“Are you truly praying for thy will to be done,” the preacher asked a rapt congregation, “Or for my will to be done?”

My church recently hosted a missions conference where our international and national partners shared their work for God’s Kingdom around the world. For five days, I listened to stories from missionaries and church planters about smuggling Bibles into closed countries, preaching the Gospel to those who had never heard it, and experiencing persecution for the Christian faith. I sat on the edge of my seat as they recounted God’s faithfulness to them in suffering, needs, and endurance. Their testimonies both encouraged my own faithfulness, and yet, caused some discouragement to rise up. I wondered how serving my own little community in the center of the Bible belt could make the same difference in the Kingdom of God. How could I, a mother who works in the home, make an impact on the Kingdom?

On the final Sunday morning, one of our international church planters shared an exhortation for our faith family to live on mission wherever we are. He ended with the question above, challenging whether we truly were living our lives for the Kingdom of God. He encouraged us to submit our will to the Father’s by daily praying, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

We’re all kingdom builders. In my home, my primary mission field, I often want to build my kingdom, rather than God’s. I build routines that protect my own comfort rather than provide opportunities for Gospel proclamation. I use my discipline to point to my own control rather than God’s sovereign rule. I create all day long—meals for my family, words for others, activities for my children—expecting to receive glory rather than point to my glorious Creator. I steward my home and family to establish my own kingdom, rather than to further God’s Kingdom.

The question is not whether you and I are building a kingdom. It’s whose kingdom are we building? Because we all are part of the story of the Kingdom.

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Practical Takeaways

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Momma Theologians Contributor

Bethany Broderick

Bethany Broderick lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband, three-year-old daughter, and one-year-old son. A recovering perfectionist, she writes about resting in God’s grace in the everyday moments of life as a woman, wife, and mother. She is on the blog contributor team at The Joyful Life and has featured articles at Risen Motherhood, Coffee + Crumbs, and Kindred Mom. You can find her words on her personal blog (dwellingword.com) and on Instagram (@bethanygbroderick).

Responsibility, exhaustion, and distraction often overshadow the joys of motherhood. Quiet and solitude remain as elusive as the Loch Ness monster. As we pour ourselves out for our children, we struggle to find more to offer our spouses, friends, and God.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if the solution consisted of doing less rather than more? What if being mindful of each moment enabled us to refresh our souls and glorify God?

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1) Start your morning by reading Psalm 148 and 150 and carry that spirit into your day. Actively look for moments of beauty, write them on your heart, and give praise to the Lord.

2) Read and meditate on Psalm 103 and/or 136.

3) Find a few moments to marvel at God’s creation around you. Consider these songs to accompany your solitary worship:  Chris Tomlin’s “I Stand In Awe” featuring Nicole Serrano or “Beautiful Beyond Description” performed by Soul Survivor and Momentum.

4) Challenge yourself to spend time outside each day this week. Try to experience God with all five senses and turn the time into a prayer of praise. If you can’t go outside, marvel over prerecorded sights and sounds from nature.

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Momma Theologians Contributor

Leslie Klosterman

Leslie Klosterman has savored more than a decade as a stay-at-home mother and volunteer. However, she recently took a leap of faith and completed her master’s degree in Christian Spirituality and Formation at Regent University. God has blessed Leslie with three lively sons (a teenager and twins who are eight). Leslie loves God, reading, writing, K-Dramas, dessert, and taking pictures. She also has a passion for ministering to women and children. You can find more of her writing at her personal blog. 

My parents modeled spiritual disciplines, read to us, taught us how to think, and demonstrated repentance. They did this in small, daily moments of faithfulness as well as after intentional planning. It wasn’t complicated, but these four areas became powerful patterns in my life that shaped me and are now shaping my parenting.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DEVOTIONAL NEWSLETTER TO STAY CONNECTED WITH OUR MINISTRY

Go to www.mommatheologians.com 

Find articles and essays written by mothers just like you as they share stories and reflections about how they grow spiritually in Christ in the midst of motherhood.

Join our community on Instagram @mommatheologians

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Momma Theologians Contributor

Kyleigh Dunn

Kyleigh Dunn is wife to Ezra and mother to three young girls. She reads obsessively, enjoys playing oboe and piano, and seeks to spread awareness of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders in the church and apply theology and biblical encouragement to moms experiencing them. Kyleigh blogs at www.thesojourningdunns.wordpress.com and can be found on Instagram @kyleighrdunn or Facebook @thesojourningdunns.

I’ve come to realize that most of my identity crises - both regarding  to motherhood and with my spiritual growth - start with comparison.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DEVOTIONAL NEWSLETTER TO STAY CONNECTED WITH OUR MINISTRY

Go to www.mommatheologians.com 

Find articles and essays written by mothers just like you as they share stories and reflections about how they grow spiritually in Christ in the midst of motherhood.

Join our community on Instagram @mommatheologians

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Momma Theologians Contributor

Denise Assis Dos Santos

Denise is a pastor, wife, and mother of two boys who wake up way too early every morning. She is a Brazilian living in Oslo, Norway, and speaks Norwegian and English in addition to her mother language, Portuguese. Denise has a burning desire to serve Jesus and to manifest His Kingdom on earth, all while juggling motherhood and a full-time job. You will find her writing, drinking coffee, listening to worship music, and working up the courage to do the dishes.

If you’re anything like me, you probably start your day with hot coffee and short prayers.

Lord, give me strength, help me wake up, please make the baby sleep a little bit longer, please be the patience I come up short with. You might be mentally reviewing and ordering your tasks for the day, or you might prefer to wing it. You might be readying children for school or gearing up for “long days of small things” with your littles, as the author and theologian Catherine McNiel so aptly phrases it in her book of the same name. Whatever season of mothering you are in, I imagine your plate is full and your capacity for care might be waning. You are doing all that you can and trusting that God’s grace will provide for all that falls through the cracks, and these days, it may feel like pretty much everything is.

1.  Ask Holy Spirit to show you if there are any areas in your life where you could more wholeheartedly support the wellbeing of your family?

2. Do something out of the ordinary for your kids—bake them a batch of chocolate chip cookies on a Wednesday afternoon and tell them (and yourself) how delicious God’s love is!

3.  There are 221 references to the word “build” in the ESV translation of Scripture. Spend some time on biblegateway.com reading through the verses referencing this word. Pick one Scripture to re-write in your own words, and meditate on what God is showing you through this verse or passage.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DEVOTIONAL NEWSLETTER TO STAY CONNECTED WITH OUR MINISTRY

Go to www.mommatheologians.com 

Find articles and essays written by mothers just like you as they share stories and reflections about how they grow spiritually in Christ in the midst of motherhood.

Join our community on Instagram @mommatheologians

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Momma Theologians Contributor

Kelsi Folsom

Kelsi Folsom is a poet and singer making her home in beautiful Kansas City with her husband and four young children. She navigates the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood with black coffee, her library card, and a no.2 pencil. Her essays and poems are published in Motherly, Coffee and Crumbs, Grit and Virtue, Verily Magazine, Mothers Always Write, Kindred Mom, and elsewhere. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Breaking the Jar (Finishing Line Press, 2022), Buried in the Margins (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and Words the Dirt Meant to Share (Desert Willow Press, 2018). Having lived in multiple countries and moved fourteen times since getting married, Kelsi loves encouraging women to find refreshment and comfort in the moment-by-moment friendship of Jesus Christ. She firmly believes in the power of true worship to foster healing through the embodiment of God’s unconditional love. When she isn’t cooking for family and friends, she enjoys thrifting, reading Bible commentaries, and occasionally putting her B.M. in Voice Performance to good use. Connect with her on IG @kelsifolsom and sign up for her quarterly newsletter The Shameless Beauty Digest.

None of us would admit we view God as a cosmic vending machine who will dole out blessings if we only insert the right coins of our good works.  Yet, here we are, living as though this karma ideology was the gospel truth.

Momma Theologians Practical Takeaways 

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DEVOTIONAL NEWSLETTER TO STAY CONNECTED WITH OUR MINISTRY

Go to www.mommatheologians.com 

Find articles and essays written by mothers just like you as they share stories and reflections about how they grow spiritually in Christ in the midst of motherhood.

Join our community on Instagram @mommatheologians

Our team consists of fifteen writers and Momma Theologians, plus myself,  but it is always a joy to host and steward others’ words in this space to encourage you on in your spiritual growth.

If you are a writer and would enjoy the opportunity to be featured on our podcast, just like Elena Limoges is featured on this one, or to have your essay published at Momma Theologians, check out our writer’s and submissions guidelines at: mommatheologians.com/writer

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Momma Theologians Guest Writer

Elena Limoges

Elena Limoges is a registered nurse turned writer living on the West Side of Chicago. She is passionate about telling stories of God’s goodness, even in difficult situations. She draws on her experience to write in the spaces of mental health and also justice. When she is not caring for her two small sons, you can find her making delicious food, delving into audiobooks, and discovering new coffee shops around the city.

This gives Eve hope: childbearing will be painful, but the womb will be an instrumental tool moving God’s plan of redemption forward. It is a  primary weapon in the war between the seed of the Serpent and the seed of Promise.

Read the full essay here.

We are so thankful you found us here!

Momma Theologians is a new motherhood ministry podcast and our mission is to revive spiritual growth in the midst of motherhood.

We offer resources, articles, essays, a monthly devotional newsletter and more at www.mommatheologians.com

Be sure to follow us on social media @mommatheologians

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Momma Theologians Contributor

Kyleigh Dunn

Kyleigh Dunn is wife to Ezra and mother to three young girls. She reads obsessively, enjoys playing oboe and piano, and seeks to spread awareness of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders in the church and apply theology and biblical encouragement to moms experiencing them. Kyleigh blogs at www.thesojourningdunns.wordpress.com and can be found on Instagram @kyleighrdunn or Facebook @thesojourningdunns.

Christ’s death and resurrection open the door for our salvation. Jesus makes “safe the way that leads on high, and [closes] the path to misery.” God not only makes us new, He drives history forward to the New Heavens and the New Earth, where there is no more sorrow. He works to pull us out of a world of death and decay.

    3. If you are currently grieving miscarriage, set aside time to lament, honestly bringing your pain before God as you seek to trust Him.

For more comfort regarding miscarriage, I highly recommend the book Held, edited by Abbey Wedgeworth, for mom, and the corresponding Ours, edited by Eric Schumacher, for dad.

Read the full essay here.

We are so thankful you found us here!

Momma Theologians is a new motherhood ministry podcast and our mission is to revive spiritual growth in the midst of motherhood.

We offer resources, articles, essays, a monthly devotional newsletter and more at www.mommatheologians.com

Be sure to follow us on social media @mommatheologians

__________________________________________

Momma Theologians Contributor

Kyleigh Dunn

Kyleigh Dunn is wife to Ezra and mother to three young girls. She reads obsessively, enjoys playing oboe and piano, and seeks to spread awareness of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders in the church and apply theology and biblical encouragement to moms experiencing them. Kyleigh blogs at www.thesojourningdunns.wordpress.com and can be found on Instagram @kyleighrdunn or Facebook @thesojourningdunns.

Mommas, though I’m sure you’re busy chasing toddlers and keeping up with laundry today, let’s go back to high school for a little bit. Remember the days when our worries were school dances, pep rallies, and grades? In the midst of those days, we sat in English classes and learned about genres. In my previous article and podcast episode, “Understanding the Importance of Genre in the Old Testament,” we learn that genre matters, especially in studying Scripture. Knowing the genre of a book of the Bible enables us to interpret and apply it correctly. Today, let’s focus on genres in the New Testament, which are typically a little more familiar to us. However, there are still helpful things to consider when studying each different genre.

Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)

Acts

Letters/Epistles (Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude)

Revelation

Read the full essay here.

We are so thankful you found us here!

Momma Theologians is a new motherhood ministry podcast and our mission is to revive spiritual growth in the midst of motherhood.

We offer resources, articles, essays, a monthly devotional newsletter and more at www.mommatheologians.com

Be sure to follow us on social media @mommatheologians

____________________

Momma Theologians Contributor

Cassie Pattillo

Cassie is a student pastor’s wife, mom to two energetic boys, and hopeful adoptive mom to their daughter, growing in their hearts from India. She’s passionate about biblical literacy, and writing and teaching about Scripture. Currently, she’s pursuing an M.A. in Ministry to Women from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary to better equip her to teach God’s Word. Cassie loves slow mornings with a cup of coffee, a good book on the beach, and Gamecock football. She loves giving Gospel-centered encouragement through writing, which you can find on her blog, Diaries of a Daughter.  

TAGS*

Christian Motherhood, Momma Theologian, Bible, Jesus, Women in the   Word, Women of the Word, Bible Study, Woman Bible Study, Risen   Motherhood, Journeywoman, Mothering in faith, Motherhood, Christian   Motherhood, Christian Mom Ministry, Children's Bible Study, Raising   Christian Children, Praying Mom, Help Me Teach the Bible,  Metanarrative,  Calling of Motherhood, God's Grace in Motherhood,  Motherhood Encouragement, Bible Study, Bible Genres

Have you ever been downright confused when attempting to read your Bible? Have you ever questioned how you should even read certain parts of Scripture? If so, momma, you’re not alone.

Law (Genesis-Deuteronomy, but note these books contain some narrative also).

Narrative (Joshua-Esther)

Poetry/Wisdom Literature (Job-Song of Solomon)

Prophecy (Isaiah-Malachi)

What does this teach me about God?

How does this point to Christ?

Therefore, how should this change the way I live?

Read the full essay here.

We are so thankful you found us here!

Momma Theologians is a new motherhood ministry podcast and our mission is to revive spiritual growth in the midst of motherhood.

We offer resources, articles, essays, a monthly devotional newsletter and more at www.mommatheologians.com

Be sure to follow us on social media @mommatheologians

_____________________________________________

Momma Theologians Contributor

Cassie Pattillo

Cassie is a student pastor’s wife, mom to two energetic boys, and hopeful adoptive mom to their daughter, growing in their hearts from India. She’s passionate about biblical literacy, and writing and teaching about Scripture. Currently, she’s pursuing an M.A. in Ministry to Women from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary to better equip her to teach God’s Word. Cassie loves slow mornings with a cup of coffee, a good book on the beach, and Gamecock football. She loves giving Gospel-centered encouragement through writing, which you can find on her blog, Diaries of a Daughter.  

TAGS*

Christian Motherhood, Momma Theologian, Bible, Jesus, Women in the   Word, Women of the Word, Bible Study, Woman Bible Study, Risen   Motherhood, Journeywoman, Mothering in faith, Motherhood, Christian   Motherhood, Christian Mom Ministry, Children's Bible Study, Raising   Christian Children, Praying Mom, Help Me Teach the Bible,  Metanarrative,  Calling of Motherhood, God's Grace in Motherhood,  Motherhood Encouragement, Bible study, Bible Genre