Pardon the Mess with Scarlet Hiltibidal - Christian Motherhood, Biblical Parenting, Raising Christian Kids

“Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare him room.”   Singing carols like “Joy to the World” is one of my favorite things this time of year. The nostalgia that comes with singing these beautiful words reminds me over and over again of the significance of Jesus coming to earth as a baby, paving the way for our salvation.   This week we’re praying for...

We hear Jesus referred to as Immanuel in the Christmas story and all throughout the Christmas season. We know it means “God with us,” but do we ever stop and think about what that means practically?    Rebecca Carrell is with us today and has the perfect Christmas reminder of why Immanuel changes everything in our lives. She challenges us to consider how the Israelites experienced God in the deser...

Oh contentment, why are you so elusive this time of year? Why do the holidays leave us searching for better presents, bigger wow moments, and flawless family interactions?    As you may have guessed, we’re praying for contentment this week as we head into the home stretch of Christmas. We’re asking God to remind us that he knows each of our needs before we even realize them, and he’s faithful to p...

Friendships are some of God’s greatest gifts in our lives. However, they can be super complex too.    Amy Weatherly and Jess Johnson join us today to talk about healthy friendships in our own lives, as well as parenting friendships with our kids.    Here’s some of the great friendship topics we cover: The lies we believe in friendships Loving ourselves so we can love others The number of friends w...

I realize it’s December and life is crazy! But let’s take just a few minutes to slow down and pray for our kids today.    Our focus this week is praying that our kids learn to fear God. Fearing God sounds confusing, but it’s not about living scared or fleeing from him. Instead, it’s living in such awe and reverence towards God that we’re willing to submit to him even when it doesn’t make sense.   ...

Today we’re talking all things Christmas with Alicia Wood and Lee Cordon! Alicia and Lee are pros when it comes to Christmas preparations and keeping our sanity this time of year. They are so much fun and you’re 100% guaranteed to be in the spirit of Christmas after today’s show.  Here are a few of the things we cover: 🎄 Gift giving ideas and how to keep it under control 🎄 Making lists and prepa...

There’s a big difference between knowledge and wisdom, and this week Janet Denison of Denison Ministries is joining us to talk about praying wisdom over our kids. Psalm 111 tells us very plainly that wisdom comes by fearing God and following his word. And in a culture that is pursuing worldly knowledge at all costs, it’s a great time to pray for our kids to choose wisdom.    And please don’t miss...

Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃🦃🦃   I hope you are surrounded by friends and family today with the smell of familiar food floating through the house. There’s so much to be thankful for this year, but I’m especially thankful to be walking this parenting road together with each of you. It’s a true gift.   Today we have Kayla Craig with us and we’re discussing liturgies and how they add a richness to our pr...

It’s the week of Thanksgiving and Psalm 16:2 gives us the most basic truth in these seven words: “Apart from you I have nothing good.” What a great starting place as we celebrate Thanksgiving by remembering that every single thing we have is from God.    Kayla Craig joins us today to pray thanksgiving over our kids. She also encourages us to consider the value of praying liturgies. A liturgy is si...

Don’t anyone panic, we’re not skipping Thanksgiving!    But we are chatting with Ruth Chou Simons about advent and why the posture of our hearts as we enter the holiday season matters. Ruth is hilariously practical and talks about her scrapbooking skills (or lack thereof) and her propensity to lose sight of what matters this time of year… if her perfectionist ways take over.    Ruth reminds us tha...

The times of waiting in my life have hands down been the places where I’ve learned the most about God. Knowing this, I’m excited to be praying this week for our kids to learn to wait well. Waiting patiently on God is a hard thing to grasp when you live in an Amazon-style, instant gratification kind of world.   Psalm 40 is our key Psalm this week and David suggests that when we are waiting on God t...

For the first time ever we have Lauren Chandler on Pardon the Mess!   Lauren is a worship leader, author, mom of three, and wife of Pastor Matt Chandler. I love this conversation because it’s all about Thanksgiving traditions, favorite recipes, and enjoying family this time of year. 🦃 🦃    She has an amazing heart for praising the Lord and gives us practical ways to foster a lifestyle of praise...

David had an affair, murdered a man, and spent almost a year ignoring his wrongdoing before finally confessing his sin. Psalm 51 reveals his heart after such a significant moral failure, and his words are beautiful as he asks God to cleanse, restore, and continue to use him. Our kids will sin too. This week we are praying they recognize it and repent, just as David did all those years ago. God car...

Nothing makes you question the boundaries in your relationships like the holidays. Am I right?  Lysa TerKeurst is with us today to talk about relationships and the boundaries we often fail to put in place. The result?  Chaos in some of our more challenging relationships. Like most of us, I haven’t thought a lot about boundaries and definitely not from a biblical perspective. But thankfully Lysa ha...

I think the twenty-third psalm just may be my favorite psalm of all. I used to think of it as just a funeral type psalm, or one for hard times—but now I realize how many nuggets are packed in there as we pray this over our kids.  I’m reminded that God is the provider for all things, and he’s oftentimes providing things we don’t even know we need. There are also verses giving us encouragement for t...

A Penn State study indicates that 91% of what we worry about never happens.    I don’t know about you, but this statistic holds true in my own life having worried about countless things that (thankfully) never actually transpired.   Louie Giglio is no stranger to fear and anxiety and comes today with a great word on how to deal with the inevitable worries we all face. He debunks the idea that we a...

A discussion on being still seems especially relevant this time of year as we’re gearing up for the holidays while enjoying all the fun things of fall. Psalm 46 reminds us that being still allows us to better know Jesus. The Hebrew for “be still” means “to be weak, or let go, or to release.”    Who couldn’t use some of that this week?    We’re praying specifically that in a world that praises hard...

Jonathan Pitts is back and he’s no stranger to Pardon the Mess. He’s an author, speaker, podcaster, and father to four daughters. Jonathan lost his wife, Wynter, suddenly to a heart condition in 2018—and he’s been learning how to wait on God in the hardest places ever since.    Today Jonathan shares his journey of walking through grief and disappointments with God. Spoiler alert: He’s also recentl...

So often we think of persecution as something that only happens in the places where faith in Jesus can cost you your life. But persecution is actually something all of us will experience if we’re seeking Jesus and trying to live godly lives (2 Timothy 3:12).    Today we’re praying for our kids to live big enough in their convictions to experience persecution, while also leaning on God to get them...

This week we’ve got Max Lucado with us—and yes I go fan-girl and it’s super weird.   But if you can get past that, Pastor Max has an amazing word on the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives and why it matters. Here are some of the topics we cover: Why is the Holy Spirit so foreign to us? What kind of power does the Holy Spirit have? How does the work of the Holy Spirit look practically in our live...

We’re praying the Psalms over our kids this school year and this week our focus is on the words we speak. And let me tell you this, nobody puts their foot in their mouth more than me. I’ve learned first-hand the power of words, oftentimes in rather unfortunate circumstances.    In Psalm 19, David prays that the words of his mouth and meditations of his heart will be found pleasing to God. He under...

Amanda Pittman is with us today and she has a VERY important message on living in confidence. A lack of confidence runs the risk of keeping us from doing the God-ordained things in our lives because we think we aren’t good enough, or gifted enough, or ______(fill in the blank) enough.    We chat about why this matters not just for our own lives, but also how our confidence (or lack thereof) impact...

The last several years I’ve prayed that my kids will live interruptible lives. I’ve prayed for it because for so long, I was completely unwilling to have my own life interrupted. I like things to be planned out, organized, and on my schedule. So much so that I wasn’t open to the things God was calling me to that might “mess up” my best laid plans.    But now knowing what I know, most of God’s grea...

Let’s be honest. There’s not a one of us that doesn’t often feel like the Simon Cowell of our family having to correct, instruct, redirect, and . .  . sometimes criticize. We don’t call it criticism, but so often it feels that way for us (and definitely for our kids too).    Ken Wilgus is with us today talking about the real truth on critical parents and critical kids. We dig deep into issues of b...

There’s a lifetime worth of banter in Christian circles around the question of being “good enough.” This week we’re laying it down and considering Psalm 27 as David speaks into this question while hiding out because his life is in jeopardy.     He calls God his light (hope), his salvation (rescuer) and his stronghold (deliverer). Nowhere does he evaluate his own value or abilities, but over and ov...