Month: November 2019

28
Nov
2019

Thanksgiving 2019

All is quiet this Thanksgiving morning. The fire is crackling in the fireplace. Upstairs a newlywed couple sleeps and two exhausted college students. My husband is still sleeping in our bedroom. I just received word yesterday that my sweet Future Leader Dog Millie has moved on to the final stage of training at Leader Dogs for the Blind, and if she passes this one she will be matched with a blind person. My heart is full of Thanksgiving.

The truth is, though, I am not always thankful. Do you ever catch yourself grumbling and complaining about anything and everything? I have been convicted this last week about how much I complain. The opposite of complaining and being ungrateful is contentment and thankfulness. Everything in life does not have to be perfect in order to be thankful. Actually, our life should be more about our attitude toward life than what actually happens.

As I have been reflecting on this concept and my ungrateful heart attitude, I have been trying to notice the things that come out of my mouth more. I have been thanking God for the things that previously I was grumbling about.

Honestly, I have nothing to ungrateful for. I have a house full of my favorite people. Good news about my favorite dog. A job that offers a lot of flexibility. A wonderful husband who takes such good care of me. A reliable car. Today, we have internet that works again. Most importantly, I have a God who loves me and sent His only Son to redeem me, pay for my sins by dying on the cross for me, and He still loves me with my ungrateful heart.

As I was taking care of one of my patients yesterday with these thoughts present on my heart and mind, I tried to help her to see the other side of her coin. Yes, she had some things to be ungrateful for, but I tried to help her see that she had something to be thankful for. As we worked together and she would start to complain, I would redirect her thoughts to something to be thankful for. By the time I left her, she had a smile for me that was genuine and sincere. Life is funny that way isn’t it?

Our attitudes can be contagious.

We all have something we can grumble and complain about. When we do it puts us in a category of very ugly people according to Scripture. “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, UNGRATEFUL, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying it power. Avoid such people.”  (II Tim. 3:2-5).

God told us through the pen of Timothy to avoid such people.

It’s easy on Thanksgiving to think of all the things we are thankful for, but Thanksgiving should be something we should do every day. Every day, there are many things to be thankful for.

I am thankful that all of our children wanted to come home and spend Thanksgiving with their parents. What a blessing that is to my heart. Most of all, I am thankful for a God who loves me all the time every day. Even on the days when I am ungrateful.

Happy Thanksgiving! From my precious family to yours!

Posted by ddykema5@gmail.com in The Seasons of Motherhood, 4 comments
20
Nov
2019

The Truth about Our Identity

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion these days on an individual’s identity. According to Merriam Webster, identity is “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual.” We could call this a vague and even secular definition to our identity.

As a Christian, our identity must be viewed differently. According to Sam Allberry, “As a Christian, one of the key things for me is realizing that identity as Christians is not something that we discover in ourselves, nor is it something we create. It’s something we receive and are given by the only person who can know our actual identity, which is the God who made us. So my identity as a Christian comes from the fact that I’ve been created by God and redeemed by him through the saving work of Jesus.”

If only we could get this message out to the world and they would understand it and apply it to themselves. Too often people are searching for who they are. They are looking inside themselves to figure out who they are. This thinking is skewed by our sinful nature for who we are is not determined by what is inside of us, but by what God says about who we are.

It is so easy to be swayed by our feelings. They can be rascally creatures. They change and sometimes are not based on reason, but rather on misconstrued “facts.” The Bible speaks to this in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?” Our hearts can so easily deceive us, and with deception comes an instability. The antonym or opposite of deceit is truth or honesty.

If our hearts are full of untruth or deceit, than we must have something that we can turn to that is full of truth. That is God and His Word. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb. 13:8). In other words, Jesus never changes. While Jesus was on the earth, He said “sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17). As Christians, we are set apart by truth, and the best place actually the only place to find truth is in the Bible.

When an individual looks to themselves to find truth, they will get deceit. When an individual looks to God’s Word for truth, they will get truth.

Our world seems to be spiraling out of control in regards to our identity as humans and where this identity comes from. This stems from a lack of knowledge and confusion on where their identity comes from. It also comes from a disregard for God and His Word.

“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” (I Cor. 14:33). Since God does not author confusion, we know that this comes from the enemy. When a person is confused about who they are, it is the work of the enemy, Satan, not the work of God.

As parents, it is extremely important to give our children and any other children we may be working with a firm foundation of who they are according to God and His Word. We will explore these topics in future blogs. It is important to establish a basis of truth with our children. The enemy will attack them. He will seek to destroy them in whatever way possible. It always starts very small and in a very insignificant way, so as parents we must be on guard to protect our children and their hearts.

Posted by ddykema5@gmail.com in The Seasons of Motherhood, 0 comments
13
Nov
2019

Image Bearers

As a parent, it seems that there were and still are times that the weight of being a parent and all of its responsibilities are very heavy. At times, the breadth of all our daughters needed to learn seemed almost overwhelming and there did not seem to be enough time with them under our roof for me to teach them all they needed to learn. I don’t know if there is any parent that ever feels like they taught their children everything they could have. There are so many ways that we can teach them, but it is most usually through our words and our actions that we teach them the most.

More is caught than taught

This phrase has been around for a long time, and is so true when we watch other people’s children. I have seen insecure moms produce insecure children. When we listen to how the mom talks, and then we listen to how the children talk-it sounds the same.  The mom who is always putting herself down produces a child that is always putting herself down. The same could be said for the dad who always talks about cars and sports. What is talked about by the parents is often what the children spend a lot of their time talking about. What the parents value, the children also value.

It is important as a parent to help our children have a proper view of themselves. Who they are? Where do they get their identity? How should this identity affect who they are and how should this affect their lives?

The Image of God

It is important to start out by understanding and teaching our children that we are all made in the image of God.

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him,                            male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27).

In order to teach them about being made in the image of God, we must first teach them about who God is. We see God in Genesis 1 as creative. God created the world out of nothing. Every molecule that ever was and is was created by God. The intricacies of the planets, the stars, and the sun all shout the creativity of God. The cycle of weather, the change of seasons, and gravity all point to the creativity and the matchless intellect of our God. The workings of human bodies have not yet been fully grasped by our human intellect and yet God made all of this out of nothing. There was nothing to model His creation after, He created it out of nothing. (ex nihilo).

But God did have a model for mankind, and that was Himself. God made mankind in “His image.” Since God is creative, we as human beings are also creative. A dog cannot paint a picture as magnificently as Leonardo da Vinci. Nor can a monkey understand how electricity works and make the light bulb like Thomas Edison. Mankind is creative and intellectual. We can learn. We can love. We can reason.

We get these magnificent qualities because we are made in the image of God.

Who are we?

As parents it is important that we appreciate who we are: made in God’s image. We are made with creativity, language, intellect, reason, ability to love, and the ability to learn. As parents, we must teach our children the value of being made in God’s image. Not only must we appreciate this value, we must understand that with this value of being God’s image bearers, we have an unmistakable identity.

Our Identity

Oftentimes on Facebook, my oldest daughter gets mistakenly tagged as me. When she has done a fun activity with her friends and they post pictures, Facebook will inadvertently tag me in the photo rather than her. There must be enough similarities in our face structure for Facebook to think that I am her. She has also been asked, “Are you Danna’s daughter?” by someone she does not know. We look that much alike.

So it is with us as humans. We are made in the image of God. No matter how many people want to claim to be atheist or believe that God has nothing to do with their lives, they cannot get away from the fact that they are made in the image of God and His image is stamped all over them.

Do we embrace this identity of being image bearers of our God? Do we take pride in being image bearers? Do our children value this fact and understand the impact it needs to make on their lives? Do we as parents value this fact and understand the impact it needs to make on our lives?

Posted by ddykema5@gmail.com in The Seasons of Motherhood, 2 comments