One Million Arrows Christian Parenting Blog
- Is Adoption Good for My Family?
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Guest Author: Cheryl Railsback
- November 28, 2009 | View or add comments |
- Bringing Authentic Hope Through Music
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Guest Author: Matt Brouwer
- November 25, 2009 | View or add comments |
- Laying A Spiritual Foundation for Your Family
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By Julie Ferwerda
- November 18, 2009 | View or add comments |
- Laying the Correct Spiritual Foundation for Your Family Pt. 1
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By Julie Ferwerda
- November 11, 2009 | View or add comments |
- Continuing A Cycle of Love
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- November 11, 2009 | View or add comments |
Entries for: November, 2009
Recently, Tim and I celebrated our 12th anniversary. Though some might consider it a pretty humdrum day—home with four kids, a pile of laundry, and me sick—we decided that it was our best anniversary ever. While three of our kids played games nearby, our most recently adopted daughter—an orphan from China—laid on top of us in our hammock, patting our faces, giving us kisses, and showing how clearly happy she is with her new world.
About eight years ago, God began preparing my husband and me to "do hard things" with our lives by giving us a vision. Though we'd been raised "Christians," we could see that we had a fairly self-centered belief system that didn't challenge us to "do" anything outside of our comfort zone. Since then, we've adopted two special needs children from China, in addition to our own two biological children.
I grew up in an eastern Canadian town called Truro, in Nova Scotia. I'm the sixth of seven kids. My Mom taught music and my Dad ran a dairy farm. When I was three years old, my father was killed in a car accident, leaving my Mom with 2 kids, 5 step-children and a farm to run. Growing up, I had quite a tumultuous relationship with God. But in spite of the anger and doubt I experienced, I believed He was real. He is the only Father I've ever known, and I've felt his presence in my life since I was really young.
Continuing from part one, how do we begin laying the correct foundation that will help illuminate the Bible for our family and even make Books like Leviticus relevant and potentially exciting?
Learn the Feasts. This is not an education in picking which buffet to gorge on after church on Sunday. The Hebrew word for "feast" is the word "moed" and it means, "dress rehearsal" or "appointed times." There are 7 Feasts taught in the Bible, 3 of them major Feasts (Deut. 16:16), and they are all crucial for understanding God's unfolding plans for mankind. For now, we will just learn to identify the 3 major Feasts:
It was purely "accidental" that I discovered a new approach to Scriptures this past year that has totally revolutionized my understanding of the bigger picture of God's plan for the ages portrayed throughout the Bible. And through my studies, I realized that I totally missed out on laying the correct Biblical foundation that my children desperately needed in order to make sense of it all.
The discovery? Learning the crucial early Jewish perspectives on the Old Testament, particularly Genesis through Deuteronomy. There's a treasure chest of learning to be unearthed by returning to the original teachings and oracles of which many (most?) modern day believers and teachers are unaware. But I believe in the "last days," God is leading His children back to their roots of understanding so that we might be prepared for the days to come.
Jennie knows nothing about her south India parents except that, as a newborn, they threw her away and left her for dead in a city dumpster. Some college boys happened by and heard her crying, so they picked her up out of the garbage and took her to a nearby orphanage.
Jennie was so bright that she graduated from Bible college at sixteen. Her instructors noticed how mature and responsible she was at such a young age and how she had a heart for helping children, so they sent her to help out at an orphanage for younger children for one year of on-the-job training. When the main caregiver at that orphanage was called to another location to help out during a time of need, seventeen-year-old Jennie took over. For two years, she took care of an entire orphanage of eight younger children with the help of an assistant, sixteen-year-old Mary, also a previous orphan.
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