Will someone please stop the noise?
My house sounds like Grand Central Station all the time. From 6:30 AM until my six children go to bed each night.
I’m sitting here today wondering how I have not lost my mind. Four boys (the two girls are quiet by comparison) are constantly in a state of make-believe. That imaginative world ALWAYS involves a battle.
My four-year-old goes to sleep and wakes up making shooting or sword-fighting sounds. Really. And my two-year-old learned early on how to hang with the big boys, mimicking everything they do.
As I sit here listening to it all, I am asking myself how (amidst all this) does the ascension affect me right now?
I mean right now — when one is screaming, one is hitting, one is micromanaging, and one is bullying.
How Does the Ascension Help Me Endure the Trials of Parenting?
Because of Christ’s ascension, I have a direct prayer line to my Father in Heaven!
“Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
If every Christian mother TRULY understood that at any point of the day she can stop and talk to the One who can comfort, guide and forgive her when she’s deep in the struggles of parenting, all her woes and stresses would be alleviated. Yet, we so easily forget this vital lifeline!
This reminds me of the hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”:
“What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!”
There’s no need for me to call a fellow mom and unload all of my frustrations. There’s no need for me to go hide in the bathroom and get lost in Facebook. Neither of those can calm the hurting heart and provide the peace a mother needs.
Because of Christ and because I am a redeemed Child of God, I get free access to the Creator of everything! (1 John 5:14).
I can barely hold back the tears as I breathe in the truth of that. I do not deserve this love!
All that Christ endured comes funneling down to my tiny little life filled with screaming, laughing, fighting, and playing — all to give me comfort, peace and wisdom.
Christ’s Ascension Is Everything!
It’s everything, yet it’s just one page of a bigger story. I love how one of my husband’s seminary professors concludes his notes on the ascension:
“The work of Jesus must ultimately be seen as a compound unity, and the loss of any act (sinless life, penal-substitutionary sacrifice, bodily resurrection, and bodily ascension) destroys the unity and, therefore, the salvation based on this entire work. So without the ascension, there is no Divine acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice; Jesus is not Head of the Church and Ruler over Creation; Jesus has not sent the Holy Spirit; Jesus is not our Great High Priest; Jesus will not return to take believers to heaven and then bring them to rule with Him on earth; there is no salvation, no Church, no resurrection, no life in heaven, and no reign on the earth. But Jesus did live a sinless life; did die in our place to pay for our sins; did rise bodily from the dead; and did ascend bodily to heaven.”
Moms, we are not alone. God so graciously and mercifully gave us Jesus Christ to be our everything. Hebrews 4:15 could not be more useful in our stressful days:
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”
Will you rely on Him? Will you seek Him when your day seems out of control? Only He can give you what you truly need.
