speaking to my precious daughter, and she recognized His voice! I said, “That’s right. Now please put the dolly’s bed away.” And she did. She also helped her brother put some things away. And she was happy when it was over.

And so was I!

Yes, it took extra time to do it, but the end result was happiness for everyone, and peace in the home.

Yes, this is the secret: a connection with God, listening for His direction, and following His guidance. Most of the time, we won’t know for sure if the ideas that come to our minds are from Him or not, but we are to test the spirits, and move forward in faith. But being surrendered ourselves–to take our toddler’s hand for the grizzly run (because they are too young to run by themselves), even when we don’t feel like running–makes all the difference. Because we certainly cannot bring our child to surrender if we are not surrendered ourselves!

I’m reading this book through for the second time. I can’t say I’ve read enough recently to do a proper review of it, but I would still highly recommend it. And all the other books in the series.

If you were raised as a Christian, like I was, you may have never really seen God. Oh, you knew He existed, and knew a lot about Him, but you may have not really known Him–never really looked deep into His heart.

It is also easy to get so used to the picture of Jesus as our Saviour that we fail to realize the deep significance of His death. Jesus suffered and died. So have many martyrs. What makes His death better or more efficacious than theirs? What is God really like? Is He really that different from us?

These are some of the questions that Ty Gibson tackles in what may be his most powerful book, Seeing With New Eyes. This book has had a powerful impact on my life, especially in the way I see God. It has given me a new perspective of God and His character. Let me quote one of my favorite passages:

We have tended to make God so distant, so nearly sterile that we have forgotten that He is a person. A person who made us in His image. A person, therefore, who has a heart that feels joy and pain like ours. All the passion of the universe has its origin in Him; and therefore all passion, both the pleasurable and painful, finds resonance in Him as well. Every pain that is felt, every sigh that is breathed, every sorrow that pierces the soul, like a rushing current of sympathetic vibrations, throbs in the Father’s heart.

This book is easy to read in the sense that it is not written in high, theological terms. It is written creatively, descriptively, colorfully. Yet the words have a way of awakening your deepest emotions, while at the same time imparting knowledge. Each thought is grounded in Scripture, expanded and simplified so that even a child could understand much of it.

Growing up as a Christian, I learned many facts about God. So I can’t say that there was anything exactly new for me in this book. However, the way it was put together was fresh, and it forced me to step back and apply the knowledge I already had. It opened my heart when I had been hiding from God–trying to live without Him, because I was afraid of the pain of letting go of my sin–and helped me to see Him not as a stern judge condemning me, but rather as a loving Father with aching heart, waiting to welcome me back. This view of God was not new, but by taking time to actually look, my heart was softened, and I was led to repentance.

And for someone who is struggling with understanding the character of God, this book could be a powerful tool to help them to really know who He is–instead of seeing him through the lens of how their father was, or the way they may have been taught He is. Jesus, in His prayer in John 17, said that knowing God is the same as having eternal life. Listen to how Ty Gibson explores this thought:

Understanding who God really is, seeing His true character distinct from all false pictures, is the psychological and emotional substance of which eternal life is composed. Knowing God heals the soul of all internal maladies and imparts a quality of life that is eternal. There is earth-transcending peace to be derived from knowing that the One who made us, and to whom we are ultimately accountable, is infinitely and intrinsically good. On the other hand, all false pictures of God are destructive to the soul, eating away the beauty and meaning of life.

So next time you want to take a fresh look at God, consider picking up a copy of Seeing With New Eyes, and look again for the first time.

One if the books that has made a big impact on me lately is The Gift, subtitled “God gave you more than you’ll ever know” by Kim Allan Johnson. I don’t think I can come up with a better way of summarizing the content of the book than to quote the back cover:

When was the last time you lay awake at night, too captivated by Christ’s love to sleep? When was the last time you wrestled with the astonishing risks involved in Jesus sacrifice? When was the last time your mind stretched to grasp the many layers of suffering He endured?

This book does just that. It starts with painting a picture of Jesus before His incarnation, then delves into the different aspects of His life that show what becoming a human actually cost Him. The author highlights key events in Christ’s life that trace the evidence of the gathering storm that broke with unbridled fury on the evening of His arrest in Gethsemane. Then instead of diving directly into a discussion of Christ’s physical sufferings, as so many writers and speakers do, he starts out with amplifying the internal pain that Jesus would have experienced every day: the pain of being misunderstood. He spends one chapter looking at The physical torture He endured, then in the next he tries to imagine what it must have been like for those that witnessed His sufferings and death. He spends a whole a whole chapter trying to grasp what kind of pain Jesus must have endured from the verbal abuse He suffered.

Up to this point, he has looked at the very human side of Jesus; He endured pain and misunderstanding much like any human would. But this book goes deeper, exploring what the depths of Christ’s internal sufferings.

If you are familiar with Ellen White, then you are probably familiar with statements like this one:

How few have any conception of the anguish that rent the heart of the Son of God during His thirty years of life upon the earth. The path from the manger to Calvary was shadowed by sorrow and grief. He was the man of sorrows, and endured such heartache as no human language can portray.

Human language may not be able to portray it, but Johnson comes pretty close as he looks at the various aspects if this world that caused Jesus pain–things like brutality in nature, human disease, the evils in human nature, and especially His pain over the lost of the world. Then he goes deeper into the sufferings that nearly crushed out His life in Gethsemane and broke His heart on the cross–being forsaken by God and feeling so helpless and alone, crushed by the weight of our sins. Finally, he sums up some of the lessons that Christ’s sufferings have to teach us.

This book is like none I have ever read on this topic. Some books use a narrative style that just talks about the subject, leaving the reader with the responsibility of trying to imagine everything. Other books use stories and word pictures the help the reader visualize the scene, kind of like watching a movie. This book has a good balance of both. Let me give you an example of each style. First, the narrative:

It was only because of His connection with God that Christ survived the relentless torrent of hate, criticism, and abuse that beat against Him from His earliest days. Intimate communion with God was as natural and necessary to Him as breathing. Ellen White reveals, “Jesus sought earnestly for strength from His Father. He regarded communication with God aside essential than His daily food.”

Here is a portion of one of the scenes he paints in graphic detail:

As Jesus hung on the cross, bleeding and gasping for air, the mob and the Jewish leaders had a field day mocking and ridiculing Him.

One of the many onlookers pointed at Christ and yelled, “What happened to all Your boasting, Mr. Carpenter? How can you destroy our great temple and build it again from up there? Can I get you a hammer so you can take out those nasty nails?” Hearty laughter ripples through the crowd.

Someone else cupped their hands over their mouth and shouted, “For a wretch like you to claim to be Israel’s holy Messiah makes me sick. Son of God? You’re the son of passion, the son of Mary’s lust!”

This mixture of narrative and story appeals to both the intellectual and emotional levels of our being. That mixture makes it a very powerful book. More powerful than any movie, because you can get a peek behind the scenes, as it were, to catch a glimpse of Jesus heart. But then it allows you to feel with your heart as well.

I haven’t even finished it yet, but I must say I highly recommend this book. It has given me a deeper appreciation for of Jesus love for me, and awakened in my heart a deeper love for Him. And that, I think, is the purpose of the book.

You can buy the book here:

I picked up this really great book at the Goodwill the other day for $5, and I’ve got to tell you about it. I think it may be the secret behind why I’ve struggled to lose weight in the past, in spite of a fairly good diet.

Eat More, Weigh Less by Dr. Dean Ornish is a simple diet plan that anyone could do. It’s more a change of lifestyle than your typical diet, though. His basic idea is that you cut your dietary fat down from 40% of calories from fat (the typical American diet) to 10% (much lower than the recommended 30%), and increasing your carbohydrates. He does this by cutting out meat (which is pretty much always more than 10%), nuts, and other fatty foods. The idea is that you can eat until you are satisfied (not stuffed), and will actually get fewer calories and thereby lose weight.

Dr. Ornish believes that this radical change in diet (removing meat and cooking without oil) is easier to make than simply cutting down on the amount of fat, as the FDA recommends, because the results are almost instantaneous. For instance, on a typical diet that provides 30% of the recommended calories from fat, you have to eat small portions and often feel hungry when the food is all gone. On his diet (which he calls the Life Choice diet), you are able to until you are satisfied, so you are less likely to reach for some not-so-healthy snack later. In fact, in a study done on some women, some of whom ate his diet and some of whom ate the typical 30%-from-fat, small-portions diet, they found that those who ate the low-fat diet ate about 15% fewer calories and lost twice as much as the other group.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I have heard the typical “calories in must be less than calories spent to lose weight,” but I could not imagine trying to count calories. I remember reading sample diet plans and thinking, “How could I survive on that little food?” Then there was my husband, who could eat as much as he wanted and still not gain—who exercises to gain weight! I realized that the missing ingredient in the whole counting-calorie thing was the metabolism. If you have a fast metabolism, you can (and should) eat more. If it’s slow, you can eat almost nothing and you might even gain weight.

Most diet books don’t address this issue. They just focus on calories in, calories out. But Eat More, weigh Less spends a great deal of time on this issue. In fact, in that same study I just mentioned, “the principle investigator, Dr. David Levitsky, [stated that] your metabolic rate is related to the amount of carbohydrates you consume. . . . When you increase consumption of carbohydrates, your metabolic rate may increase.” That makes a lot of sense.

Plus there’s always the issue of gaining weight back once the “diet” is over. That’s why this book is not a diet that you go on to lose weight, then go off of when you’ve achieved your goal. It’s a comprehensive lifestyle change that you will continue for the rest of your life.

Dr. Ornish suggests that it is easier to make such a drastic change in diet than to make a small change, because the results are so instantaneous. He actually developed this diet not as a weight-loss program but as a heart-disease reversal program. There are many benefits to this kind of a diet, and many of them can be felt within days or weeks. This “quick fix” kind of reaction, Dr. Ornish argues, is just the motivator people need to stick with the diet and make it part of their lifestyle.

Now, maybe you’re thinking, “I couldn’t eat a diet that low in fat. It couldn’t possibly taste good.” Well, I haven’t mentioned the best part of the book: it has over 250 recipes, all low in fat or even fat free, made by gourmet chefs. I tried a couple of them last week, and was very pleased. Even my husband liked them! They come up with creative ways to cut the fat without sacrificing flavor. For instance, instead of sautéing onions in oil (which helps seal in the flavor), they use a little vegetable stock. This gives more flavor without the fat. It’s likely on one would even realize that the dishes are fat free “diet food” unless someone mentioned it. They are colorful and delicious. I am looking forward to trying a number of them.

I will say there are things in the book I do not agree with. Things like grazing (eating a little all day long) and meditating (eastern style). But those things don’t detract from the overall message of the book.

There is a lot more in the book, but I’m not going to rewrite the it! You should go and find yourself a copy—even if you just borrow it from the library to read it. But let me tell you, those 250 recipes it contains are worth much more than whatever the price tag might be, so I highly recommend you buy it for yourself!

You can get a copy of the book here:

I first heard about this book at a church function where the author came to speak. I enjoyed her talks and radio show, and bought the book.

I will start off by saying that I do not endorse absolutely everything Diane Moore, the author, teaches. That said, I do believe that she has a lot right. She is a Christian, and this fact is obvious in her book, which is something I appreciate.

In spite of the cover, this book is not so much for parents with small children as for parents in general of all ages. It takes you through the stages of what motivates us as people, starting with fear of punishment and anticipation of reward, on to less self-centered focuses. Ultimately, the goal of a parent should be to help their child to reach a maturity where they do the right thing for the right reason, regardless of personal feelings or what everyone else thinks they should do.

One thing I really like about this book is that her focus is more on character and less on behavior. For instance, sure you can motivate a toddler to do something by promising a cookie for doing it. That might even be appropriate at times (if you eat your veggies, you can have a cookie!). But by the time they are teenagers, you shouldn’t still be operating at that level. Teens should have progressed in their character development to where they will eat their veggies (to continue with the previous line of reasoning) because they know that they are good for them, will give good health, and because they know it’s the proper thing to do. It’s about teaching kids to do the right thing for the right reason.

An example that I appreciated from the book was when the author asked her teenage daughter to do something and offered a reward for doing it, and the daughter said, “Mom, I’m way past stage 2! I’ll do it for nothing.” This is the kind of thing this book is promoting.

I wish I had time to give a better review, but it’s been a while since I read it (a few months), and I don’t have much time right now. Kids need to be got ready for bed and I need to make cornbread for my husband’s supper. In summary, I do recommend this book. It’s not going to tell you what to do when your toddler throws a tantrum (in fact, I do not agree with the author on this topic), but in looking at the overall picture of parenting, and helping parents be proactive in raising mature, godly young people, I think this book has a lot to offer.

You can get the book here: Parenting the Heart of Your Child: Teaching Your Kids to Make Good Decisions Even When No One Is Looking

When I became a mother, I realized that I had an awesome responsibility. I didn’t have any money to go out and buy lots of parenting books, and I was leery about reading just any book, so the library didn’t seem like a good option. I wasn’t too concerned about the first few months. I knew I’d figure those things out. But I did not want to have to deal with the “terrible two’s,” and I wanted parenting advice that came from a godly perspective and was Biblically sound.

I had the book Child Guidance, and I had read a good deal of it, but somehow I couldn’t get my mind around some of it. Things like this:

The mother’s work should commence with the infant. She should subdue the will and temper of the child and bring its disposition into subjection. Teach it to obey, and as the child grows older, relax not the hand.

Child Guidance, 82

Sure. I agree. But how? Without someone to show me how it works, I wasn’t sure how to do it. I love the principles in Child Guidance, but sometimes I am at a loss to know how to apply them.

Enter Raising Godly Tomatoes. I found this book when my daughter was somewhere between 6 and 12 months, and I devoured it. It was only available online at the time, but it has now been published in book form, and is available for purchase through their website or from Amazon.com.

Let me say that this book has tremendously influenced my parenting–at least, as long as I apply the principles! I like it because the author ignores all the phychobabble so common in our world today and takes a Biblical perspective into her parenting. After reading this book at least twice, when I go back and read Child Guidance, it suddenly makes sense. Now I know how to subdue my child’s will (see my post Major Outlasting Session–The Rest of the Story for a rather lengthy example).

There are several sections to the book. The first section talks about teaching obedience. A favorite saying of the author is, “Teach obedience, and you won’t have to teach anything else.” She deals with starting early and starting later, discerning the heart of the child (because words and actions can mean different things depending on where the heart is), “tomato staking”, and spanking. The second section deals with emotional issues, like crying, whining, and tantrums, giving suggestions on how to deal with them. The third section takes a look at character. Though hardly exhaustive, it is a good start for parents who would rather teach their children to have a godly character than to just be good on the outside. The last section has thoughts for parents themselves, and for dealing with older children.

The author, Elizabeth Krueger, has 10 children and one grandchild. None of them ever rebelled or did anything wild as teenagers (granted, some of them aren’t quite that old yet). To me, that says something about her parenting. She has her children’s hearts. That is worth more than anything eles! She is a conservative Christian; she home schooled her children. What more can I say?

I could probably say a lot more about this book, but I suggest you go look at it yourself. You can still read the whole thing free online–though having a hard copy available is nice. I lost my first copy, in Mexico, I think. I bought a second. It was worth it.