A Mom After God's Own Heart

Last summer I was part of a mom's Bible study at our church. This is the book we studied.

I. LOVED. it!

It was the first parenting/mom book that I had read. (besides Power of a Praying Parent --also excellent and I highly recommend it!) Now this summer I'm re-reading it. After I got a few chapters in I decided I should be taking notes. serious notes!

(Our home fellowship group this summer is doing another parenting study!!! I am pumped!)
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A Mom After God's Own Heart
Focusing on the Heart

The book starts with this line: "No matter what you do each day... or in life... doing things God's way is a matter of the heart." No one will argue with how crucially important the heart is.

Author Elizabeth George, gives us moms these two challenges:
1.) to raise a child after God's own heart sewing the seeds of God's Word and
2.) devote ourselves to train with persistence and deal with disciplining the sin nature that is in every child.

When you have a chance these children of the Bible are excellent examples of how important a mother's training is... and is to start training young!

Samuel - at the age of THREE he was "ministering to the LORD before Eli the priest" (1 Sam 2:11) Check out his mom, Hannah's, prayer in Samuel 2:1-10!! It. is. moving!

David - it's believed he was an early teen when he was anointed to be king over Judah by Samuel! Looking back at his family tree is filled with big faith people!

Some of my favorite lines from this introduction chapter:

"It's all about fulfilling God's instruction to us. He wants us to focus on giving our heart, soul, mind, strength, and time to influencing and shaping the hearts of our children toward God and his purposes."

"It's impossible to overestimate the great things which become possible when a young life is surrendered to Almighty God." (pg. 16)

At the end of each chapter we get to read a little from Elizabeth's husband, Jim. These pages are not to be skipped! Great insight to be found here!

The very last part of each chapter is her list of "Little Choices That Reap Big Blessings." One that struck me from this chapter was: Develop a template for your week. About the time I first read this I had just begun reading up on the FlyLady. She may have a funny name but there is nothing funny about her method. Since I was a new mom, I was trying to find the best way to balance all my roles in the house. The FlyLady helped with getting the household chores done in a timely fashion but Elizabeth talked about really putting first things first in the schedule. Being sure I had set aside a time to read the Bible to Mr. A moved right up there to the top of the important list!