The Gospel of Jesus Christ
Whenever people ask me “How do you do it?” (do you get this question a lot also with your litter of children?) I always say “Jody and Jesus”
Which means that the way I handle life with littles is through the Life Coaching tools (Jody is my coach) and The Gospel of Jesus Christ (Jesus is my enabling power to actually put in practice those tools).
We talk a lot about the life coaching tools here in this blog but I’d love to incorporate more of the Jesus tools also. He was the original author of all the models, after all.
The Prophet, President Russell M Nelson said “His gospel is the ONLY enduring solution for peace.” And we are here learning how to create more peace in our parenting so we need to understand how His gospel can be that solution for us personally in our homes and with our kids.
So what is the gospel exactly? Christ’s model is this: Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Confirmation, and Endure to the End.
Ok…. that is the solution for peace in parenting?… How exactly? Let’s dig in!
Faith: Faith is belief. Beliefs are thoughts that we keep on thinking. Ding ding ding! That is thought work coach tools we always use. But to take it to the next level, we have faith in Christ. We believe that Christ is there, he wants to help us, he can help us. His grace will enable us to do what we cannot do alone. We can be like him. He will help us develop his characteristics that will help us in parenting: patience, long suffering, kindness, gentleness, meekness, humility, LOVE! The image of the ideal mom that we are trying to be is probably like Jesus. He is those things. He can teach us how to BEcome those things also. We have to first believe that he can and he will.
Repentance: President Nelson has also said that repentance is not a punishment. It is a change of heart and mind. Ding Ding Ding! Life coaching again. Changing our thoughts and feelings is what we’re all about! Changing our view of the world to be in alignment with how He views the world. It is His world, after all. Gaining a new perspective. We daily repent of our thoughts that are not his thoughts. Are you still beating yourself up with shame? Would Christ say those things about you? Of course not! Then we need to heal those thoughts. If we look at sin as a wound and Christ is the master healer to cleanse those wounds, repentance sounds more like the loving process that it is.
Baptism: We do this once a lifetime, right? My 8 year old son is getting baptized tomorrow, actually, so we are talking a lot about baptism in our family. And one thing we all know for sure is that after he is washed clean tomorrow, he for sure will continue to make mistakes that need repentance. So this model is not actually linear and one and done. We continue to need faith and to repent. Over and over. Even baptism is not a one time thing. Every week in the sacrament we renew our baptismal covenants. So again, it’s a daily, weekly, ongoing thing. We can covenant with God every time he directs us in how to help our children that we will do as he has inspired us to do. We are in a partnership with Him. We are all in! He gave us these kids and he knows what they need. He knows they need you. And he will guide you on the best way to help them. Which leads us to the next part..
Gift of the Holy Ghost: My 6 year old daughter called it “The Holy Ghost Present” the other day. haha so cute!! But also fantastic that she glommed onto the fact that her brother is about to receive the best present ever! The Holy Ghost is the cleansing and purifying agent that makes repentance possibly. It is the Peace that comes from the gospel. He is the comforter that gets us out of shame and reminds us of our worth. He is our soul’s connection to our Heavenly Parents. He is where our inspiration and intuition come from. No parenting expert outside of you will know what is best for you and your kids. Even as your coach, I don’t tell you what to do. I help you with all the previous steps so that you can clear the clouds and receive the answers on what to do for yourself. You are the expert on you and your kids because you have this gift. The Holy Ghost will inspire you to know exactly what each child needs. We are all unique and God created each of the intricacies so He knows what’s best. And you can tap into that direction.
And lastly is Endure to the End: That doesn’t sound that fun to me. Enduring sounds like trudging through the mud in boots. And some days in parenting feels exactly like that. But why do we expect it to be easy? We are doing the most important work there is! So of course it won’t be easy. Pero todo lo que cuesta, vale la pena! The hard will be worth it. The lessons learned from the hard is the whole point. And you can do hard things!! This is the rinse and repeat step. Endure in your faith, continue to repent and stay in aligned action, recommit to your covenants, and enjoy the peace the gospel brings. Over and over and over until the end.
That my friend, is my interpretation of the gospel of Jesus Christ for today. As the Prophet said “His gospel is the only answer.” I’ve written a lot of blogs, sent a lot of emails, recorded a lot of videos and there is even more where all of that came from but hopefully, as i stay aligned with Christ, all of the content has this basic framework all laced throughout because this is the answer. Christ is the way the truth the light. Look to Him and Live!
