Today’s post is written by Christina Fox and sponsored by Christian Focus. Christina’s new book, God Hears Your Heart follows on from Tell God How You Feel (2021) and encourages children to bring all their feelings to God. Learn more and get both books here.

“Mommy, I’m scared!”
When he was young, my son would seek me out during every thunderstorm. He’d arrive at my side, a favorite blanket wrapped around his head, his body trembling in fear. It didn’t help that we lived in Florida where every summer afternoon the sky lit up and the windows shook so hard, you’d think they would break.
I prayed with him and taught him how the psalmist responded to his own fears by telling God how he felt, asking God to help him, and trusting in the character of God. In doing so, I began to teach him how to lament.
“In the day of my trouble I call upon you, for you answer me” (Psalm 86:7).
We were created as emotional beings; we all have feelings—our children included. While we rightly spend time teaching our children the truths of who God is and what he has done, we don’t often teach our children how to navigate their emotions. We might instruct them not to sin in their emotional responses but are less likely to help them learn what to do when they feel big things.
My children’s book series, Tell God How You Feel and God Hears Your Heart are discipleship tools for parents to use to help guide their children in learning what to do with the hard emotions of life. In these stories, brother and sister Josh and Mia face difficult emotions such as fear, sadness, anger, and failure, and learn to bring their emotions to God in prayer. They learn the art of lament.
In reading these stories to their children, parents are encouraged to have conversations with their children about their feelings and teach them the habit of crying out to God in prayer. Each story in the books covers a particular emotion and the end of each story includes questions for parents to discuss with their children.
Children learn at an early age how to respond to the hard emotions of life. For some, they might learn to distract themselves from those emotions. Others might develop habits of comforting themselves with a temporary pleasure. Still others might push those emotions down, only to have them erupt later. By teaching our children the way of lament—of bringing emotions to the Lord in prayer and seeking his help—our children are equipped to respond to their big feelings in a God honoring way. They learn to see God as their rock, their refuge, and their deliverer in all their troubles. They learn that God is a Father who hears their cries, collect their tears in a bottle, and is their only source of help and salvation.
“In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears” (Psalm 18:6).
Do you have children with big feelings? Consider reading the stories of Josh and Mia with them today.

May the God of love and peace be with you today.

This is a good one. “Here are three things we should strive for: Christians who are willing to confront but aren’t eager for controversy. Christians who pursue a gentle revival, not a holy war. Christians who eavesdrop on Jesus’ intercession instead of joining Satan’s accusations.”

This article grapples with “whataboutery,” the inclination to apply Scripture to everyone else before ourselves.

R. Scott Clark explains why church discipline is not mean. To the contrary, when carried out as intended, it is a form of love. “In our time, the tendency is to view the church as a means of therapy, merely as a place of fellowship and encouragement, but not as the divinely instituted embassy in which the keys of the Kingdom of God are administered. Viewed thus, the very idea of church discipline seems high-handed, arbitrary, unjust, and even cruel. After all, the reasoning goes, who are those sinners to judge this sinner?”

Andy Farmer offers some helpful thoughts on offering opinions. “I’ve had to develop a kind of ‘rules of engagement’ so that I respond appropriately when I’m ever asked or pressed to engage a hot cultural topic. Here’s how I parse it out…”

“You are not alone, Christian believer! God’s people have always wrestled with fear, with questions, with sickening doubts when it comes to the many challenges of living in a sinful world. Yet the answer continually returns: there is no need to fear!”

This video from SBTS will help you better understand biblical typology—a key subject for understanding Scripture.

The parent who spares the rod does not only ruin the child, but also ruins a future relationship with the child. The parent who spares the rod hates his son, but he also hates himself.

If believers are lost, God loses more than they do, for he loses his honour, he loses his character for truthfulness, and the glory of his name is tarnished.
—Charles Spurgeon

I have many fond memories of my father—memories accumulated over the 43 years we shared this earth. I have fond memories based on my first twenty-one years when I lived in his home and saw him nearly every day. I remember him taking me to old Exhibition Stadium to watch the Blue Jays play. I remember going on a road trip together—just the two of us traveling across Georgian Bay and onto Manitoulin Island. I remember getting up early in the morning and finding that he was already awake, already reading his Bible, already spending time with the Lord. I remember this and so much else.

Then I have fond memories based on the next 23 years of life after I had gotten married and moved out, and after he and the family had left Canada to settle in the American South. Our visits became less frequent then, but no less significant. I remember his joy on those rare occasions when the whole family could be together, the entire collection of kids and grandkids under a single roof. I remember looking out from many church pulpits and conference podiums and seeing his face in the crowd. I remember notes and letters he would send at important moments or following significant events.
But my favorite memory of all is my final memory of all. In June of 2019 dad turned 70 and the family threw him a surprise party to mark the occasion. I made the long journey from Toronto to my sister’s home in Georgia to be part of the fun. It was a wonderful afternoon spent with friends and family, all of whom had gathered to honor dad as he reached a significant milestone. Though I talked to him on the phone after that day, I never actually saw him again and formed no other lasting memories. Just a few months later he collapsed and died at a time that was unexpected but in a way that was exactly as he wanted—with dirt on his hands.
Just months after my father went to heaven, my son followed. It has been more than a year since I last saw Nick, more than a year since I dropped him at Southern Seminary and watched as he walked away, arm-in-arm with the woman who would soon be his fiancée. Though we often spoke on the phone after that time, and though we sometimes connected by video chat, I never actually laid eyes on him again before he, too, collapsed and died at a time that was unexpected and in a way we could never have imagined.
In the aftermath of those two great sorrows, I often find myself thinking back to dad’s final birthday and to my final memory. Though I had decided to make the long journey, the family had determined they would not tell dad that I was coming. Because of flight schedules I was not able to arrive until an hour or two after the festivities had gotten underway. Dad was by the side of the pool when I got there, chatting with a friend. He saw me, he blinked in shock, and his face lit up with joy—the joy of a father who is surprised and delighted to see his son. It was a special moment.
It was a special moment that, in its own way, points me toward another special moment, for on his birthday dad unknowingly foreshadowed the joy I will experience when I finally see my Nick again—the pure and sweet and unadulterated joy of a Father whose heart has longed for the son he loves, the son he misses, the son he so wishes to see, to hug, to hold, to enjoy. The delight that flashed in his eyes, the smile that broke over his face, the tears that glimmered in his eyes, all point me to a time in the future when what is broken will be made whole, when what is sorrowful will be soothed, when what has been torn apart will be stitched back together, a time when son and father and father and son will be reunited, never more to part, never more to grieve.