What I Learned This Week Carnival *WITH GIVEAWAY*

The giveaway portion of this carnival is closed.  (Feel free to continue to link in, although at this point you may want to wait until our next carnival this Tuesday, February 3rd!)   The winner of the casserole dish is Amy @ One Mom’s Memos.  Congratulations, Amy!

I am beyond thrilled with this week’s participation!!  I hope everyone is planning to stop by again on Tuesday and share with us what you learned THIS week.  And if you didn’t get a chance to visit everyone, take a while and make your rounds.  You’ll find some delightful posts, and who knows, you might even make a new friend!

So here we are, the very first Things I Learned This Week Carnival is getting underway.  Here’s the deal.  Just write a post about what you’ve been learning over the past week or so.  It can be one sentence.  It can be several paragraphs.  It can be serious.  It can be silly.  It can be thoughtful.  It can be sweet and sentimental.  It can be sarcastic.  It can be profound.  It can be ANYTHING that you learned that is of a family friendly nature, ahem.  In your post, please include a text link back to this post.  Feel free to use the button as well, but that’s optional.  Here’s the code.

<br /><a href=”http://www.musingsofahousewife.com/2009/01/what-i-learned-this-week-carnival-with-giveaway.html” mce_href=”http://www.musingsofahousewife.com/2009/01/what-i-learned-this-week-carnival-with-giveaway.html”><img src=”http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj12/dcrdesign/What-I-Learned-This-Week.jpg” mce_src=”http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj12/dcrdesign/What-I-Learned-This-Week.jpg” border=”0″ /></a>

Then link up with the Mr. Linky form down below.  (Please don’t link to your main page; link to your carnival post, okay?  Got it?  Good!)

So this is what I learned this week.  We read this line in our Bible study last week, and it made me start to think.

We gladly proclaim that justification and glorification are all of grace, but we live as if sanctification is all of our effort.  Living like that doesn’t fulfill our high calling because it turns the spotlight away from God’s glory and shines it on us. – Carole Ruvolo

I absolutely believe that my sanctification is accomplished by God’s grace as much as my salvation and glorification.  But I do believe I often forget to live that way.

And further, I realized that I don’t counsel my children adequately in this area.  Which brought to my memory my son’s very first preschool teacher.  This woman was a fabulous teacher.  She loved and treated each of her students as if they were her own grandchildren.  She was exuberant and silly but equally in charge.  And she had a Prayer Chair.

The Prayer Chair was for Time Out, but she never presented it in a punitive way.  She sent children to the prayer chair to ask God for the grace to do the right thing. Whether it was to keep his hands to himself or to not dismantle the eraser or whatever the child was doing that was out of line, this teacher knew that it was only through God’s grace that we can do anything pleasing to Him, and when her children were in need of that grace, she directed them right to His throne.

This is something I’ve been striving to remember lately.  Rather than sending my 3-year-old into a time out to stew, I send her there to pray.  And when it’s time for her to get up (at her age, only a couple minutes) I don’t just send her off to play.  I take the time to talk with her about her actions and model a prayer asking for God’s grace.

Which makes perfect sense because biblical discipline is intended to be restorative, not punitive.  When God disciplines us, it is with the goal of bringing us back into a right relationship with him.  Likewise when we discipline our children, we should always seek restoration above retribution.  After all, it’s ultimately not the behavior that is the most important thing — but the state of the heart.

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And just to make it a little bit more fun, there is a prize for one lucky participant! At the end of the week, I’ll randomly select someone who participated in the carnival to receive an assortment of Libby’s Vegetables in a red Mayfair & Jackson Covered Casserole Dish with Rack.

FUN?

Okay, so get ready, get set, go!  Link away!  I can’t wait to see what you’ve learned this week.  And be sure to drop in at the other carnival participants’ blogs and see what they learned this week.  Spread the love!  The more, the merrier!