Bless Your Heart and Home

by his grace, through his word, for our joy, to his glory.

How to Read the Old Testament to Treasure Christ (with printable worksheet)

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Cup of hot coffee in hand, I sat in my usual spot at the kitchen counter, positioned to watch the sun rise through an East-facing window. I have been following this Bible reading plan this year, and on this particular morning I opened my Bible to 2 Chronicles.

As often happens, I caught myself reading quickly to “knock out” my Old Testament reading for the day. Although I know that every page of the Old Testament points to Christ, it’s tempting for me to gloss over the words in 2 Chronicles as history that I’ve read before, not expecting to see my Savior and understand the Gospel on these pages….

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5 Hymns to Teach Young Children

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Our children will face hardship. Every mom’s heart hurts to consider her child’s encountering difficulties, but because we know that challenges will arise for our children, we want to prepare them to find hope and joy in the trials and crises of life. We also want to share truth and doctrine with them in such a way that they can build their house upon the Solid Rock, Christ Jesus.

Music is an especially ideal method for teaching biblical truths to children. My kids are 2 and 5, and we have so much fun learning to sing hymns together. Our kids need solid truths running through their hearts and minds when they face heartbreak, loss, pain, and challenges, and I trust that the words to some of the hymns we are teaching them will ring in their hearts long after this season where I sit on the couch beside them to teach and instruct them.
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Three Truths for When We Don’t Feel God’s Faithfulness

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Is God really faithful? Is He going to take care of us? Does He love us? What do I do when my feelings tell me that God is not intimately involved in my life today? Or when the early-morning-crazies make me feel like I don’t want to face another day? Or when well-deserved mommy-guilt makes me feel like I’d better get my act together if I want God to keep up His end of the bargain? What do I do when my feelings question God’s faithfulness and dismantle my doctrine? I preach God’s word to my feelings.

The fight for “feeling” is a fight for faith. Our feelings betray us, and our hormones deceive us, and our emotions doubt and drift from truth, so we recount to our feelings the promises of God and choose to believe His word rather than trusting our hearts’ doubts and fears.

God IS faithful, and here are three truths to hold on to when you wake up tomorrow and need to be reminded that He really is faithful….

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The Daily Inconvenient Path to Joy

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My five-year-old and I recently started some seeds indoors that we will transplant later this season into our garden. Every morning, he wakes up and goes to check on his seeds to see how they are doing.

After we first put them under the soil, my son told me he didn’t know where his little seeds had gone. He had buried them away underground the week before, and now he wasn’t quite sure what had become of them. Now we can see the little shoots, and we anticipate a bountiful harvest in the coming months. But for a while, they were nowhere to be seen.

God designed the seed’s cycle of death and life in such a way that he could demonstrate the gospel to my young son. The plant cannot live and bear fruit unless the seed is first buried away to die. Then, once the seed relinquishes its life, a plant can emerge with the promise of yielding fruit….

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