Are you a blogging parent with small children?  I love sharing stories on my blog about what God is doing in my life, but I also love to share my family life with you.  I often find it difficult to find time to blog while juggling all of our family activities, church events, and work.  My kids are awesome and I make it a point to spend time with them even when I have other things that need to or want to do.  You will often find that my blog posts will publish late in the evening  or I will even schedule them sometimes to post earlier in the morning.  Either way, I don’t find nearly as much time as I would like to devote to this blog.

So, I thought that I would ask a question to the community to see who is awake out there.  I am curious to learn about techniques that other blogging parents use to make time for family and for blogging.  I have a few that I would like to share, but I want to compile a big list of ideas from the community and I will put them all into one blog post.  For those of you who are not bloggers, feel free to offer your opinions and ideas for the rest of us.

I am going to go play with my kids now, but I won’t be far from Twitter.

Joe Boyd taught this weekend on the Creed series.  He noted that throughout the Creed we repeat “We Believe” over and over.  He pointed out that when we look at different translations of scripture the word ‘believe’ is often interchanged with the word ‘trust.’  He used the example of John 14:1 comparing the ESV to the NIV.  When translating from Greek we have the words ‘believe’ and ‘trust’ that both fit the meaning of the translation.  For us though, those two words can mean very different things.

Joe used a really good example to demonstrate the difference and I cannot think of any of my own right now, so I am going to use his.  He told us about a friend of his who had been taking flying lessons and spent months of training and getting flight time learning to become a pilot.  After a lot of training, studying, and practice, he finally obtained his pilots license.  His buddy then offered to rent a plane and take him flying.  Joe believed that his friend was highly capable of flying the plane but he told him no because he didn’t trust him yet.  He was not ready to put his life on the line even though he believed it.

So I have been thinking since last night about what I believe and what parts of what I believe do I actually trust.  Am I willing to put my life on the line trusting in Jesus?  I live in a very comfortable environment for believers compared to the rest of the world.  I have the freedom to worship wherever and whenever I want to.  I don’t have to hide from the government or meet secretly knowing that I could be imprisoned or killed for following Jesus.  I am sitting in Panera right now with my Bible open writing about following Jesus and nobody here is going to bother me about it.  Sure there are times and places where I will encounter some challenges, but I have the easy road to worship as far as the world is concerned.

I find it easy to believe, but my trust is not always challenged.  Where am I taking risks for my faith?  Am I just a believer or am I trusting God with everything?

This is my main man Ephriam.  My first born and one of the joys of my life.  He is one of the most loving kids I have ever met.  I am biased of course.  There isn’t an ounce of shyness in him and he will become you buddy in a heartbeat.  What you won’t pick up from the picture is that he has a speech delay.  He is 4 years old and speaks at the level of a 2 year old.  We have him in private therapy and preschool to help him catch up with his speech and he is gaining a lot of ground, but there are days when I just wish that he could talk to me.

Today I was praying for him as I often do on my way to work when the Holy Spirit interrupted me.  I was thinking about how I want to be able to communicate with Ephriam more than anything in the world.  He is my son and I want him to be able to share his dreams, joys, fears, and pains with me.  I want him to understand me so that I can help to guide him as he grows up.  Then suddenly I realized that God wants the same thing from me.

God wants me to have a complete and open relationship with him.  This is not exactly a new idea to me, but I never really thought about it from God’s side of the relationship.  I can get so frustrated when Ephriam cannot tell me what his problem is.  How frustrated does God get when I shut him out of my life?  He wants to hear from me and I don’t always do a great job of that.

I take comfort in the fact that God knows my pain even when I don’t share it with him.  I also know Ephriam’s pain even when he doesn’t know how to tell me about it.  He is my son and I probably know him better than he knows himself.  Just as I am not going to leave Ephriam to do life on his own, I know that God will never leave my side.

The parallels between my relationship with God and my relationship with my kids is really starting to become apparent to me.  It is amazing how there is always something to learn from following Jesus no matter how long you have been at it.

What is God teaching you right now?  Are you allowing yourself to be discipled?

This week we started a new series at church called Creed.  We are studying the Nicene Creed to see exactly what it is that we believe.  I grew up reciting this every week in Catholic church, so I know the words pretty well.  But I think that I am going to learn a lot by picking it apart and examining it piece by piece.  It will also be good to find scripture references for its origins.

WE BELIEVE in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Easter has always been a low key holiday for me.  I used to have a hard time celebrating because I would focus too much the death of Jesus and not so much on the resurrection.  Good Friday is always tough for me because I wish that Jesus didn’t have to die for me.  I know that is what I need, but He gave up everything for me and I will never be able to return the favor.  It is the hard part that makes the good part possible.  Today we celebrate because our Lord has overcome death for all of us.  Jesus wins in the end in come from behind OT fashion.  Please remember to celebrate with Jesus today because He is ALIVE.  He is right there with you and you may not even know it.  Can you see him?

Faith and I have been reading Ephesians and I was caught up in this section in chapter 4 today.  In Eph. 4: 3-16 Paul writes about unity.  When I think about unity, I think about a group of people with a common interest that get together and are able to persue something greater than the individual.  I think about team sports where a well coached group of athletes can beat a team that is divided by all stars who think that they are the best.  As an individual you might be really good at something and you can do great things.  But when you join your efforts with others and start running in the same direction, greater things can be accomplished.

I think about the church a lot.  I am talking about the big church.  I don’t care what type of church you go to.  It makes no difference to me whether you are baptist, catholic, methodist, presbyterian, non-denom, inter-denom …… or whatever.  Some people see denominations as divisions.  I see it as diversity.  On a much bigger scale than we can imagine, we are all united under the same banner, Jesus Christ.  We are all reflecting on our Lord’s death today being Good Friday.  We all will celebrate His victory over death in 3 days on Easter.  We all may do things a little bit differently, but there will always be the one common denominator.

We are all different in denomination and on a small scale we are different as individuals.  My church has a lot of ministries and opportunities to help out and serve.  Every week, my kids get to go play in Discoveryland while Faith and I sit and enjoy the church service.  Faith serves in Discoveryland too watching other kids while their parents go to service.  I love my kids and I love playing with them, but serving in Discoveryland would not be my cup of tea.  I have done the church nursery gig before, and I just do not like it.  But I sure am glad that there are people at my church who do because I get to go to service without the distraction of my kids.  I enjoy serving in the student ministries.  I lead a small group of high school guys.  I love hanging out with them and encouraging them as we study and serve in our own little community.  This is where I choose to serve because I enjoy it.  But not everyone wants to hang out with teenagers.  I know a lot of people who feel leading a highschool small group would be like pure torture.  And they are very glad that I love serving in that area because they don’t want to do it.

So we all have different skills, gifts, and parts to play in the church.  It is not always easy to identify what our part is.  I know that I will probably not be a high school small group leader forever.  I have great passion for small groups of all ages and particularly I am a little excited about where Internet technology is taking the church.  I geek out about online collaboration, communication, organization, social networking…….the list goes on and on.  I am able to connect right now with people from other churches who I would never have met if it were not for blogging and Twitter.  I am investing in other peoples lives who I have never met in person or even talked to on the phone.  I pray for people who don’t even know that I am praying for them.  There is a giant world of unity of the church online and the potential to me seems infinite.

I want to end this with Eph. 4:11-13.  These are the verses that really caught my brain today leading to a deeper reflection on the whole passage.

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

I am not completely sure what I am going to be when I grow up, but I will continue to do my best to participate in this unity encouraging others to do the same until we attain ‘the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.’  This weekend we are united no matter how different we are.  It is our differences that make us one.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Dictionary.com defines workmanship as the art or skill of a workman or workwoman.  The quality or mode of execution, as of a thing made.  The product or result of labor and skill; work executed.

My kids like to play with play dough and they try to create things or just smash it around on the table.  They are not very intentional yet about what they create.  They are pretty good at snakes because it is easy to rollout but it’s not what I would call workmanship.  It is a pretty big mess that takes a good imagination to see what they are creating.  They have many years yet to perfect their play dough skills.

God did not halfhazardly create us because he was bored.  We were crafted with great skill for a great purpose.  God has made preparations and now it is up to us to live out what He created.