When reading about Paul in the New Testament what comes to mind? A gifted missionary perhaps? Paul wrote letters to various churches, traveled from city to city, to the Jew and to the Gentile, preaching the good news of Jesus Christ!

As encouraging as this is, I can’t help but wonder what I have in common with Paul.

From the Chick-fil-A drive through to daycare pickups, from dirty diapers to spilled Cheerios, from grocery store trips to dance recitals, the life of a mama with kids seems very different from his.

Yet just like Paul, we have been given the same mission.

Simply put, evangelism is sharing the gospel or the good news of Jesus Christ. It can seem intimidating not knowing where to start or having the right words to say, but when Jesus gave us the great commission, he ended it with a powerful reminder as we seek to obey this command.

He reminds us that he will be with us always.

The first thing we can do is to pray that God would press onto our hearts people who he wants us to witness to.

Think about those who are around you that may not know who Jesus is. Prayer shows our dependency on God to give us opportunities to share the truth about him with those people whose hearts he has already been working in. We, the messengers, just need to be ready to share.

The second thing we can do is practice.

As often as I could, I started sharing the gospel with my one-year-old son who would, at worst, ignore me and, at best, clap at my feeble attempts. Reciting the full gospel out loud to my child gave me the opportunity to practice what I would say in a way that sounded natural.

We can allow an embarrassing moment to keep us from experiencing a powerful promise that follows after our obedience, or we can continue to press forward—placing one foot of faith in front of the other.

We’re not alone in this. As we begin to share our faith with others and teach them to know and follow Christ, we will actively see God working in our lives and in the lives of others.”

The next time you’re tempted to open your mouth in complaint, pray for the Lord to put a guard over your mouth and ask him to fill your heart and mouth with gratitude, to bring glory to the Lord over all.

Every mother wants a strong relationship with their daughter. Or at least, I think they do. I actually don’t know for certain since I’m not a mother. I’m a daughter who just graduated from her teens last year.

As I look back on my teen years, I loved hanging out with mom. I loved learning from her. I even took her correction pretty well because she exposed my sin truthfully yet tenderly. I loved praying with her, baking with her, going on adventures with her, and reading books with her. What’s more: I still do.

So what’s so special about my mom?

It actually isn’t anything particularly special at all. It’s merely two things: she prioritized her relationship with her kids and she relied on the grace of God.

As I consider my teen years, I’m mindful of five things my mom did to build this relationship with me: she started young, she prayed for and with me, she risked vulnerability, she learned with me, and she had fun with me.

I wish you could meet my mom. She’d say she’s far from a spiritual giant and that raising godly kids wasn’t about her.

‘It just took intentionality,’ she’d tell you. ‘But most of all, the grace of God.’

For both my mom and you, there is gospel grace to meet you at every turn. No mom is ‘mom enough.’

Every mom needs infinite grace to forgive her sins, to work through her mistakes, and to point her and her kids to Jesus.

Remember: he is the savior of your family, not you.

Do you remember the first time your parents or friends talked to you about sex?

I wouldn’t describe the emotions that I experienced from the conversation with my mom or with my friends as positive. And yet, in Genesis 2:25 we have a description of a very positive experience. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed.

Can you imagine a scenario where you could be completely naked, emotionally and physically, and be unashamed? Nothing to hide. Nothing to cover. No good parts to emphasize. No bad parts to deemphasize.

This is the beauty of the sexual experience as God intends it.

We know that our kids won’t get the biblical view of sex from culture. The culture swings between sex being too important and not important at all. It is the end all of every great experience and it is so unimportant you can engage in it with anyone.

We need to give our kids a different view. We need to give our kids a grace-centered, biblical view of sex.

The question is how do we talk about sex to our children in a way that validates the goodness of sex, the way God intended, without shaming or scaring them into thinking sex is a bad thing.

How do we stand next to our child and give them more than a list of dos and don’ts?

We must show our children that a relationship with Jesus is better than any other experience. And we must make sure they know that no sin, sexual or otherwise, is beyond the grace of God. We can only give a complete biblical view of sex when we affirm that Christ loves the prostitute as much as he loves the woman who was a virgin when she got married.

Grace levels all of us.

This glorious news is worth the embarrassment that you may feel in any conversation with your kids.

So smile, and share.

The RM Team loves seeing questions roll in whenever we’re prepping for an “Ask Us Anything” podcast episode with Laura and Emily. Unfortunately, we can’t answer every question submitted to us—there’s not enough time and we don’t know or haven’t experienced everything! However, we have a treasure trove of resources and information in our show archives, blog archives, and old show notes. We’ve rallied up a collection links to help answer some of the most asked questions we receive below...

No parent wants to wade through difficult issues with their kids. But sometimes the unavoidable things are God’s grace to us and our child. Sometimes they are the very things he uses to draw us more to himself.

“One of the first lessons a pilot learns is to trust his instruments over his feelings. A pilot’s feelings may mislead, but his plane’s instruments provide him the true information to keep him safe and focused.

Life sometimes feels like a flying in a storm, doesn’t it? We bump up against difficult circumstances, find our faith shaken by loss, lack, or trials; & struggle to reconcile the feelings we experience with the wisdom we know from scripture.

We reach out to social media & blogs like air masks to maintain some semblance of control when what we need is the lifegiving air of our hope in Christ.

But what does that mean? To ‘find our hope in Christ?’

When people talk about hope, it’s usually in uncertain terms. We hope that thing happens. We hope that situation changes. We hope, but we wait to know the outcome.

And since we can’t be sure of what will happen next, our hearts are tempted to look at our circumstances & assess God’s faithfulness to us by the state of our current realities.

‘Is there enough money in the budget?’ ‘Are my kids healthy?’ ‘Does my marriage feel strained?’ ‘Does God love me?’

But the result of circumstantial hope is despair. If we can’t be sure of an outcome, we feel an urge to self-promote & self-preserve in order to care for ourselves in the face of uncertainty.

The truth is, life is full of suffering, painful consequences of sin, & a general brokenness that affects every relationship, conversation, & trip to the grocery store with five kids under five.

But as Christians, we know hope in an unchanging & eternal Christ is a certain thing.

When we look at the cross, we see that God gave up his most precious Son to save his enemies who delighted in their rebellion. In Christ, we have a fixed point of God’s faithfulness to us.

If God has given us all that we need through Christ, will he let us falter when we grow weary in training defiant children or haven’t slept in seven months? When the weight of our feelings are crushing & we can’t see if we’re flying right-side up or upside down?

No, mama, he will not. Because Who we hope in was & is victorious.”

These littles of mine certainly stand out.

I was born to a white mother and a black father. And I should mention, I’m one of 7 kids. I had the muscle tone of a seasoned female wrestler and the hair of a trolls doll left in the water too long. As you can imagine, I didn’t quite fit in.

My husband, Oshiomogho, is the youngest son of Nigerian parents who left everything in Africa to bring a few dollars, his older sister, and their rich Nigerian history to Canada.

Soon after we found out we were pregnant, I realized in the Atogwe family, tradition says the grandparents name the babies. The Sloanes, Haydens, Micahs, Chloes, and Whitleys of my dreams were laid to rest.

My son is Oshiolema, and my daughter is Keogena Na’Airah.

They’re both different like their mama was different. Different like their daddy was different.

But I’m elated to assure them that their Savior was different too. Jesus knew what it was felt like to be unlike his peers, and unlike any human that ever lived. He certainly didn’t fit in. And yet, even though he’s different, Jesus securely knows his identity.

Christ proudly stood firm in hs identity, and in a beautiful exchange, Jesus humbled himself, choosing to say whose he is. Fully God, fully man, and the way he lived his life here on earth speaks powerfully about who he is.

Whether or not we fit in—if we are accepted or rejected—the deep desire to be understood is fulfilled when we remember Who is in us and what he has called us to do. As followers of Christ, we are called to be the lights of this world, and I’ve never once known a light to blend into the darkness.

No two of us are alike. We will all face moments where we don’t feel like we fit in-but in Christ we can walk in secure and beautiful identity until we meet him face to face.”

As a mom of two under two, I’m pretty much always tired, which means I pretty much always have a 'good' reason to not invest in my marriage. In fact, if there was ever a time where I felt like I had every right to reject my husband’s advances, it’s now.

But feelings do not determine truth, do they?

The reality is that God designed marriage to mirror his relationship with his church. And just like we can’t take a break from God without our spiritual health declining, we can’t take a break from our spouse without it impacting the health of our marriage.

Everything is from him, to him, and through him—even marital intimacy. So, the path to marital closeness is through the One who created it in the first place. Which makes sense, because another word for intimacy is closeness.

Sex becomes more beautiful with this in mind, offering a glimpse of the glorious oneness between Christ and his bride, a unity that comes from preferring the good of another over yourself.

When I don’t feel up to pursuing intimacy with my husband, I look to the One who came not to be served but to serve and give his life for many. When everything in me is exhausted, I turn to my humble, self-sacrificing King in prayer, knowing that his wisdom in marriage is trustworthy.

God promises to work in us both for his own good pleasure, which means he is my greatest ally in cultivating rich intimacy in my marriage.

The truth is we’re both exhausted. We look forward to days when it won’t take a week to get through a movie, when giving up sleep to be with each other doesn’t feel like such a hard sacrifice, but we’re also thankful for the way this season challenges, stretches, and grows our love for one another.

Our challenge is to steal moments to express that love in the marriage bed."

RM note: Sexual intimacy in marriage is a gift from God, but it's also a very sensitive topic. While many women relate to normal feelings of tiredness that make intimacy challenging, there are many struggling with deeper issues of sexual brokenness. If this post triggers deeper concerns, consider talking to an older couple, a biblical counselor, or a doctor for help.

Right before my second son was born, my husband had emergency back surgery. Following my c-section, neither of us could lift more than ten pounds which made things really interesting as we tried to care for a newborn and a 30-pound toddler.

I remember calling an older mom the day I found out my husband needed surgery and just weeping. How were we going do this?

Thinking back on that season, I smile (and tear up) remembering each mom that did good to us. Some of them I knew and others I only recognized from a polite smile at church, but God knit my heart to theirs because of their kindness.

That’s what God does—he uses our acts of love to bind us together in unity.

Trying to do good to other moms in our own strength is a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, God doesn’t expect us to do it alone. His word tells us that he is ‘able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.’

It’s reassuring to know that we don’t have to come up with the grace on our own, isn’t it? He’ll give grace to you too, friend.

This week, mama, consider the opportunities that God has (or hasn’t) prepared for you, lean on his grace, and look forward to your reward in Heaven.

May he knit our hearts together as we do each other good.

“When my oldest was three, we had a small concrete pad poured to host our trash and recycling bins. Just as the workers were finishing up, she and my husband, David, went outside to check on the progress, see if they needed anything, and admire their work from a safe distance.

Five seconds of small talk later, the three-year-old looked up at him, looked up at the workers, and took off in a sprint. I need not tell you in which direction.

David reports she ran full-tilt and leaped, arms and fingers splayed, with the slow-mo perfect form angle of an Olympic long jumper, landing three-year-old feet, hands, and booty into freshly-poured concrete.

Now, it’s easy to tell David’s funny story here. It’s easy to laugh, because I wasn’t in it.

But the truth is I’m “in it” a hundred times in a normal day. And I’m rarely laughing. Because I can rarely see in the moment anything beyond the loads of laundry or how many Brawneys it’s going to take to clean this up or whether or not this is going to make us late for school.

Which is why I’m so thankful for my sisterfriends—the women who are also “in it” every day, who still take the time to remind me to laugh and lean into the crazy and not get swallowed up by it.

They remind me that God—not me—is responsible for setting concrete and growing babies, and perhaps I’m freer to laugh than I realized, particularly when my daughter reports she just successfully flushed the potty with her mouth.

When you put your trust in his son Jesus, you find he’s had his arms wrapped around you all along. And just as we whisper into the ears of a tearful child, “I’ve got you,” God’s promises ring true in scripture to remind us of his sovereignty and grace in our lives.

God has us, even in the hard, even in the ridiculous.

So laugh, my friend. Laugh with the abandon of your head tossed back and loud enough for others to hear and with the delight of a daughter.”
 

I don’t need to tell you that motherhood is hard work. It’s physically grueling, emotionally exhausting, and intellectually numbing. But one hardship we often overlook as moms is the challenge it makes to our sense of purpose.

Through the consuming trials of motherhood, we lose many of the earthly ways we used to understand the purpose of our lives before—we may no longer work out of the home, our friendships may change, our relationships with our husbands may differ as we make room for the family, and so on.

Because the challenges of motherhood strip away our old identity markers, we are tempted to replace them by finding our purpose in godly motherhood.

Although godly motherhood is valuable, it is not our purpose. It is not our first calling, but the result of it.

Our purpose is first and foremost to love God more.

Therefore, we don’t wrap our purpose up in our children—or in any other relationship. Roles and relationships don’t define who we are and why we are here. Only one relationship defines us: our relationship with God.

Dear Mommies, we are so much more than the summation of our children. His purpose for your motherhood is that you would know him better, love him more, depend completely on his strength, and understand his faithfulness in a new way.