Author Archives: Heidi St. John

About Heidi St. John

Heidi has been married to her husband Jay since 1989. Together they have seven children and three grandchildren! The St. Johns homeschooled their kids all the way through high school. Heidi is the the author of seven books, host of the popular podcast "Off the Bench," and the founder of MomStrong International, an online community of women learning God's Word and how to apply it to every day life. She and her husband Jay are also the founders of Firmly Planted Family and the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center, located in Vancouver, Washington.

When a Husband and Wife Disagree

Quiet Times Podcast: Teach Me to Pray

Keeping Short Accounts with God

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Good morning!

Did you know that God wants you and I to experience a fulfilling, love relationship with Him? It’s true!

Growing in the spiritual habit of confession is like taking a daily shower to clean us off from the filth and dirt of the day. Regular cleanups help us hear God’s voice, and harboring sin and wrong attitudes in our heart hinders our prayers. If our heart is the home of the King, then we will do well to make sure its rooms are clean.

To grasp the importance of house cleaning in our relationship with God, I’d like you to look up some verses that teach us about the act of confession. Take some time to write down these verses and look up each one, I’ve even listed them on my blog.

There are three verses to start with: 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Don’t you just love that about the Lord? He is faithful, He forgives us, He loves us, He wants to spend time with you.

There is something amazing about getting into the presence of God and just cleaning house with Him. When we clean house, we make an inventory of what needs to be cleaned.

So read Psalm 51 and write down everything you see that has to do with sin. Psalm 51:1 says, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love, according to Your great passion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from all my sin.”

In the culture that we live in, sin is not a popular topic. But the Bible says sin is what separates us from God—and pride keeps us from confessing our sin to others and to the Lord. Pride is a thief, robbing us of inner peace and joy. When we think that we do not need to confess our sin, it begins to fester, causing deeper hurt. Pride will try to keep us from being real, from asking for help or even being truthful with ourselves.

How do we keep the rooms of our heart clean? We can start by keeping short accounts with the Lord, busy moms, spend time with Him, allow Him to search your heart.

The Bible says that we want to allow the Lord into every part of our hearts. And be thankful for what happens when He comes in and forgives us of our sin.

When I confess my sins to the Lord, I get a sense of a mind that is being renewed, being washed. I think of the rooms in the house that are being cleaned.

Confession before God and men is a holy habit that is lacking in the disciplines of the inner life.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, “Life Together,” he writes, “He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.” He goes on to write that pious fellowship permits no one to be sinners and thus we are weak in our fellowship with one another. He says, everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship, and thus we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy.

It is so easy for us to try to hide our sin from the Lord, but, you know what? We can’t do it.

It really is amazing what the Lord does when we allow ourselves to come before Him, in humility, and confess and repent of all our sin in our life, and allow Him to bring those things to our mind.

Thank you, Father, that we live in a world in which You can still enter into our hearts and into our minds. Thank you, Lord. I am reminded that I live here, but I don’t wage war like the world does; I am reminded that the weapons of my warfare are not the weapons of this world.

Prayer is your best weapon, busy mom! Let’s pray for each other and for ourselves today, that we might walk humbly before God.

A Wise Mom Multiplies Her Efforts

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Did you know that mothers expand their work by multiplication and not just addition?

Proverbs has a lot to say about the training of children. In Proverbs 22:6 we read,

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

This is not a formula or a guarantee for flawless children, rather it is a principal that children keep good habits they learn when they are young. Every mother’s goal should be to train her children to replace her—and that starts when the children are young. Start with training your children to help you at home.

A mother’s effectiveness depends on multiplying her efforts around the house.

Recently, I’ve had conversations with new moms who are struggling to get their kids to work around the house. Simple things like chores become battles for control, and Mom’s frustration shows at the end of the day when she decides to do the chore herself. Hey, I get it! Sometimes it’s easier to clean the kitchen by myself than to train a child to do it while they grumble and complain, or even worse – grumble and complain while doing the chore wrong and then having to be told to do it again. That’s happened just a few times around my house. 😉

It does take a lot of effort on your part, but there is value in training your children to work. There is value in teaching your children how to do the things around the house. They help now and can do things on their own when they leave your house.

One time, I heard someone say that a mom who has her children working around the house is a lazy mom. I would like to suggest that nothing could be further from the truth! That person had clearly never trained a child to work around the house because it is so much easier to do it yourself, right? Most of you who have tried to teach children to work know exactly what I’m talking about!

Don’t be afraid be afraid to teach your children to work.

Today, sit down with your children and let them know exactly what is expected of them. Children who know what is expected of them have an easier time accomplishing things that are needed to be accomplished, and they feel secure in those expectations. It’s hard to work for someone when you don’t know what is expected of you!

A wise mom multiplies her efforts through training and teaching her children. Communicate with your children and train them up, Busy Mom. That’s your job.

Mending Relationships

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Do you have a relationship that needs mending?

Sometimes we have fights in our house. I hate to break it to you guys, but my home is not always calm and peaceful (shocking, I know!). There have been many times when we have needed to mend relationships in our home.

I want to take us to James 4 today. The first part of James 4 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but you don’t get it? You kill and covet but cannot have what you want, you quarrel and fight, you do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

It’s interesting to me that the more I get to know the Lord, over and over again God says the same things throughout Scripture. He says, trust me, talk to me, put down your flesh, and dwell and live in the spirit.

If we continue to read in chapter 4:6, we read, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” God opposes the proud, and gives grace to the humble.

If you are in the process of needing to mend a relationship in your life today, be willing to seek forgiveness for your own actions. As parents, we need to be humble and not lording our position over our children. Humility opens a child’s heart. When I can go to my child and say, “You know what, I’m sorry, I could have done that better,” it’s amazing the response I will get, as opposed to saying, “You need to apologize to me.”

Several years ago, I had an instance with one of my daughters- a hardness of heart- and I was having a hard time getting through. I asked the Lord to give me a specific grace for this particular child, and I felt like the Lord was telling me, “Tell her that you need her grace for you. Ask her to pray for you.” I went into her room and I was tucking her in bed for the evening and we said our prayers together, I said to her, “You know what sweetheart? Mom is struggling with these things…” I could almost see her heart begin to soften as I told her some things in my own life (like pride and fear) that I was struggling with. It was almost as if my willingness to expose a tender part of my heart made her hear tender towards me.

So if you have the opportunity to, seek forgiveness from your children if you need to. Children want to forgive their parents. Wait for the Lord to speak to your child and then wait for your child to respond to you verbally.

Try it out. See if it does work. God says that forgiveness clears the conscious. Take the time to mend your relationship with your children.

Keepin’ it real, Moms!

A Spiritual Battle

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Have you been watching the news lately? So many things bring uncertainty into our lives, don’t they? I’m doing a fair amount of sitting around right now, as I recover slowly from the emotional and physical journey of a hysterectomy. As I watched tonight, I saw a mom interviewed about the fear she struggles with over possibly losing her healthcare and not being able to provide for her children. So many things up in the air. It’s easy for us to become afraid, isn’t it?

Well, just in time, we’re still talking about Esther today, but in relationship to the verses we find in Ephesians 6. If you have your Bible, open it to Ephesians 6 and get out your highlighter and pen, because you’re going to want to highlight this passage.

In Ephesians 6:10 we read,

“Finally be strong in the Lord, and in His mighty power put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything to stand.

Stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, with your feet fitted with readiness that comes with the gospel of peace; in addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one; take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God, and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”

Solomon once said that there is “nothing new under the sun.” How true that is! Just like the time of Esther, the battle that we are fighting now is a spiritual battle. There has always been good and evil. There have always been wicked men in this world. God uses even the the difficult things. He is always at work. Esther understood this.

Esther had the wisdom to see that the battle she was fighting needed spiritual weapons. In the same way we encounter things in our daily lives- whether it’s with our husbands, our marriage, our children, strife in our churches, frustrations in our friendships or struggles with our health, we need to recognize who the enemy really is.

The Bible says we do not struggle against flesh and blood, we are engaged in a spiritual battle. There really is wickedness in this world, so we need to be looking at the world with spiritual eyes. We cannot fight this spiritual battle using a carnal weapons like manipulation or unkind words. We need to be using the weapons of prayer and application of the Word of God. Those are the weapons we use to engage in spiritual warfare! We read in Ephesians 6 that we are to put on the belt of truth and buckle it around our waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and fit our feet with the gospel of peace. God is telling us over and over again that the battle we fight is a spiritual battle.

Are you ready to fight a spiritual battle? Do you spend the time you need to spend putting on your armor? Gear up Busy Mom. Gear up for a spiritual battle. Put on the full armor of God!

Gird up,

For Such a Time as This

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Have you ever struggled with fear?

Esther enters the Bible and enters history during the reign of King Ahasuerus, when the Persian Empire was at its peak. Esther’s challenge was to serve God in challenging circumstances. Now, Esther – as well as all the other women who were being considered to be King’s wife – knew that Ahasuerus was a fearful man and he had a lot of power. Esther had a lot of reason to be full of fear!

But the Bible mentions two different types of fear: the first type is beneficial, and is to be encouraged, and that is the fear of God. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The second type of fear is detrimental and it is the kind that we need to overcome: it is the fear of man. The first type of fear brings with it blessings and benefits, and is the beginning of wisdom and leads us to understanding.

In Psalm 111:10 we read that wisdom and our faith in the Lord leads us to understanding. The Bible says in Proverbs that only fools despise wisdom and discipline. And the fear of the Lord leads to light, rest, peace, and contentment in Proverbs 19:23. Proverbs 14:27 says it is the fountain of life and it provides security and a place of safety for us. We can see how fearing God can be encouraged, but fearing man is not beneficial at all. This is the spirit of fear that is mentioned in 2 Timothy 1:7 where we read “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.” A spirit of fearfulness and timidity does not come from God. If you’re wrestling with the fear of man today, ask the Lord to take it from you. And as we learn more about Esther this week, you will discover as you give your fears over to the Lord, He will replace those fears with faith.