July 16, 2008

• The Stretching Pattern for Fostering

  One of the harder things about foster parenting is not the actual
  parenting part but the fostering part. We are taking care of this
  little one and loving her as our very own. We do not limit the love we
  lavish on her nor the firmness needed for correction and guidance.
  However, at the end of the day, we need to remind ourselves that she is
  not ours for keeps. Weekly, she has visitations with her birth parents,
  and it’s those visits that drive the point home. God has given her to
  us for a short season and after that, she will return to her parents.
  If ever there was an experiential lesson on “the blessedness of
  possessing nothing” (AW Tozer, The Pursuit of God), this would be the
  one. To love fully but hold loosely and put our heart in God’s hands
  and our hope in His sovereign character — that is the stretching
  pattern of foster parenting.

  When “God’s gifts take the place of God…the whole course of nature is
  upset by the monstrous substitution.” — AW Tozer, The Pursuit of God

  “The blessed ones who possess the kingdom are they who have repudiated
  every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of
  possessing.” — AW Tozer, The Pursuit of God

  • 1:50 pm
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