A Bit of Encouragement + Free iPhone Wallpaper

There a few quotes on parenting that have really encouraged me in the past few months. The words of Charles Spurgeon have buoyed my heart no less than several times. He said:

“You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, and training them up in God’s fear, and minding the house, and making your household a church for God, as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.”

And then there’s this quote by Andy Stanley, who said: “Your greatest contribution to the kingdom of God may not be something you do but someone you raise.”

I first read those words when I was crafting this post, and they’ve stuck with me. They echo around in my head and remind me that this work of raising little ones has eternal significance. Yes, there are the day-in-day-out tasks of feeding hungry tummies, changing diapers, wiping tears, directing play and picking up messes, but there is also the immense privilege of shepherding their hearts. Truth  be told, it’s something I often fail at and sometimes succeed at, but the good news of the Gospel is that His mercies are new every morning. Thus, even in my failures, I can wake with new mercies. The dawning of each day is a new opportunity to love on my children in a way that reflects Christ, even if I failed to do it the previous day. Even if I failed miserably. Because God is a God of redemption, I can receive that redemption and pour out grace to my children. Not because I’m perfect, far from it, but because I’m the recipient of abundant grace.

To remind myself of this good news and the privilege of this role as a mom, I created an iPhone wallpaper featuring Andy Stanley’s quote. There are three versions available: Gold, Coral and Gray. The jpeg is optimized for iPhone 5, but it should work on other versions, and I assume it will work with other phones as well.

Simply download the image, and then save it to your phone’s camera roll. When setting the image as your wallpaper, you’ll need to turn “perspective zoom” off, then pinch the picture to scale it down to fit the frame. Make sense?

Download Gray here
Download Coral here
Download Gold here

I hope you enjoy!

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