A dear, longtime friend of mine, Sally Clarkson‘s words have mentored, encouraged, and inspired me over the years—so I can think of no better person to speak on the power of words. Her wisdom is an endless well to draw from, her kind heart is an inspiration to many, and her dedication to and affection for God are evident enough to inspire anyone she comes across. In her new book, Giving Your Words, which she co-wrote with her husband, Clay, she illustrates how words are an integral part of our children’s faith formation, and offers practical advice and biblical wisdom on growing our vocabulary to include life-giving, faith-molding words. It’s a grace to welcome Sally to the farm’s table today . . .

Guest Post by Sally Clarkson

So, back in 1999, we moved from Texas to Colorado, to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in Monument, a bedroom community twenty miles north of downtown Colorado Springs on Interstate 25.

Two miles west of the interstate and Monument Hill, sitting at about the same 7,000-foot altitude, our foothills home was wedged into a man-made hillside cleft with only sprawling acres of national forest for a backyard.

Clay and the boys would spend many hours walking and talking along the trails of Mount Raspberry and Mount Herman, but they also enjoyed a “Boys’ Night In” together at home, taking journeys along more spiritual paths.

The first year in Monument, when Joel was about thirteen and Nathan about eleven, Clay would meet with them every Wednesday night to read aloud and discuss Robert Lewis’s popular book about guiding sons into manhood, Raising a Modern-Day Knight.

It was a strategic and intentional time for nurturing with life-giving words of grace. They would gather in Clay’s comfortable and manly home office, close the door, and enjoy hot chocolate and a homemade treat designed to prime the discussion pump.

They started the time just talking about guy things, to open heart doors, and then they would read and discuss a chapter of the book. Lewis talks about the ideals, ceremonies, community, and legacy of knighthood, so their discussions found many interesting life trails to explore.

Clay purposely used the time to share words of dadly wisdom and lifegiving nurture that would give the boys grace for their lives as they turned the corner from childhood into young manhood.

Grace should taste good

Clay and the boys also had their Boys’ Night Out when they would go out to eat, usually at a local fast Italian restaurant with pizza, lots of breadsticks, and the coveted self-serve soft drink machine. It was a time to just eat and talk—feeding their growing-boy appetites and their developing spirits. For them, it was grace that tasted good.

These times together culminated in a special ceremony and blessing Clay had for each boy as he turned thirteen. There was the traditional birthday breakfast, of course, but the afternoon teatime was a ceremony to launch our boy into young manhood. It included scripture readings, personal charges about honor and purity, and prayer, but most of all, it included . . . the sword.

Each boy received a beautiful Knights Templar sword, crafted of fine polished metals in silver and gold plate from Toledo, Spain. It would become a cherished keepsake and reminder of their charge to be a noble knight for God—a man of biblical conviction, integrity, bravery, and honor. Along with the sword, they also received a silver cross pendant or a silver ring, a simple token to remind them of their commitment to Christ.

All the nurturing words given at these special times were words of grace that brought life.

“Biblical nurture is God’s grace given in words.“

Grace and nurture work together

Those times were about giving words of grace and nurture.

Since the word grace pops up dozens of times in modern English translations of the New Testament, while the word nurture is literally nowhere to be found, you might wonder why we have them together.

Properly understood, nurture is the act of cultivating life—protecting, preserving, and nourishing a living thing.

Grace, then, is how God gives us His life (it is an unmerited gift), and nurture is how we can give God’s grace of life to one another. It’s not the only way we give grace, but nurture is a spiritually lifegiving act. And we’ll go one step further to say that for children, biblical nurture is God’s grace given in words.

“The life of God is in the words“

That is nowhere more clearly seen than when Paul instructs parents in Ephesians 6:4 to “bring [your children] up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (NIV). However, here’s a paraphrase that better expresses Paul’s admonition: “Parents, stop frustrating your children. Rather, nurture them with the words of instruction and guidance that come from the Lord.”

He uses the term ektrepho, a compound Greek word that taken literally means “to feed from.” Parents were to nurture their children by feeding them with words of “training and instruction.” And those words were to be “of the Lord,” or coming from the life of God, who is now alive in their hearts as parents. Paul’s words reflect the words of the Shema that as Jews they would recite every day: “These words . . . shall be on your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6).

The life of God is in the words, and children receive those words from nurturing parents.

Paul’s portrait of a nurturing parent

In the Ephesians passage, Paul sets the standard for what Christian parents should do to nurture their children. But in 1 Thessalonians, he creates a word portrait of how that kind of nurturing parent should actually behave. Though he describes his own behavior toward the church using the language of parenting, his words are the clearest picture in the New Testament of Paul’s personal conviction of what a Christian mother and father should be like.

He reminds them that he was “gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children” (2:7). Then he describes his commitment to them, “as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God” (2:11–12 NIV).

And the reason he says he behaved that way is the very heart of giving grace with nurturing words:

“We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well” (2:8 NIV).

Nurture is God’s grace put into words

Paul clearly makes that connection between words and grace when he instructs the Ephesians to stop using destructive words, and to use only words that build others up according to their needs and “give grace to those who hear” (4:29).

We should not use our words to tear others down, but to build others up in the Lord, so we can give words of grace to them. That’s what words are for—to give grace to others. Tim Kimmel reminds us, “Grace-based parents spend their time entrusting themselves to Christ. They live to know God more. Their children are the daily recipients of the grace these parents are enjoying from the Lord.”¹

And that grace will be given in words.

“The highest purpose of the words we give to our children is that words are a means of grace“

The highest purpose of the words we give to our children is that words are a means of grace—they create messages of love, acceptance, and forgiveness that give grace to others. Nurture is God’s grace put into words.

Parents are participants in God’s grace

C. S. Lewis, in his essay “Meditation in a Toolshed,” recounts observing a sunbeam shining into a dark shed through a crack above the door. Looking at the beam, he sees only the beam itself. Looking along the beam, he sees the sun and objects within the beam’s path. Lewis says, “We must . . . deny from the outset the idea that looking at is, by its own nature, intrinsically truer than looking along. One must look both along and at everything.”

We can look at the beam of grace as a concept to define and explain it theologically and intellectually—what Scripture says it is and does. However, it isn’t until we look along that beam of grace that we can see what it really is—that God is its source and power, words are its means and form, and it gives life to those along its path.

When we give words of grace to our children, we are looking along that path not only to see how grace gives life, but to be part of the life that it gives.

[ Our humble thanks to Bethany House Publishers for their partnership in today’s devotion. ]