Insights
Excellent Design
My daughter, Sarah, is expecting her first baby early next year. We have been walking through all the stages of pregnancy, both good and hard. We are excited about how this baby is being knit together in her womb, how he is fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14) and how loved he already is even before we have seen him! (1 Peter 1:8) We serve a loving God who created us by excellent design! While new life is being created inside her, the Lord is also equipping Sarah and Nick to parent this baby once he is born, to train him in the way he should go. This baby will be a beautiful mix of the good and the complicated parts of both his parents with a few extra qualities created specific to this unique baby. Sometimes we get our eyes too focused on the child and think of everything through that lens instead of focusing on the Lord and seeing our children through the eyes of their Creator and King who lovingly wired them to desire a relationship with Him; remembering that fostering that is our greatest calling as parents. I love this quote by Sally Clarkson, "As lifegiving parents, one of our most important tasks is to help our children discover themselves in the story God is writing, to find their places in the unfolding tale of God's grand purpose and plan and to know that we are all, as a family, in that story together."
Parenting is sanctifying work, isn’t it? You have been given this precious gift that is fearfully and wonderfully made and you now have the privilege of raising them, although sometimes it feels like an overwhelming job that we are severely under trained and ill equipped to do. Well actually, that’s true, we are not enough on our own to parent our precious children. The Lord did that on purpose so that we look to Him for guidance and direction. Just like the compass Mrs. McIlvoy referenced in her article last week that uses magnets to be pulled in the right direction, God placed “magnets” inside of us that are pulled by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God and tell us what turn our story should take next.
Do you know there are two things that affect the ability of a compass to accurately point out directions? One, the quality of the compass and two, the environment. Since we know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, the excellent design of The Master Craftsman who doesn't make mistakes, who created us in His image and who desires to pull us close to Him; we know quality of design is not the problem, so we can safely say that the environment could be causing our magnetic pull to go awry. When we look at how to do the next right thing with our children, we should be looking at the next steps through the lens of a Biblical mindset, but sometimes our default mindset is our cultural mindset. Culture is a strong magnetic force that pulls so vigorously on our families these days. We are so tied to our electronic devices that we have begun to filter everything through the lens of “group think” on Instagram or FaceBook or YouTube, and we forget to strengthen our magnetic pull to the Father by spending time with Him in prayer and through His Word so that our strongest pull comes through our Biblical mindset and not our cultural one.
It is so exciting to raise children in this season when the world is being pulled apart at the seams because we know the One who pulls us all together! If your inner compass is feeling a bit off, strengthen your magnetic pull to your Creator by reading the Word and spending time in worship and prayer. Don’t stress about the next turn in the path or new direction in this season, just strengthen the Lord’s pull on your heart more than the culture’s pull on it and you will be automatically led to do the next right thing as that inner compass of your “fearfully and wonderfully made” heart leans into the strong magnetic pull of a loving Father desiring to lead your family in the way you should go.
Becky Ross
Primary Education Principal
Logos Preparatory Academy
The Ultimate Compass
There are four fundamental forces at work in nature: gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear forces. The plumbline, used at Logos Prep as a visual reminder to strive for excellence, is an example of a tool pulled by gravitational forces. The compass, our symbol for navigating God’s Excellent Story, is controlled by magnetism. Ultimately, we are all pulled by something. While some of the forces influencing our lives are fixed, such as inherited traits and genetics, many other forces can be controlled. Things such as desire, distraction, and negative peer pressure are unavoidable on our life’s journey but need not be given the power to determine our paths. Parents have a tremendous opportunity to drive and direct the hearts and lives of their children by teaching them to choose their influences well. It is a parent’s job to equip their children with a good compass and drop pins for them to follow as they go.
We must all have a strong directional compass to guide us on this journey. According to the authors of Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, “a good compass is a credible source that signals when you’re going off course.” None is a more credible guide than He who has planned the journey and written the story of our lives. In discussing God’s Excellent Story over the course of the 2024-25 school year, it is our great hope that students will recognize who the author of their story is and come to value His direction above all. We also hope that they will not seek to rewrite the story in a way unintended by the Author.
“When he’s writing our stories, we are healthy… But when we are writing our own stories, we are vulnerable to pressure or unexpected events,” from Freedom in His Story by Ellen Schuknecht.
This year, there will be pressures and unexpected events. There will be forces that try to pull on the hearts of adults and children alike. Seek now to orient your life toward the Truth of God’s Word and His great plan for you and your children. Let Him be your greatest desire and source of all direction. Keep the plumbline and compass in mind as reminders that there is a standard of excellence and that God will direct us through His Excellent Story.
As Dallas Willard points out, “If God is the great longing of our souls, He will become the polestar of our inward beings.”
May it be so for each of us and the children we love.
Tammy McIlvoy
Head of School
Logos Preparatory Academy
The Big Story
The Big Story
The most excellent story ever told begins in Genesis 1:1 with In the Beginning. God has told us an excellent story, cast us in an excellent story and woven a love of story into our hearts. Whether we realize it or not, we are drawn to and driven by narrative. Each of us is living out a story. Parents, teachers and other leaders serve children well when they help children discover their place in God’s story.
“From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is telling us about the reign and rule of God. This is the Big Story of the Bible, the purpose for which it was written.” Jen Wilkin, author of Women of the Word
An understanding of God’s Big Story comes through correct interpretation of the many smaller stories that create the narrative from Genesis to Revelation, from Creation to the fall through redemption and restoration. For example, if one doesn’t get past the creation story with an understanding of God as creator of it all, the rest of the story is hard to comprehend. Similarly, each of us live out the big story of our lives through everyday smaller stories. Interpretation of those small stories will shape our view of our big story, and God’s Bigger Story. “The story we believe is the story we live out.” John Mark Comer, author of Practicing the Way
Storytelling has been around as long as humankind has been around. It is a part of every culture. God is a master storyteller. He is also the author of our excellent stories. Unfortunately, many of us live out narratives that are not true to the story God has written over our lives. We misunderstand who the villain is and who the hero is. We get caught up in small unimportant narratives and fail to play our part in the Big Story. We misinterpret small stories and rewrite the truth.
Every human being tells themselves a story. We weave stories to make our world and our lives make sense. Stories provide meaning, helping us find purpose. The story is what you believe in yourself, the world, and God. We must pick our stories carefully because they determine who we are. We must all be intentional about the narratives we are shaping for ourselves and our children. In his book How to Know a Person, David Brooks makes the claim that therapists are essentially just story editors. This year, we want to get our story right and help our students do the same.
There will be opportunities to be caught up in less than excellent stories. We can allow political, social, and economic narratives to improperly focus our story. We can allow social media and the news to inform our stories instead of the Word of God. We can allow negativity to shape our thoughts and thereby shape our story. We can give ourselves permission to focus on the world’s story instead of God’s Story. But as John Eldredge reminds us in his book Resilient, “The story of God, the story of Jesus Christ has been, is now, and always will be the story of the world.”
At Parent Recharge, Keynote Speaker Pat Connor shared three responsibilities parents have in helping their children find their way in God’s Excellent Story:
Help your child know God.
Know your child.
Help your child know himself.
Let’s all work together to tell an excellent story, insist that our children know the things of God, and that we know our children well enough to help them learn to know themselves.
It’s going to be an EXCELLENT year at Logos Prep and I am thankful to be living it out with you and your children.
Revelation 22:13 ESV
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
Book Recommendations:
Epic by John Eldredge
Great book to read as a family!
Resilient: Restoring your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times by John Eldredge
Freedom in His Story by Ellen Schuknecht
Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer
How To Know A Person by David Brooks
We were also given the gift of many copies of Carrie Sheffield’s Motorhome Prophecies. The giver based the number of books given on the number of students we have in high school. Therefore, any family with a high school student may come to the DEN at the 59 Campus to receive a copy, or have their high school student pop in to pick one up. The memoir is Carrie Sheffield’s story which takes the reader through her difficult childhood under an abusive father, who used religion as his motivator, to the point of her true conversion to Christ. While written from a Christian perspective, the book does contain challenging storylines and some foul language.
Tammy McIlvoy
Head of School
Logos Preparatory Academy
