Overprotective Parenting…

Did I grab your attention with that title?? Ha! Trust me, I have no desire to be controversial…my title is actually referring to magpies!


The other week I took my super cute bike out for a ride, totally minding my own business, when bam…the fluttering of wings, the sound of something way too close to your head, a magpie had swooped me! I had only just made it out of my driveway! I foolishly thought that if I wheeled my bike another 50m or so I would be safe…but no…whoosh, down it came again! This time I started running with my bike (I could have just jumped on and ridden??) down the road and I let out a scream when it swooped me one more time! Out of breath and full of fear, I crossed the road and thought I’d be OK now, I got on my bike, started riding and whoosh – another magpie!!  I decided this was absolutely ridiculous and I wouldn’t be riding my bike anymore until these stupid birds had gotten over their swooping season, I rang my husband Tim and asked him to come outside and help me get the bike back into the garage without being swooped again!! It was a traumatic experience friends!! If you’ve been swooped, you know what I’m talking about!

I was thinking about these silly birds, about the fact that we humans have no interest in their nests or their young, but they, for some reason sit there, and attack any one or thing going past, all in the name of ‘nesting’ or what I would like to refer to as overprotective parenting!

I then began to think about us, in our lives, about how we have precious things that need to be protected, our hearts, our minds, our dreams, our purity, our words from God, yet about how many of us allow those things to be so easily robbed.  We allow our minds and our thoughts to constantly be attacked, we allow dreams to be stolen, we listen to the lies that people say ‘you could never do that or achieve anything’, so many people allow their purity to be robbed by the things they watch, the music they listen to, the people they spend time with, the stuff they allow people to do to them, we let all sorts of things and people into our hearts and lives and wonder why we are left feeling as broken and confused as we do…..

I think that we need to learn a lesson from those magpies! We need to begin to protect these things in our lives, to even overprotect them, to start getting far more offensive with the enemy, giving him no foothold at all, giving him no room to attack because we’re too busy swooping him with the Word of God – our sword of the Spirit!!

Proverbs 4:23 says to ‘Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life’, 2 Corinthians 10:5 says ‘we bring every thought captive in obedience to Christ’ – we need to start thinking about what we are thinking about!  We need to guard our hearts, what we allow in and who we allow in!  Jesus was zealous for the House of God, He passionately defended the Temple when they had turned it into a ‘place of thieves’… What has God put on your life, what is in your heart, what are the dreams, promises and words of God that you need to start passionately protecting?!

John 10:10 says that the enemy seeks to kill, steal and destroy, but Isaiah 59:19 says that when the enemy comes in like a flood the Spirit of God will raise a standard against him! Sometimes we give the enemy way too much room to move in our lives, but enough is enough!

So, just like those magpies, get on your post, keep watch over what’s taking place in your life, heart & thoughts and get ready to swoop anytime an attack comes your way! It’s time to stand, it’s time to fight, it’s time to guard and passionately protect what’s on and in your life! Go for it!

Love & believe in you!

J xx