Hotstuff Hannah

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Repentance,Forgiveness, & Restoration

We only have a couple of weeks left in our Growing Kids God's Way class. We have thoroughly enjoyed this class and have gleaned a lot of wisdom from our teachers and the authors of the program. George told the teacher last week that he would be so lost without this class. The last couple of weeks were on discipline and chastisement (the age old debate about spanking). I won't get into the spanking thing here. However, after the discipline comes the section on forgiveness, repentance, and restoration. Obviously when a wrong is committed there needs to be some follow-up action.

Let me warn you that this is a "heavy" post and long, but full of a lot of insight.

It's amazing how God can orchestrate things for us to hear them just when we need to hear them. Here's the jist of the section.

*You can regret without repentance (to experience sorrow for and to change wrong behavior), but you cannot repent without regret. Basically many people get away with certain actions because they express regret, but really have no intention of changing their actions in the long run.

*The object of repentance is not the sin itself, but the relationship affected by the sin. So when I sin against God, I am expressing repentance more over the fact that my sin has hurt him. It's not that my relationship (because He will never leave us or forsake us) with Him is broken, but fellowship with Him is. Also, when I sin against George, it's not that our relationship is over, but my fellowship with him is strained. Until I repent and ask for forgiveness, our fellowship will not be completely restored. One cannot commit a wrong against someone else and expect it to be overlooked without ever expressing sorrow over the hurt that one has caused. If there is never any repentance, then there will always be some sort of strain (spoken or unspoken) on the relationship. Hope that makes sense.

*Repentance begins with the offender. Forgiveness begins with the person offended. It would be absolutely wrong for a Christian to withhold forgiveness because Christ doesn't hold forgiveness from us. (Matthew 6:14; Matthew 18:21)

So God has placed a real life situation in front of me right now that really has me struggling. I have extended forgiveness to this person (a nonbeliever) that was not received because the offender did not feel that I was the person that the wrong was committed against. While the wrong was not directly against me, it did hurt and affect me. Since the forgiveness was not accepted there is still a significant strain on the relationship and fellowship has not been restored. It has been mentioned to me that I need to begin to restore that fellowship and I have been wrestling with whether it is my responsibility, as a believer, to do that.

I will say that I haven't had the chance to fully search the Scriptures for a complete and definite answer in my situation, but I have some peace with the answer I have come to. My answer is that I have done what is required of me as a believer. I may be called to forgive, but that cannot be used as an excuse to "run over" believers. The reasons why:

1) The very essence of forgiveness requires acceptance on the part of the offender.

2) God doesn't automatically forgive everyone in the world. He offers forgiveness, but not unless someone asks for it. (Acts 10:43; Ephesians 1:7) We don't just get to show up at the judgement seat of Christ when we die and inherit his forgiveness. It is ONLY through the blood of Christ and faith in that sacrifice that He extends it (by his grace and mercy) to us. Only then, after we have asked for His forgiveness are we rightly restored to Him.

I guess what I'm saying is that we can't expect for people to gloss over offenses when we have hurt them, directly or indirectly. If we expect to have genuine relationships with people, we must be willing to humble our hearts and ask for forgiveness. What a precious lesson that we can pass this on to our children so that they can see the beauty of offering forgiveness and the beauty in asking for it, especially the forgiveness of Christ.

So Kate Thinks She Can Dance

Kate had quite a few firsts yesterday...

1) I was washing dishes after lunch. We have a section of the kitchen that I can look through to see our table. I looked up and I see this sweet little girl smiling at me and sitting in one of the chairs. So climbing is now definitely on our list of things she can do!

2) I gave Kate a bath first yesterday. I put her in her Cheers t-shirt and a diaper and set her down to watch a Baby Faith Christmas DVD while I bathed Hannah. I open the bathroom door to check on Kate and all I see is a clean diaper on the ground. I recognized it as the one I had just put on Kate. So here is Kate toddling around the house with no diaper on. Not a big deal, but I would rather us not go through the "I can take off my own diaper" phase.


And possibly the best thing about this post is this video. Kate has learned how to do more than just swaying back and forth dancing. She was walking around the house last night with this elephant toy hanging out of her mouth and dancing to the music it plays. Her love of dancing comes from her Mommy. It's hard to see in the video, but she does this funny knee jerk wiggle her butt move.

P.S. Hannah has been walking around much more and I'm going to try and get video of it today so I can brag on her!

Little Piggies

This little piggy has pigtails...(because her Aunt Lauren got bored and saw a child with hair)

This little piggy (Kate) likes to climb in boxes...

This little piggy (Hannah) likes to climb in shopping carts that are way too small for her...

And all three little piggies love to watch Baby Einstein at Grandma & Grandpa Schaefer's house...

The Quest for the Ball

Kate is literally walking all over the house. It's so different to see her toddle around the house instead of crawling. Hannah is starting to walk a lot more, also. She took about 10 steps today! Yeah, Hannah! The following pictures are Hannah's new way to watch her Baby Einstein DVD, within the protection of the laundry basket. I love her!

What delight!

This is a video of one of Kate's new skills. If you tell her to go find a ball, she will. This girl knows what a ball is. She will bring any size ball to you. Hannah can do the same, but is more hesitant, probably because she has to crawl to get there. Anyway, if you watch it all the way to the end you will also see Kate stand up by herself, another new skill! This child has done so many new things this week. It's amazing! I also have to mention that she signs more and all done. She doesn't quite get the meaning of them yet, but at least she does it. Hannah still thinks that more is clapping.