Building a strong foundation for motherhood

Do you know why you are a mother? Do you understand the foundation for your parenting?

As mothers we are surrounded by opinions, methods, and suggestions for how we should parent our children in different areas. Whether it’s obedience, respect, emotion, fear, or any number of behavior problems like biting and fighting, we have countless concepts thrown at us ~ ways to fix our child in a week, tricks to use, ways to speak or not speak to them. 

We need to know what God says. But do we believe He actually offers guidance for when our child hits his friends in the nursery or struggles with feeling lonely in high school? Does He give us just a broad concept of His love and expect us to figure things out or could there be more to His leading?

We're going to be breaking down some common ideas or common things that we wrestle with, as moms. It may be behaviors, it may be seasons of life, it may be cultural pressures, like what culture tells us we should be doing with our child. We'll look at them with the lens of Jesus, the lens of the gospel, and then truthfully, we're going to build them back up in a way that will allow us to know why we choose to do something with our children. We will also be able to communicate these ideas to our kids so that we continually point our child to God’s great love for them. 

We will begin to be a generation of Warrior Mothers, who confidently stand up in the power of Jesus and anchor our motherhood in His Word. 

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” Ephesians 6:13

We stand confidently in what God's Word says, knowing that His word is sufficient for every situation that we experience, whether it's raising our kids, walking in our marriages, walking in our jobs or ministries, or whether it's simply about walking with a mind that is whole and healthy. Because we know what Scripture says, and we know what Jesus says about us. We are living in days, where this is becoming harder and harder to discern what the truth is. And we're getting more and more fatigued, trying to figure it out, I think, aren't we?

The gospel must become the foundation upon which we build every aspect of our motherhood. 

Many years ago we had a house with a foundation unattached to the pillars under the house. Some kind of building error that the inspections never caught, yet was critically important to our home's safety. So therefore, very quickly after the house was built, we started to see this weird sloping in our floors. After many specialists and builders, we had to go under the house and rebuild the entire foundation. Why did we have to do that? Well, the floor was getting warped. We were also starting to see some cracks on one wall. Up on the second floor, my son threw a baseball and broke a window. But in trying to replace the window, because the house was changing, because the foundation wasn't firm and strong, that window was almost impossible to replace, until we could get that foundation right. What alerted us to the problem and motivated us to fix the foundation was that broken window. It was the obvious place that needed repair. 

But the easy replacement of one window couldn’t happen until we fixed the underlying issue of a foundation not set on a firm setting. Until the home was aligned properly, and it was level, and everything was put on strong grounding, it didn't matter what we did to that window. 

In our lives with all that is going on around us, with what our children are hearing and how we are needing to be discerning, we need to have the good, solid foundation of Jesus Christ. 

A misaligned window may be a child believing something we know doesn’t line up with God’s Word, yet they believe it and wholeheartedly espouse it. A crack may begin to run through relationships because we've allowed something to come into our family that erodes relationships. 

“Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.” ~Song of Solomon 2:15

Jesus gives a similar warning in Matthew 7: 24-27. He paints the word picture of the man building his house upon the sand. And the house was fine until a storm came. When the wind blew, and the rains came down, that house fell, because its foundation was on shifting sand. But for the one who builds his house on the rock, the winds still come. The storms still pound. But that house stands firm, because it is on the foundation that cannot erode. 

We're going to spend time breaking down the many beliefs and opinions in motherhood, pounding with massive sledgehammers on faulty foundations. And we're going to start building it back anchored on God’s Word. So that when we have to hang new windows, when we have to repair the walls of our home and family, or we have to make floorboards straight again, we can because we're built solidly on what God says. 

All of us will walk through storms. Our family has walked through so many seasons of storms, where I wasn't sure if we were going to make it. Hurricane force winds. Massive torrential thunder, booming lightning, scary, scary storms. But I can tell you this. God as my foundation has never shifted and has never failed. 

We have to start basic, looking at the simple truths of the gospel, because I believe most of us walk around with what Paul Tripp calls gospel amnesia. We hear the gospel. We remember the gospel and then we forget it. 

Why do we want to be a Warrior Mother with a foundation firm and strongly anchored in the Gospel? What is a gospel foundation?

Resetting your mind in motherhood is a 6 week course written just for this question. Every woman needs to take this course. Personally, I wrote the course. And I have now taken the course four times, because I suffer from gospel amnesia. 

I forget these key truths. 

And I have to go back through these truths. Next week we will start with our identity as His workmanship in our motherhood. On this blog series, you will get a mini-lesson, but the wealth of teaching on this truth can be found inside of Resetting Your Mind in Motherhood ~ and we each need to be learning these truths.

Let’s look at our lives with God's perspective, not our perspective. Let’s begin to understand we are not under condemnation. The enemy wants to heap hopelessness and shame on our hearts. Let’s understand God’s view instead. We have to walk in light of what God says about us. 

Below, you will see a quick link where you learn more and purchase this course. I promise you, that if you will stand in the truth of that course, your motherhood will be full of purpose and joy. 

Resetting Your Mind In Motherhood: Learning God's Perspective

These words will flow out of you to your children, and you will find yourself talking to a child and just loving them well with the grace of God. Why? Because you have taken the time to write it on your own heart first. 

Next, you are His workmanship, warrior mama, I promise...