Purposed Parent Connected Child Podcast Episode 129 - How to Live With Joy That Lasts
Welcome to the Purposed Parent/Connected Child podcast – Episode 129 – How to Live With Joy That Lasts
Thank you for sharing your day with me. I pray this podcast gives you the awareness and tools you need to STOP being a GOOD mom so you can BECOME the GODLY mom God entrusts you to be. Then you’ll be the SET-APART woman PURPOSELY raising children to chase CHRIST over culture.
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If you’re ready to become the godly mom God entrusts you to be for Him and His children, you’ll love my free “Good to Godly: A 31-Day Scripture and Prayer Guide for Moms.” Visit terrihitt.com to receive this resource.
Are you ready to ensure you don’t waste moments this summer? If you’re ready to purposely strengthen connection with Christ and your children, I invite you to email me at info@terrihitt.com. Summer is a perfect time to partner with me in my $197 summer renewal mini-program. It’s perfect for the busy mom who loves Jesus and wants to equip herself and her children with deeper connection with Christ and each other.
Now on to this episode that covers an important topic with a goal everyone desires - how to live with joy that lasts.
After high school, most of the kids I studied with headed off to college. Although my parents and I never formulated a plan for my continued education, my father always told me he desired me to become a lawyer. Being an attorney was not a profession I would’ve enjoyed at all! I wanted to be the next big journalist and interviewer – like Barbara Walters. I could envision myself interviewing everyone – from famous to infamous, especially those no one knew publicly, but were greatly loved by family and friends and were influential or impactful in the world.
Everyone has a history with intimate stories to tell that inspire and bond most of us together. Despite backgrounds or history, I like to think most of us are more alike than different. I wanted to explore and share those stories.
During my senior year of high school, I completed some advanced classes, which would have given me high school and college dual credit. Nowadays, families plan and prepare for university years in advance. Back then, my family and I didn’t know how to plan in advance, and we voiced no thoughts about where I would attend college or how I would pay to obtain a degree.
When I discovered I was pregnant that summer after high school graduation, the news changed the direction of my life. No longer did I daydream about ivy league schools or how I’d amaze every Language Arts professor with my prolific prose that would surely bring rave reviews and awards. Instead, I was faced with telling my parents they would soon be grandparents and I was terrified to share the news I could barely comprehend. I was about to be a mother.
Before I told them, my steady boyfriend and I decided that since we were already planning to get married in the future, we would just do it sooner. Surprisingly, his parents were very supportive, which made it easier to gather the courage to tell my parents and begin to stand up for what I wanted.
In the end, my husband and I hurried to marry before I started showing. He had turned 18 just a month and a half before we were married. I was 17 years old. Although I did not yet know Christ as my Savior, and I was not raised with discussions about the reasons a girl should wait to have sex after marriage, I felt a tremendous amount of guilt. I praise God that my husband and I truly loved each other, although at the time I wasn’t really sure how to define true and lasting love between a man and a woman.
Looking back on those early years as we built our marriage and strengthened our relationship, I wish I would have been able to remove myself from the burden of guilt I carried, but I didn’t know how without Christ. It wasn’t that I thought about getting pregnant before I got married every day, but it did affect the way I viewed myself and my worth. Usually, I was happy. I loved my husband and our baby girl very much. Yet, I didn’t have a peace that passes understanding and only comes through relationship with Jesus. As I think back on those years, I can easily remember the emotions and guilt I carried, thinking I wasn’t as good as those who graduated from college or those who remained sexually pure until after marriage.
I said I was happy, and while that’s true, happiness is far from deep and lasting joy. As I sat in my self-shame, I wonder how much joy I cheated myself out of. What did I miss by allowing lingering thoughts far from what God would have me thinking?
Are you caught in guilt or shame from something in your past? Or in your present? Are you missing out on the special life Christ has for you?
After I found new life through submission to Jesus and a maturing relationship with Him, I was eventually able to let go of guilt as I deepened my trust and faith. These days, I strive to walk with Him moment by moment. The Holy Spirit within me is present to guide and guard and to protect and provide my every need. I want you to hear that He is ready to do exactly the same for you when you’re covered by His sacrifice, mercy, and grace.
Philippians 4:6-8 says, “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. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Through Jesus, you can live with freedom from sin and guilt.
You can live with joy that is present regardless of circumstances.
You can live free from guilt and shame.
Through Christ, we receive forgiveness and truth, but how do we move forward to escape our past and stop living in the bondage of guilt or shame?
Remember, there are several feelings that cause us to miss out on the life we could experience through God. Feelings are important. God allowed us the capacity to feel emotions and thoughts. However, we don’t have to stay stuck in them.
It’s important to look at the definition of the word “feelings” to allow us to move past remaining in our emotions. The word “feelings” is described as “sentiments, attitude, and opinion or an emotional perception.”
Keep that definition in mind when you allow words to flow through your mind or create a definition of you or your life, so you can process and release those feelings that keep you from living in the fullness Christ intends.
Let’s expose some of the “fears” and lies your feelings can craft within you:
1. Inadequacy
2. Failure
3. Distrust
4. Disappointment
5. Comparison
6. Judgement
7. Separation
8. Hopelessness
9. Negativity
Yet, remember, God’s holy Scripture reveals truth to us that is often contrary to the deceit we feel.
2 Corinthians 3:17 says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
When we live by feelings, emotions, experiences, and comparisons, we rely on self. By relying on self, whether intentionally or not, we live in ways similar to the Old Testament practice of keeping laws and traditions or relying on ceremonies. But remember, those formalities pointed the way to Christ. Those laws and traditions expose our need for Him.
Because of Jesus and the Holy Spirit alive within believers, freedom from sin and guilt is provided without cost. When we trust in Jesus, the burden of pleasing Him is removed. The inevitable guilt is gone. We will always fall short of perfection, but by trusting our lives to Jesus, we find that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Christ enables us to look to Him and be renewedeach moment we humbly submit to Him.
Is there anything you need to release to Him this moment?
Ephesians 3:14-21 says, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Let’s examine the difference in our life before and after Christ.
In our life before Christ we are:
1. Against God
2. Dead in sin
3. World and flesh followers
4. Under bondage to Satan
5. Victims of our thoughts and feelings
In our life after Christ, He lives within us, and we are:
1. God’s child
2. Reborn through Christ
3. Following Jesus’s truths
4. Freed through Jesus
5. Living in fullness and freedom
The fullness of God can only be known through Christ.
Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit alive within us, we are complete. God’s love reaches within every corner and crevice of our being. His love and forgiveness is deep and wide, immersing within where we think He won’t look. Exposing what we think He can’t love.
God’s grace and mercies truly are new every morning, going high and low, reaching above and below what we deserve, expect, or imagine. As we live for Him moment by moment, humbly reliant on Him, we are miraculously transformed. Scripture, faith, prayers, trust, and obedience keep us connected to the Holy Spirit who fills every need we carry. We experience complete freedom and fullness we will neverfind on our own.
Have you committed to believe, follow, and claim the Lord Jesus? Every single moment? If not, why? What is keeping you from entrusting your life to the One who crafted you will precision, skill, and agape love?
As you submit and release these pieces to the Lord, you will mature your faith and preparing to be the mentor your children need to live in truth and with fullness of joy.
Galatians 5:1 says, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Let me know if you need more guidance in this area. You can reach out on my website terrihitt.com. We can pray together and I can guide you on your next step for the Lord so you and your family can live in the fullness of joy God desires for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, Your steadfast love surrounds and abounds within us. We welcome You and the Holy Spirit to cover and complete us. According to Your promises, we have hope and peace in the fullness of life that comes from You. Help us keep Your laws and obey Your truths and purpose for us because we live fully within the freedom only found through You. Help us to delight in Your commands and meditate on Your statutes because we adore time in Your presence. Enable us to release bondage of sin or guilt and place them in Your Hands. Help us to rely on You to pull us from the depth of self-reliance and keep us in Your sacrificial love and presence. Help us to believe and build a life on Your truths. May Your word not be contrary to what we believe or how we live because our mind and heart are fixed on You. In the precious name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Remember, you are the first Jesus your child will see. Your relationship with Christ is the light that shines Him to your children. If you want a connected relationship with Jesus and your children that leads them to your side and His feet, instead of them seeking validation from peers, my Set-Apart Collective program can show you how to reflect Christ in a way that attracts your family to a connected relationship that lasts into eternity.
If you don’t want peers and culture to be the main influence over your child, if you desire to parent to “prepare” your child for eternity with Christ, not repair your relationship with them, the Set-Apart Collective will arm you with a Christ-centered Motherhood Mindset Model™, and create a Purposed Parenting Plan™. You’ll also deepen your identity in Christ so you can mentor the way for your children to do the same. You will be a purposed mother with an intentional mind and heart set on Christ and your family and you will have the tools to raise set apart kids as you parent the heart, not simply the behavior.
If you’re the mom of an adult child and in need of strengthening connection with them, you can also visit terrihitt.com/coaching and click the link for a free, no obligation conversation call with me. This is a strategic call where I will hear your biggest struggle and show you how to turn it into a blessing that will bring you closer to Christ and your children. It’s time for believing mothers to be purposed in preparing their children for a lifetime pursuit of Christ. Time is short. Make yours matter for eternity. Remember - if you’re not purposed in knowing Jesus and showing Him to the next generation, the world will sway your children away from Christ. I pray that what you hear on this podcast enables you to stop being a good mom and focus on being a godly parent. Until next week, keep looking Up while focusing on new ways to parent with eternal purpose and connection with your children and Christ.