As a woman constantly seeking God for strength and wisdom, I am passionate about my call as an older woman to pour God’s strength and wisdom into women younger in the Christian faith. If I am not careful, and there have been times when I wasn’t so careful, I confused my teaching and telling. Instead of teaching the younger women how to be strong and wise in God, I would largely share the prescriptions given to me to be wise and strong. In some cases, this isn’t always wrong; some of the ways I received were good general directions that all Christians should employ. But the times when the teaching and telling got confused was when I told the ladies I was leading how I did something and expected them to do it JUST LIKE ME. Perhaps the way I handled a situation was biblical, but confusion would come when I would expect the women to follow ME, not necessarily follow me as I follow Christ. I unwittingly was creating mini-me’s instead of creating biblical mini-me’s. God wants us to reproduce others in His image and not our own.

This can happen to us with anyone we’re leading. As strong black women seeking to operate according to God’s strength, there may be several in our circle looking to us for direction. The challenge always will be to lead them so Christ is formed in them and not we ourselves (Galatians 4:19). In my latest EEW column, I discuss in detail the challenge to develop our children into biblical mini-me’s and not just mini-me’s. The column begins below:

The other day on Facebook I saw pictures of these little girls that looked like little women. The cutline on the pictures asked readers if they would dress their daughters in those pint-sized heels, highly decorative stockings, high-rising skirts and bejeweled earrings and necklaces. Of course the answer for many Christians would be ‘definitely not,’ but some of us get pleasure out of seeing our version of a mini-me. We may not want our children physically-fashioned like us, but we may marvel that our children may not only look like us but also cut a look like we do, respond sharply as we do and otherwise behave in our undesirable ways. We may laugh and accept what we see, simply saying, “She is just like me.” Though some of the mini-meism is genetic, some is environmental, learned from observation or from being intentionally taught. Either way we know that our children learn from us. Our job is to make sure that what is caught and taught is biblical, that we are biblically-fashioning mini-me’s.

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1—ESV). This is what our attitude should be as we seek to help our children to mature. We should only want them to be like us if we are being like Jesus Christ. And as Jesus Christ grew he “. . . became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). So, just as Christ grew, we have to help our children grow spiritually, mentally and emotionally. Read the rest here.

My One Thousand Gifts List

#741-750
Listening to Roy Hargrove
Having a sufficient amount of leftovers
My books arriving
Selling three of my books
More spectacular items for my message
A visit from Hilda and Christian
Getting a quick prescription for Joshua’s pink eye
Not having to take Joshua to the doctor
God’s timing for allowing Joshua’s pink eye to manifest when I had a doctor in my home to be able to diagnose and prescribe Joshua’s prescription
Being able to edge my mom’s hair