TLP 163: Rearing a Servant | Jessica Mair Interview

And really, we need the Holy Spirit to be able to serve in a biblical manner. It needs to be taught, demonstrated, and then given an opportunity to practice it over and over again.

Welcome to Truth.

Love.

Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, AM Brewster.

Thank you for joining us today. Our last five episodes were concerned with learning how to help our children discover God's will for their lives. A couple times during that study, we discussed the importance of servanthood in the sovereign will of God.

We also talked about servanthood being one of the foundation stones of how and why we do family chores, and we talked about that in episode 154. So today, we're going to talk all about how to rear a servant.

And to do so, I've invited Jessica Mair to be with us. Jessica's first show was with us back in episode 93. On that episode, she shared biblical ways to tackle tattling, and it's been one of our most popular episodes ever since.

So now, 50 episodes later, Jessica's back to walk us through her parenting journey and share with us how God has shown her the importance of this issue. Jessica is a follower of Christ, wife to John, and mother of five, all under the age of 10.

She and her family serve at the Wilds Christian Camp and Conference Center in Brevard, North Carolina. She's also a Truth.

Love.

Parent counselor, and she has the supreme privilege of being my sister. Welcome back, Jess.

Wow.

What an introduction. Supreme privilege of being my sister.

That's incredible.

Yep.

Well, I had no choice in that one, but I'm very thankful for it. I'm so excited to be back. I am very pumped.

Awesome.

All right.

TLP, if those of you who are just joining us, maybe you don't know this, we are now the number one iTunes podcast for Christian parents, and we've been growing quite a bit. So it's possible that many of you have not been introduced to Jessica.

So Jess, why don't you take a moment just to kind of introduce us to your family?

Well, it is always exciting in my home. I tell everybody, I get lots of looks and I feel like, you know, I'm not the Duggars. So it's just five kids, but people, I don't know, like they're always like, whoa, that's a lot of children.

And when I go grocery shopping, I get lots of remarks. And my favorite one is, are they all yours? And I've always been tempted to be super sarcastic in my response, and I've always just smiled very politely and said, yes, they are all mine.

And one day I was standing in line and the cashier said, are those all yours? And I looked at her and I said, actually, no, I love to just walk around the grocery store and collect other people's children because it's way more fun.

And I get a lot more done when I have five children grocery shopping with me. And she just looked at me and I was like, I'm joking. Yes, they're all mine.

She was like, oh, yeah, because she she was about to call the cops, you know, nothing.

Much. Exactly.

It was it was not good. But I'm like, really? Yes. Yes, they're all mine. Obviously, it's not so fun all the time to shop with five children, but we make it work. Anya is nine and she is actually going to be able to go to camp at the Wilds where we work for the first time.

And so that's like really huge for our family. She is just absolutely pumped. She is the second mom. I mean, she loves her brothers and sisters. And somehow she has been able to master being a leader in a way that the kids actually want to follow her and they just love her.

So every time she talks very excitingly about going to camp, I'm not joking you one by one, all four of the other ones start crying. So we try not to talk about camp very often with her because everyone starts crying and we're like, OK, so that's Anya.

And she's just a huge blessing. We're very thankful for her. Ethan is going to be eight this summer in August, which is incredible. And he is our little gentleman. And we are so thankful for him. And he just finished second grade.

He'll be going to third grade. And he enjoys school and learning and he loves, loves, loves to serve. He just actually got an award for AB honor roll in school and then also for having a servant's heart.

That's what his second award was. And my husband pulled him aside after the award ceremony and said, son, we are very thankful and glad that you worked really hard to be able to get your AB honor roll.

But most importantly, to be able to see Christ work through your life and be able to receive an award for showing a servant's heart, for looking for ways to serve other people is just incredible. And that's what we want you to know.

That's number one. That's what's most important. And then grades come after. So we were just very excited about that, too. That was very neat.

That's awesome.

And then Isaac is our very tender and compassionate six-year-old and he is a goofball and he always has the look or something to say that will just make everyone crack up. And he cherishes his brothers and sisters.

He loves to take care of the little ones. So Olivia and Logan. And he just does such a good job with that. We are very interested to see how God is going to use him because right now he's very good at he's the middle child, so he can duck under everyone else and somehow not get his chores done while everybody else is doing their chores.

And it's incredible.

Like he just kind of under the radar. Not not cool, but that's that's him. It's going to be interesting to see God's plan for his life. Then we have Olivia and she's our little feisty pants. She has platinum blonde hair, bright blue eyes.

And I have to jump in here. I have to jump in here real quick. Olivia probably should have been my child. Because she is like a spitting image of my wife. She is a mini Aunt Jo. It's it's pretty impressive, which makes her totally cool.

Attitude and all.

Yes. Oh, yes, definitely.

Yeah. And she is hilarious. She loves to be the boss. And she's our four year old and the fourth one in our family. And the only one that she tries and attempts to actually succeed in bossing around is Logan, our fifth one.

She will not call him Logan. She only calls him baby. And so she will tell him to take permanent marker to my wall and my couch. And then as soon as I come downstairs, she'll look at me with her eyes, her eyebrows raised and go, baby, do that.

It was baby, baby, do that.

So that's her little sass pants. And she has not received Jesus as her savior yet. And we are excited to see the Lord continue to work in her heart. She has been asking a lot about the gospel. And that's just really neat to see when the Holy Spirit starts working in their heart and starts making them aware of their sin and aware that there's a savior.

And that's really exciting. So we've been sharing the gospel with her a lot and praying for the sake of all of us that she will get saved sooner than later. And then Logan, he's number five. And he was when we found out we're pregnant with him.

It was like, oh, here we go again. All right. And all my kids are 18 to 20 months apart. And he was just a blessing. Like when we found out we were pregnant with him, there was that, oh, you know, sigh.

I'm like, OK, Lord, wow, your will is perfect. But our kids just cherish him. And that's the neatest thing. I don't know how many times the little ones have said he's such a gift to mom. I'm just so thankful for Logan.

He's such a gift. And that's that's what he is. But he definitely has his own personality. He probably talks earlier and more than any of the other kids did. So he has a mouthful to say. And I actually cannot wait for you and Joe to come this summer because he literally keeps people laughing.

So he's a little feisty pants, too. So anyway, that's our family. Jonathan is one of the cooks at the Wilds. And I work laundry lost and found and also at the coffee shop. And between all of that, you would think that would keep us busy enough.

But we decided to go into the journey of homeschooling. Our children are three out of our five because they're the only ones old enough. And so we will be jumping into that this fall. And by God's grace and great mercy, we are really looking forward to the school year.

Christ’s Example of Servanthood

Well, that is awesome. I I love your family to death. And what's hilarious is having you describe them like that. It just makes me want to see them that much more this summer. All right. Now, before we jump into this, I want to tell all of you that the inspiration for doing this show came really just from me watching my sister and her husband disciple their kids.

Now, neither she nor her family members are perfect. You've heard a little bit about that. But I have personally marveled over the years. I've watched them be intentional and premeditated and all the steps that they've taken to teach their kids to serve others.

This is actually, I think, a hallmark of the Wilds ministry down there. Many of the wonderful families I've met there are striving to do the same. So personally, I can think of no one better to share with us some practical examples of how to do this at home than my sister.

Now, Jess, I'd like to start with some biblical principles as to why this idea of servanthood is so important. Now, we don't have to take a lot of time with it because, you know, we've touched on a number of biblical truths recently about it.

But what's your favorite passage about the necessity of teaching our kids to be servants?

Well, actually, all of us really started in our family a couple of years ago when my husband was doing a study of Christ's ministry on this earth. And he was just overwhelmed by how he desired to serve everyone he came into contact with.

And as he was going through his character and who he was, it was. Incredible to be able to see that. And so as we start talking through it, it was just this overwhelming theme in Christ's life. So therefore, it should be an overwhelming theme in our life.

So Matthew 20, 28 and Mark 10, 45 are the exact same verse. And it says, just as a son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. And that was the ongoing, like I said, theme of his life.

And so that's really where we drew most of our desire and the push and urge to to do this in our own family.

I really love how the whole foundation of that really just was God's truth, not just a verse about servanthood, but the whole example of Jesus himself. So let that be a lesson to all of us, really. I mean, we need to tie all of these concepts and principles.

It's so easy to take a little bit of a proof text or one idea in scripture and pull it out and talk about how we all need to be servants. But when we tie it back to who Jesus was and we allow our relationship with him to motivate our servanthood, to be like him, that's just so much better.

So with that groundwork, the first step, I believe, in rearing a servant is to teach our kids the importance of servanthood, which is great because that's exactly what you and John did. And I fear that too many of us, we just we have good expectations for our children, but we don't communicate them well.

We want them to be servants, but we expect them to be coming on their own or just to be able to put two and two together without our teaching them how to do it. Ladies and gentlemen, that's just I have to be honest with ourselves.

That's just poor parenting. Our children are foolish and they need us to teach them and to interpret life for them. And like even Jessica said, you know, our children are born into this world unsaved.

They need us to help explain this concept to them.

So true. I know that we all know of somebody in our own lives who just they're natural servants, then they might not even be saved. They're just those natural. They they hear something. Someone needs it.

And that that is wonderful and great. But really, we need the Holy Spirit to be able to serve in a biblical manner. I wish it came naturally to all of us. I really do. But we and our children are naturally driven to please ourselves.

So our kids won't just catch on to the idea, like you said, of servanthood. It needs to be taught, demonstrated and then given opportunity to practice it over and over again. And those three things are really important to teach it, to demonstrate it and then to give opportunity for them to actually use it.

Yeah. And that's the whole purpose of today's episode. We want to give you an understanding of how you can communicate this to your children. But before we go too much further with that and examples of what your children can do, we need to realize that along with teaching our kids, we have to model it for them.

I think, Jessica, you said demonstrate it for them. We we absolutely must never be those do as I say, not as I do parents. And I mentioned this when we discussed family chores. If I'm constantly on my kids about their chores, but I don't do any myself, I just come home from work and plopped on the couch.

I'm literally undermining my whole ministry to my kids.

Stewardship, Possessions, and Time

Absolutely. I tell Anya she has opportunities to watch her brothers and sisters. And we often every time we leave the house, we always say to her, Anya, being a leader and being a servant is never asking someone to do something that you yourself would never be willing to do.

And so if you're sitting around just eating your snack and telling your brothers and sisters to do this and this and this, then you're not being a servant leader. You're not. And so that's one thing we are constantly reminding her.

And I'm also reminding myself of that.

Yeah, because it's really easy to have a long list of things for the kids to do. And even for us to be super busy. But the children don't see it. You know, we're getting a lot done while they're napping and we're serving people at church and whatnot.

But we were not they're not seeing us actively serving other people or them even in our families. And so we give them the wrong impression. Yeah. So number one, you know, we need to know God's expectations.

Number two, though, we need to teach our kids that truth. And number three, we need to model for our kids what servant leadership looks like. So number four, what are some practical ways we can help our kids practice being a servant?

Because that's what they need. They need practice and experience so that they can get better at it.

Absolutely. And this is one of those things I actually just a laser tree on just some parenting tips and stuff. And when I got to this one point, I really honestly felt that like I might possibly get things thrown at me, you know, tomatoes, chairs, who knows?

So please, when you people are listening to this, keep your mind open. This is one of those things I'm going to mention that doesn't just encourage us to be good parents. It gets to our hearts as well.

And we have to deal with it and work through it in our hearts before we can even work through it in our children's hearts. So what I'm about to speak about, like I am very excited about, but just keep an open mind because this is all from God's word and I'm very excited to share with it.

But the number one thing before I ever wanted to introduce servanthood to my children was that all possessions and everything on this earth is God's. Nothing is ours. So my life that I live is not my own.

It is God's. And you say, well, yes, I know that that's a very simple concept. So before I really jump into, I just want to share this with you. These are some verses on possessions and everything being God's.

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. Behold, the heaven and the heavens of heavens is the Lord, thy God, the earth also with all that there is in the heavens are thine.

The earth is also thine as far as the world and the fullness thereof. Thou hast founded them for the earth as the Lord's and the fullness thereof. The day is thine. The night also is thine. Thou has prepared the light and the sun.

What know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God and you're not your own. For you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's.

So with all of this concept, basically nothing is ours. I mean, I think God's word made it pretty clear that nothing is ours. Everything is God's in the heavens and on the earth. So all possessions and even our own life and our time, our abilities, our talents, everything is God's.

And so from the very beginning, I'm teaching and training my children that everything that they see, feel, touch is God's. So my two year old right now is in the mind stage and he is saying, mine, mine, mine all the time.

And so Logan will say, no, that's mine. And I will look at him and go, Logan, whose is that? And he will say, God's. And I'll say to him, Logan, if that's God's, then what does he want you to do with it?

He wants me to share or be a good steward because this is God's toy. He desires that you be kind one to another. He desires that you share. He desires that you prefer others above yourself. So if somebody else wants to play with God's toy, then you're here on this earth to be a good steward of that toy.

So I hope everyone's tracking with me. Servanthood is based off of the foundation of stewardship. We have possessions and talents and those possessions and talents we are a steward of. And we want to be a godly steward of those possessions, which means that we are wanting to use all of our possessions, our time and our talent to serve others like Christ said when he was on this earth.

Does that make sense?

Oh, it makes all the sense in the world. I love it. You know, we need to we and our children need to relate to our possessions the right way. When we see them as gifts from God to be used the way he intended, then it's a lot easier for us to do exactly what he wants to do with them.

When I see them as mine to be protected or to be selfishly consumed for myself, then I'm obviously not going to be interested in serving other people with that. I want it to be mine. And I think we all have experienced this in other people's lives.

And I think if we're honest with ourselves, we see how true this is in our lives. That's mine. That's why when, you know, my child drops my phone down the flight of stairs, I can become so upset because that's mine.

And you just ruin that when the reality is so very different than that. And I can see, too, how that idea with kids tends toward a servanthood, even your youngest understands this. Whose is that? It's God's.

OK, so what does he want you to do with it? Well, he wants me to share. And sharing is inherently, if it's being done the right way, serving somebody else. Here, you can take this. You can have fun with it.

I don't need it right now.

So it's it is really the fundamental truth underlying servanthood. And so when my children realize that nothing is theirs and everything is God's, then they just have to choose what kind of steward am I going to be?

Am I going to be a poor steward who doesn't use that for anything, does not give God glory? Or am I going to choose to be a steward who's faithful and gives God glory and everything that he has chosen to have me be able to steward in my life, to bring glory to his name?

A lot of the verses that we use for our children and reminding them of these things, my children take instruments. And often I remind them that these gifts, again, are to minister to other people. First Peter 410 says, as every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

Matthew 20, 27 through 28 says, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant, even as a son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.

And then Romans 12, 9 through 13 says, let love be without hypocrisy, abhorred that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. In love of the brethren, be tenderly affectionate one to another, in honor, preferring one another, in diligence, not slothful, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, communicating to the necessities of the saints.

And I love the last one, given to hospitality. Isn't that so neat that that's even in the verse given to hospitality. And that's one of the ways that we can demonstrate to our children servanthood. And that is being given to hospitality.

So as my children are little right now, I am opening up my home and using the things that God has given me, my food, the furniture, my time and ability, all of that to steward that for God, to glorify him so that my children see that mom not only wants us to serve, but she is serving by being a faithful steward of the things that God has given her to steward for right now.

That's awesome. We use a similar thing here at Victory Academy. The guys oftentimes will say, you know, we have 14 people in the house. And so everyone's coming to dinner and they'll say, Hey, that's my seat.

I'll say, Hey dude, you don't have a seat. This isn't your seat. It's God's seat. And you need to love others with whatever seat you sit in. So this is a huge thing and it can be applied in so many ways.

And it works with really little kids. It doesn't have to be deep the complicated concepts behind hospitality and love and whatnot. You start really simply with the kids. And I found that not only do our kids need to relate to their possessions the right way, and I think it's similar, but they also need to relate to their time the right way.

I know we could say that time is a gift from God, just like our skills and whatnot are. But I think that's also a huge deal when it comes to our kids because they, they guard their time, I think even more selfishly than they do their stuff.

Absolutely. And I, while I was speaking on this, I opened up for questions, which slightly intimidating sometimes. And one of the ladies said, you know, this is incredible. Like you're telling me that everything is God's.

And so if like, I asked you to, if I could borrow your car, you would just let me borrow your car. And I said, well, remember we are commanded to be good stewards of the things that God has given us. So if you need that car for whatever reason, and it's absolutely necessary and it would be a good steward of me to give you that car to lend to you, the Bible says to lend it to you, not expecting it return that to that extent.

And kind of all the ladies eyes just like opened up really wide. I said, I know, like I have the same response and I can't even say right now that I could sit here and say, Oh yeah, you know, without a problem, I'm going to let you have my car with no expectation of you returning it.

Because that's, if I am going to learn something, that's how I should be lending it to you. Knowing that I'm being a good steward of my possessions, that's super hard. And the lady said, well, my, you know, my son, then like, that's really hard to expect him to do that.

Because I know there are things that are in my life that are mine and I don't want anyone to mess with them. And I'm not going to let somebody play with or mess with something that I really, really cherish.

So how can I ask my son to do the same thing? And I said, exactly my point. It is so in our lives that we don't want to share and serve others with the possessions that God has given us, that why would our children?

They're not seeing us do it. And so being able to really just pray and ask God to work in your life first. And so often I will go and sit down with my children and say, you know what? Mom has been extremely selfish in this area of my time.

And I've, especially I think for moms, you know, you are going, going, going, serving, serving, serving, sometimes not even with the right attitude, which is very sad, but I can say that's, that's common in my life.

Just that stupid martyr attitude. So I've sit down with my kids and say, you know what? I am finding myself wanting to use this time that God's given me to serve myself. And so when it comes to two to three o 'clock in the afternoon, can you help me think of ways that mom can use this time to serve others and really have them become active in that?

So we'll jump to serving to serve the family. These are those opportunities given to serve because we are relating to others correctly by Philippians two, three, which is let nothing be done in selfishness or empty conceit, but with lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than myself.

And when we have that attitude of preferring others above ourselves, then we're going to be relating to others correctly. And then they need to be given to opportunities to serve. And so I not only want to bring my kids into, into doing this, but I also want them to help me have ideas in serving other people.

And I think this runs so counterintuitive to our society. I mean, we're, you can see all of these episodes or articles and episodes and whatnot, talking about, you know, you need your me time, you know, mommy needs to be able to get away and she needs to be able to, you know, have her, you know, her special food or her time alone and whatnot.

And I'm not saying that any of that is inherently wrong. I'm not saying that it's necessarily sinful because you're right. We are stewards. If somebody wants to borrow my car, but I have a previous engagement that I need to drive my child somewhere.

I need to take my child to the dentist or the doctor. We need to go shopping. And really I need to make a decision. What's the best stewardship of my car, lending you my car. So you can go to a baseball game or doing the job that God has called me to do.

I might have to say no to you, but I'm saying no to you not because I'm being selfish and I don't want you driving my car. I'm saying no to you because I need to steward my time better and I steward my possessions better.

And sometimes this happens too. You know, we get sick. And so we need to steward our time well, and that might need mean investing some time in us getting better. Sometimes when we're spiritually low, now we shouldn't be isolating ourselves and running away.

We should be getting help and comfort and community in our lives. But sometimes when we're spiritually low, we need to pull away from the temptations and that are, that are sometimes,.

You know,.

We're responding incorrectly to and we need to get that help and we need to center ourselves on God. We need to have that, that quiet time alone with the Lord. So it's really a balance. And I just want listeners to understand this is, this is a very controversial idea because it seems to just say, you know, Hey, listen, if you're, if you need that me time, you're selfish and you need to grow up.

And in a way, I think that's very true. I think we are selfish and I think we hang on to our stuff way too much. And I think all the examples you're giving Jessica are perfect. At the same time, we don't want to be a pendulum where we're swinging too far to one side.

We want to be able to be honest enough to say that, you know, when we're wisely stewarding our things for God and stewarding our time for God, we're not just going to frivolously throw them here and there.

Correct. And I, you're absolutely right. And that's one of the reasons why it is very easy to throw tomatoes at this concept, even though that this is very clear in God's word, the main idea is to be a wise and good steward of our time.

And so one of the women are like, so if my kid says, can I play with your cell phone? I just let them have it. I'm like, well, that no, that's not being a wise steward of your phone or your son, let alone anything else.

Because, you know, there are dangers on the cell phone and, you know, and we don't want our children to be sitting with electronics all day. Like there are so many things that go in behind it. And I do think it's also important for us to be wise in our health and our mindset, because I think it's very important for a mom to go get a bath.

And I have my children have room time so that I can be in God's word. And those are very necessary things because I need to be helping my health and make sure that I am right in the right spiritual mindset to be able to parent my children.

And if I'm not taking care of my own health and spiritual health, then I'm not being a good steward of the body and life that God's given me.

Yeah. There are ditches on both sides. You need to be careful not to fall into either one. It comes back to what's the best thing that I could be doing with my time, my possessions right here, right now.

And that's a personal, sorry. That's a personal decision between you and God. And that's, that is a lot of prayer and wisdom to be able to get to that point of saying, okay, Lord, I want to use my time wisely today.

Please help me be completely focused on you and pleasing you. How can I go about doing that? And it's searching, it's searching the wisdom of God for that. Not just saying, ah, I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that.

Yeah. Whatever feels good. That's so true. Okay. So as I see this, you know, we need to teach our children to relate to their possessions the right way, need to teach our children to relate to their time the right way.

But I'm also hearing as you're talking about it, all of this and the basic idea that they need to relate to others the right way. And I think that's, you know, you've kind of hit on this point as we've talked about the other, other things,.

You know,.

If I'm relating to my possessions correctly and I realized that God wants me to share, then I'm more predisposed to doing the loving thing toward this other person and the same thing with my time. But is there any, are there any other passages or concepts behind this idea specifically of relating to others the right way that we need to teach our children?

Well, Philippians 2, 3, and I have shared that before and it is a life family verse and it really helps my children really in any area, but it's let nothing be done in selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, preferring one another above myself.

And there are, it's a really neat study. If you do a study on one anothering people, there are tons of verses about loving one another, preferring one another, serving one another in God's word. And that's a really, really neat study to be able to do with you and your kids or your whole family to be able to fully understand how God wants us to relate to other people the right way.

Yeah. I'm looking around on my desk. I actually have a piece of paper that has the list of like 30 some one another's from the new Testament. And I'm glad you mentioned that I actually want to do a short TLP snippet on each of them.

Just like 30. Yeah. Yeah. I think because it's so powerful and you don't realize how many of them are there. Yeah. And it's also ties into to the study that we did back in February, the study on family love.

And I really, I designed that study specifically so that you and your kids could sit down and listen to it together. Because if we're not, if we're not loving each other, we're not going to be serving each other.

And if we're serving each other in the right way, then it's motivated out of love. And so that idea is integral, I think to this whole concept. So, okay. So my kids are relating to their possessions the right way.