Persevero 2!

So, I have been on a long hiatus from blogging!  We've got baby number 4 coming along in a few short weeks and things have been pretty crazy around here recently with baby preparations and work to finish up other commitments I have made (church curriculum, etc.).  Anyway, I do love being able to share here things that I hope will help other women (and myself!) grow spiritually and better serve their families.  One of my last posts (from last summer!) was "Persevero!" and was related to making goals and continuing to persevere toward those goals and the things you know the Lord wants you to do even when it gets rough.

We have made some of those goals regular occurrences in our house, praise God, but some of them we are still working on.  For instance, the kids and John and I are in bed at our planned "bedtimes" most nights, which is a blessing.  The getting up early to study God's Word and get breakfast made I am still struggling with though.  Being almost 9 months pregnant isn't helping me out here either!  So, I am improvising here and we are eating cereal some mornings (sometimes a lot of mornings...) and I'm squeezing in time to study when I get a chance during the day.  I still hope to set up a morning routine sometime in the future, but it's going to have to wait till we are settled a bit with baby number 4!

The dishwasher and dirty dishes are also getting taken care of regularly each day, so overall, we're doing fairly well with our goals.  Something that has helped greatly with that is updating my laminated chore chart to go with our new house size.  We put an addition on to our house that was completed last summer and I didn't get my chore chart updated for a while.  Now that my chore chart is actually functional for the house size again, it's helping me to better keep up with the cleaning!

I'm so grateful that we have accomplished some of these goals since we set them last year and the glory definitely goes to the Lord for this.  Perhaps you set some goals this year in January for 2014?  I hope they are going well and that you have dedicated them to the Lord and sought to make them in keeping with His will and what is best for your Christian life.  I'd like to end with this encouraging verse for persevering in the Christian life from Romans 2:5-8:

 "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation." (emphasis mine) 

May we each set godly goals to help us do good and "obey the truth" so that we may hear Him say to us upon Christ's return the words from Matthew 25:23:

"Well done, good and faithful slave.  You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master."

Blessings to you this day as you seek to do the Lord's will and live a life pleasing to Him!