Ironman champ: Train your brain, then your body – CNN.com.

I love training motifs. This article caught my attention and I see strong parallels with Hebrews 12. I’ve summarized the article and compared Chrissie Wellington’s insights with Scripture.

Visualization: The race set before you (v.1). Imagine each step of the way.

Mental Images: Look to Jesus (v.2), the throne of God (v.2), consider him who endured (v.3). Get the summit/the goal in your mind’s eye.

Manageable Segments: Lay aside every weight (v.1). Pick ‘em off one at a time.

Learning to Hurt: Run with endurance (v.1), resist to the point of shedding blood (v.4). The Christian race is all about perseverance.

Support and Inspirational People: Surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (v.1). Be inspired by the examples of those who have gone before.

Big Cause: The joy set before you (v.2). You can endure anything when you embrace the mission of the Gospel.

The Gospel Project is a new kids church curriculum I’m looking into. Looks sound as well as creative in approach.

Watch this little video from John Piper and help your children get caught up in the wonder of God.

I LOVE reading stories to my children. The most moving ones for me are Bible stories. There are times when I step into the story so strongly that waves of emotion wash over me. Sometimes tears even begin to well up as I consider the greatness of God’s love. I read the story of Elijah from Manga Messengers (Tyndale) the other night and I felt fear, anger, Elijah’s mocking ridicule and such a sense of awe that can’t really be explained. Your children will see that and feel it too. (This is a powerful principle for telling stories in children’s ministry settings as well).

A solid link from my friend Amy Dolan for parents and children’s ministry volunteers who want to help their children with bullies. Also from Amy is a an interesting perspective on bystanders in the bullying scene.

A rhythm is a pattern, best seen in music. It is a repeated pattern of movement or sound. It’s systematic, not haphazard. It is designed, developed and purposeful. The author puts it together and arranges it artistically. A good rhythm is filled with beauty, power, strength and inspiration. You see it in poetry that challenges your thinking and moves your emotions. You find it in wonderful colour combinations, lines and shapes to form stunning artwork.

You also find it in life.

It’s there when you wake up and when you go to sleep. You know it in the daily grind of work. You see relationships quickly establish healthy or not so healthy patterns. Money comes in, money goes out. Emotions rise and fall or sadly never change at all. And so your life is what it is. But does life merely happen to us or do we have a part in writing the song and dance?

There are many rhythms in life, but I see one rhythm that we must groove to. It is more than paying bills or chewing gum. It is more than changing a diaper; this changes everything! The rhythm, once understood, can be leveraged into everything you face in life. It will be what you dream about. You will revisit it moment by moment because you can’t get enough of it. You will tirelessly pursue it and find that it has been pursuing you. You won’t want anything else because this rhythm has everything you could possibly hope for.

The rhythm you want is the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is your peace with God, your hope in God and your love for God. May it continuously cycle throughout your life, day and night. There are five main parts to this delightful cycle.

1. Right Relationship
2. Relationship Broken
3. Repercussions
4. Remorse
5. Restoration

In the beginning God created everything right. All was good. Relationships were perfect. Sin broke what was good, separated us from God and left us for dead. The ground was cursed and our pain multiplied. We desired pleasure, but found it not in God, but in sin. However, some of us choose remorse. That feeling of deep sorrow over wrongdoing. It leads us to the deep desire for the right relationship with God that was lost. We find it at the cross, the place where we remember the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus so that all who desire it may come to God and be restored.

This must be our daily posture. It affects our marriages, our families, our work, our friendships. As we turn from sin to God we find our peace and our satisfaction. Have you been arguing senselessly with your spouse? Repent and seek restoration. Are your children defiant? Show them how relationships break down and how repentance can mend them. Are you running ragged, bouncing from thing to thing? Rest. Find your solace in Christ. Are you emotionally stale, lacking joy or refusing to show heart-felt compassion? Live again as you remember that God wants you and those around you to be filled with unexplainable passion. We must continue through this cycle until one day we will know full restoration and lavishly enjoy a right relationship with our Creator.

May your life dance again or for the first time. May you be filled with the melody of hope. May you experience the orchestral power of God that moves you. May your families know outstanding laughter. Do whatever it takes to get this rhythm into your life!

Wikipedia Image

How a child develops is a complex wonder. There are so many variables like family history, environment, peers, location and more that play a special role in the formation of a child. Here are three factors you can zone in on and leverage as you train up children to be fantastic citizens and faithful followers of Jesus.

Motor Development
I was intrigued recently with the motor development section of Laura Berk’s book entitled, Development Across the Lifespan, as I am running a games event at my church over March break. It’s been a memorable event that uses a lot of gross-motor skills along with some fine-motor. A few quotes caught my attention:

“[Games with rules]…contribute greatly to emotional and social development.” (296)
“[Child invented games]…permit children to try out different styles of cooperating, competing, winning and losing with little personal risk.” (296)
“…these experiences help children construct more mature concepts of fairness and justice.” (296)

There seems to be a bit of a debate over competition and cooperation in games. I’ve particularly noticed two different approaches from the camps of Group Publishing (Thom and Joani Schultz) and Roger Fields (of Kidz Blitz). On one side, there seem to be the people that avoid competition saying it can hurt self-esteem or cause hurt feelings or create the undesirable feel of winners and losers. On the other side, I find people who would say competition is helpful for building up confidence and that positive attitudes and character development can be learned whether a winner or a loser. I would tend to lean towards a good mix of both. I think a child should not be crushed emotionally because they lost a game, but also that they ought to be taught how to handle difficulties with a right attitude. I also find the connection to justice very intriguing as it seems the evangelical world is talking a lot about social justice these days. I’m feeling some teaching points coming on for the games event! And not only that, but giving kids opportunities to use their bodies promotes healthy living.

Emotional/Social Development
I think too often the church disconnects emotional/social issues from the teaching of theology. The church can engage families with emotional and social instruction that is theologically driven. Kids need to know how to relate to God and others and how to control their feelings. “[Children] increasingly prefer verbal strategies…to crying, sulking or aggression.” (Berk, 336) The church should be able to equip families with Biblical and self-regulating approaches to dealing with nitty gritty and day-to-day stuff. How many people hear things like rejoice, but have no idea what that looks like or what about being slow to anger? And then there’s friendship pieces (340-342). Many people don’t know how to handle difficult relationships or how to build quality friendships. So understanding peer acceptance and children who are neglected or rejected by others is not something we should gloss over in our discussions with families. I see the church taking on a larger role including “coaching, modeling, and reinforcing positive social skills…” (342). But more than offering mere social skills–offering transformational relationships!

Faith Stages
I’m not sure what I think of putting stages into faith as outlined in another book I’ve been reading called, Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey, by Catherine Stonehouse. It can be helpful, but I want to avoid putting structure on Holy Spirit work (see John 3 and particularly v.8). I do agree that we need to be sensitive to what children can understand at their various stages of development. Genuine faith may not even be really present in the child who talks about God and knows Bible stories. So terms are important too. If we’re talking about faith in a way that describes a person’s understanding about God then let’s be clear that it’s not saving faith or use a different word. Saving faith includes a change of heart leading to righteousness. This, I think, is difficult to gauge in young children, but becomes increasingly evident as they age.

Understanding development will help in our instruction of faith. As children are concrete thinkers, talking about “Jesus in your heart” may be understood by the child the wrong way. Consider the example of the child who claimed Jesus had moved down to his foot (Stonehouse, 154).  So if a child says, “I have Jesus in my heart,” I don’t necessarily think that’s a cause for great celebration. It could be and it is likely a significant step forward, but many factors should be considered such as age and further explanations from the child as to what they mean, along with demonstrations in the future that they want what God wants and live the way he wants.

How can you use these three factors to help you in the development of the children you serve?

I have a cousin. Her name is Tara. She is 18. She has Cystic Fibrosis. Her lungs have failed her. She is right now awaiting a double-lung transplant. These kinds of things bring us back to what really matters. Family, reconciliation, friends, faith, wisdom, hope. Praying for you, Tara, and thanking God for you.

The following is from Development Through the Lifespan, by Laura E. Berk.

1. Respond to coos and babbles with speech sounds and words.
2. Establish joint attention and comment on what child sees.
3. Play social games, such as pat-a-cake and peekaboo.
4. Engage toddlers in joint make-believe play.
5. Engage toddlers in frequent conversations.
6. Read to toddlers often, engaging them in dialogue about picture books.

Put these into practice and your child will develop their language skills well. They will experiment “with sounds that can later be blended into first words.” They will learn turn-taking for conversation. Their vocabulary will develop faster. They will grow in their conversation ability, develop language earlier and likely enable greater academic success later. Reading “provides exposure to many aspects of language, including vocabulary, grammar, communication skills, and information about written symbols and story structure.”

Based on the movie Courageous, comes a website designed to equip dads and families with tools for building a courageous home. Check out some great ideas!