girltalk Blog
2010 at 3:54 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Marriage
When fear for our children grips us, we often look for something “new” to help us deal with it. But instead, we must rely on the true and the tried strategies from God’s Word. They are:
Prayer: “...do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:6)
AND
Promises: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17)
Saints throughout the centuries have leaned on God’s promises and called out to Him in prayer. And each and every time, they have found Him to be faithful. “I sought the Lord,” David tells us, “and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4).
So let’s follow the example of David and that “great cloud of witnesses.” Let’s seek God through constant prayer, and in the space of His promises, let’s park our souls.
2010 at 10:36 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear
Continuing the theme of fighting mothering fears with the promises of God, I want to encourage you to listen to this sermon by Jerry Bridges. He was at our church on Sunday—what a blessing!—and he spoke on “Trusting God.” Here’s one quote that stood out to me:
“Here’s a principle to keep in mind: The promises of god are as real as the circumstances you are in. Your circumstances say “God has forgotten you.” Your circumstances say, “I look for God, and just when I need God to come through for me, God doesn’t seem to be any place.” That’s what your circumstances say. The promise of God says, “I will not leave you. I will never forsake you.” And that promise is just as real as the circumstances you are in. And so by faith, we look beyond our circumstances and we look to the promises of God.”
Whether you are tempted to fear over an errant teenager or a disobedient toddler, may God give you faith to look beyond your circumstances and remember the VERY REAL promise that God is with you and will never leave you.
2010 at 4:37 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
One (among many!) of the encouraging messages from this past week’s Pastors Conference was given by pastor Rick Gamache from 1 Peter 5:6-11, entitled “When A Pastor Suffers.” It was addressed to pastors, but I thought you all would appreciate it too, because the topic was anxiety and faith—just what we’ve been talking about here on girltalk. When I learned that Rick had also preached this sermon to his church, and that the audio was available at their website, I just had to pass it along. Given my temptations to worry and anxiety, I’ve listened to a lot of sermons and read a lot of books over the years. This is one of the best! I hope you’ll take time to listen to “Be Humble Be Alert” this week.
2010 at 12:08 am | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
Recently Justin Taylor posted the following from John Piper. It is worth re-posting here in its entirety:
* When I am anxious about some risky new venture or meeting, I battle unbelief with the promise: “Fear not for I am with you, be not dismayed for I am your God; I will help you, I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
* When I am anxious about my ministry being useless and empty, I fight unbelief with the promise, “So shall my word that goes forth from my mouth; it will not come back to me empty but accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).
* When I am anxious about being too weak to do my work, I battle unbelief with the promise of Christ, “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9), and “As your days so shall your strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25).
* When I am anxious about decisions I have to make about the future, I battle unbelief with the promise, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you” (Psalm 32:8).
* When I am anxious about facing opponents, I battle unbelief with the promise, “If God is for us who can be against us!” (Romans 8:31).
* When I am anxious about being sick, I battle unbelief with the promise that “tribulation works patience, and patience approvedness, and approvedness hope, and hope does not make us ashamed” (Romans 5:3–5).
* When I am anxious about getting old, I battle unbelief with the promise, “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4).
* When I am anxious about dying, I battle unbelief with the promise that “none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself; if we live we live to the Lord and if we die we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and rose again: that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living” (Romans 14:9–11).
* When I am anxious that I may make shipwreck of faith and fall away from God, I battle unbelief with the promise, “He who began a good work in you will complete it unto the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:6). “He who calls you is faithful. He will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). “He is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
2010 at 10:36 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Marriage
“[T]ake the…sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” Ephesians 6:17-18
To fight fear we are to “pray at all times.” But we have another weapon in our arsenal: the promises of God. We are to wield the Word against the onslaught of mothering fears.
We are to ”take” the Word of God and use it. To do this, we need to have it nearby. This means we need to be daily reading the Word and consistently meditating on it.
And we need to pull out the promises and put them into action. We have to pick up the sword and fight. A sword must be swung in order to deliver a blow.
We have a legacy of faithful, fear-fighting women to follow: “And you are [Sarah’s] children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.” 1 Peter 3:6
John Piper writes: “[T]he daughters of Sarah fight the anxiety that rises in their hearts. They wage war on fear, and they defeat it with the promises of God.”
Let’s be daughters of Sarah and fight our mothering fears with the promises of God.
2010 at 2:32 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Prayer Motherhood
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
(Philippians 4:6-7 ESV)
For the anxious mother, God has provided a solution in His Word.
It is simple: Pray. Give Thanks. Repeat.
It covers all of life: Don’t be anxious about ANYTHING. Pray about EVERYTHING.
And it comes with a promise: God’s peace will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Yet I sometimes treat prayer as if it doesn’t work. I do this by not praying or thanking but by worrying instead.
“I’ve tried praying before,” I excuse myself, “and God’s answer was different than what I asked for. So what’s the use?” Or, “I tried praying and didn’t feel more peaceful. I must not be doing it right.”
But the peace of God is more than a flimsy feeling of peace. It is a knowing, a settled confidence in the sovereign goodness of God that will guard against all anxious feelings.
As we pray and give thanks IN EVERYTHING, our trust in God deepens and His peace pervades our lives. Anxious thoughts don’t have the same sticking power, and eventually, they go away.
So lately I’ve been trying to simply obey God’s Word in Philippians 4. I still have a lot to learn about prayer, but I can tell you this: my faith, peace and gratefulness to God have grown, and my temptation to anxiety has decreased.
Scripture is true, and as anxious mothers, we would do well to believe and obey.
2010 at 2:15 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
“Children are a precious gift from God, but much anxiety comes with them. They may be a great joy or a great bitterness to their parents….In all cases, the Word of God gives us one receipt for the curing of all their ills, ‘Bring him unto me.’ O for more agonizing prayer on their behalf while they are yet babes! Sin is there, let our prayers begin to attack it….Never must we cease to pray until they cease to breathe. No case is hopeless while Jesus lives.
The Lord sometimes suffers His people to be driven into a corner that they may experimentally know how necessary He is to them. Ungodly children, when they show us our own powerlessness against the depravity of their hearts, drive us to flee to the strong for strength, and this is a great blessing to us. Whatever our…need may be, let it like a strong current bear us to the ocean of divine love. Jesus can soon remove our sorrow, He delights to comfort us. Let us hasten to Him while He waits to meet us.”
~Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, September 17, Morning
2010 at 2:19 pm | by Nicole Whitacre
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
“I cried to thee, O Lord.” Ps. 30:8
“Prayer is the unfailing resource of the anxious mother,” to paraphrase Charles Spurgeon:
“If they are driven to their wits’ end, they may still go to the mercy-seat….Let us never forget to pray, and let us never doubt the success of prayer… Mirth and carnal amusements are a sorry prescription for a mind distracted and despairing. Prayer will succeed where all else fails.”
We are often “at our wits’ end” with our children. We feel like we’ve tried everything and we don’t know what else to do. So we worry: Will my toddler never stop throwing temper tantrums? Will my teenager ever open up to me again? Will my children ever turn to Christ?
But instead of worrying, we are to cry to the Lord on behalf of our children. We must not forget to pray. And we must believe that prayer works: it will succeed where all our mothering efforts fail.
What worries do you need to bring to the mercy-seat today?
“They…were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.” Ps. 107:27, 28
(adapted from the archives)
2010 at 3:47 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
There is not grace for our imagination. But there is grace for today’s mothering trials. Not tomorrow’s imaginary trouble or next year’s envisaged problems. Just for today.
That’s why Jesus tells us: “[D]o not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34)
Moms of all people know this to be true: each day really does have sufficient trouble without adding tomorrow’s worries!
But for today’s sufficient trouble there is God’s more than sufficient grace: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). “As your days” it says in Deuteronomy, “so shall your strength be” (33: 25).
What’s more, for the Christian mother, goodness and mercy are behind every moment of today’s trouble. Our trouble isn’t meaningless. God is pursuing us with goodness and mercy today and all the days of our lives (Ps. 23:6).
“Courage, dear friend” encourages Charles Spurgeon, “The Lord, the ever-merciful, has appointed every moment of sorrow and pang of suffering. If He ordains the number ten, it can never rise to eleven, nor should you desire that it shrink to nine” (emphasis mine).
God is busy working today’s trouble for our good. So do not worry about tomorrow but look to Him today.
2010 at 3:30 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
What do our mothering fears have in common? They are all in our imagination.
Our fertile minds generate countless scenarios whereby one calamity or another befalls our children: What if my son rebels when he hits the teenage years? What if my daughter doesn’t want to be my friend when she grows up? What if my son gets in a car accident? What if my daughter is diagnosed with leukemia?
After thirty-four years of mothering, I’ve discovered that most of the bad things I imagined never actually came true. But there have been other trials—ones I never anticipated.
That’s why Elisabeth Elliot’s wise advice has been invaluable to me in fighting fear: “There is no grace for your imagination.”
God does not sprinkle grace over every path my fear takes. He does not rush in with support and encouragement for every doomsday scenario I can imagine.
No, instead He warns me to stay off those paths: “Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil” (Ps. 37:8).
There is no grace for our imagination. That’s why our fearful imaginings produce bad fruit: anxiety, lack of joy, futile attempts to control.
There is no grace for our imagination. But God does promise sufficient, abundant grace for every real moment of our lives. That’s why the Proverbs 31 woman can “laugh at the future in contrast with being worried or fearful about it” (ESV Study Bible note on Pr. 31:25)
There is no grace for our imagination. But there will be grace for our mothering future—the moment it arrives.
2010 at 2:38 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
The state of our children’s souls before God should drive us to prayer. We should beseech God to protect our children from worldliness, or to rescue them from sin’s entanglement. We must ask God to give them an undying love and passion for the Savior. We must pray that God would strengthen their faith and uphold them in the midst of trials.
We long—above all else—that our unsaved children would repent and believe in Jesus Christ; that they would know Him and experience eternal life.
This quote by Charles Bridges aptly expresses both our fervent hopes and the faith with which we ought to pray:
“But do we mourn over the evil of our child, especially when tracing it to its original source? Oh! let it be our stimulus to earnest and persevering prayer, and to the diligent use of the appointed means for that entire change of heart and nature, which we so intensely desire….The answer may be delayed. But “though it tarry, wait for it. For at the end it shall come; it shall not tarry.” Meanwhile “live by faith” (Heb. 2: 3, 4); work in faith. Never forget that we serve “the God of Hope.” Despair not of his grace. Doubt not his faithfulness. Hold on in active energy and patient hope. The tears of despondency shall be changed into tears of joy, giving a happy glow of warmth to every tender remonstrance, and animating every prudential effort….“The end of the Lord” will put unbelief to shame (James 5:11).”
Whether or not you’ve been praying for your children for many years or only just begun, we must all “hold on in active energy and patient hope.” We must faithfully and earnestly preach the gospel to our children. We must encourage and correct those who are wayward. But we must always pray with confidence in the goodness of our God, for “‘The end of the Lord’” will put unbelief to shame.”
—from the archives
2010 at 3:28 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
Christen sent us this question in response to the series on a mother’s fears: How are we to think as far as trusting God to save our children? We have no promise that he’s going to, but at the same time, we’re raising them in that hope. Can we say that we can trust God to save them?
It might be better to say that we can entrust our children to God. We have no explicit promise that He is going to save them, that is true. But we have more than enough promises in Scripture to help us put off fear and pray with expectant faith.
We must trust in God’s character—His sovereignty, wisdom, mercy, love and faithfulness. And we must remember His purposes, as Charles Spurgeon explained in his comments on Psalm 102:28:
“The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you.”
“This verse is full of good cheer to us; we may plead for the Lord’s favor to our offspring…. God does not neglect the children of his servants…Grace is not hereditary, yet God loves to be served by the same family time out of mind…. We may, therefore, not only for our own sakes but also out of love to the church of God, daily pray that our sons and daughters may be saved, and kept by divine grace even unto the end—established before the Lord.”
Throughout Scripture we see examples of God working through families; there are many verses that speak of God’s heart for future generations and command us to pray and preach the gospel to the next generation. So let’s entrust our children’s souls to a good God. And instead of giving way to fear, let’s fervently pray and preach the good news to them each day.
2010 at 12:36 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear
“Fear to fear. Be afraid to be afraid. Your worst enemy is within your own bosom Get to your knees and cry for help, and then rise up saying, ‘I will trust, and not be afraid.’”
—Charles Spurgeon, Chequebook of Faith, March 17
You fearful saints, fresh courage take:
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy and will break
In blessing on your head.
—William Cowper
2010 at 12:43 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
Mothers, we have the gospel: we need not fear. And yet we do. A lot.
Our mothering fears are conceived with our children. We see two little blue lines, and we are tempted to worry. We worry about eating something bad, lifting something heavy, sleeping in the wrong position.
Then our baby is born, and we fret about her life outside the womb—her eating, sleeping, talking, walking, developmental progress.
Our child starts school and we fear he will never finish. Will he make friends, make good grades, make something of himself? No sooner does high school start and we begin to worry about college.
We worry about our children’s health, their education, their friends, and above all, the state of their souls.
But once our children leave home, get a job, get married—then we can stop worrying, right?
Not so fast. Instead of leaving with our children, new worries move in. In my case, I now have 16 people (including sons-in-law and grandchildren) to worry about instead of four!
And the world in which my grandchildren are growing up seems much scarier than the one in which I raised my children.
Mothers, we will never out-grow our need to trust God for our children.
But neither will we ever outgrow the faithfulness of God: “the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children” (Ps. 103:17).
2010 at 1:39 pm | by Carolyn Mahaney
Filed under
Biblical Womanhood Fear Motherhood
Back to my conversation at the party. After chatting a few more minutes, my friend asked me another question: “Do you think fear is a unique temptation to women?”
“Yes, I do,” I replied. Scripture seems to bear witness to this. While all Christians are frequently urged to trust God, women are specifically exhorted in 1 Peter 3:6: “do not fear anything that is frightening.”
I love Scripture’s honesty! It admits right upfront that there’s stuff that is frightening. In fact, Scripture often predicts we will face much trouble and hardship in this life.
And nowhere is this more true than with our children. Where else in life do we have more significant responsibility (eternal souls), face such daunting challenges (sinful heart, hostile world), and feel so inadequate and ineffective?
But we are not to fear anything that is frightening. We are to trust in God.
Trusting God is not a one-time decision or something we can accomplish in a thirty-day challenge. We will have to fight to trust. Some days we must fight hourly, even on a moment-by-moment basis. Like raising children, growing in trust is a life-long effort.
But we are not alone. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us to guide us into all truth. We have our Sovereign Father ruling wisely and graciously over all. We have our Savior’s righteousness to run to when we fail.
Many things are frightening, but we have many more reasons to trust God than to fear.
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