Persevero!

Persevero is Latin for "I persist" or "I persevere."  (We're starting Latin in homeschooling this year!)  Lately, we've been implementing some new routines as a family and working on turning these into habits can take quite a bit of work and perseverance!  I wanted to focus today on what to do when you are starting new habits personally or as a family and how to deal with setbacks in this process.

Right now, for instance, we are setting a solid bedtime for our children of 8:00 p.m. each night so that Mommy and Daddy can have some couple time each evening until we go to bed at 10:00 p.m.  That way we are all well rested and able to get up early each morning.  My goal there is to be up by 6:00 a.m., so I can spend some quiet time with the Lord in His Word and in prayer before all the busyness of the day begins.  I am also making breakfast each morning for my family and we are eating together before my husband leaves for work each day at 8:00 a.m.   Another goal thrown in at this time is getting the clean dishes out of the dishwasher each morning so that all the dirty, unsightly ones have a place to hide out during the day instead of taking over my kitchen counter and sink until evening.

That's a lot of goals at once, right?  I think a lot of them are co-dependent on each other though, so as long as one goes well, the next one sort of falls into place.  We just began this process about a week and a half ago and it is definitely a work in progress.  How are we doing so far?

1. Putting the children to bed - This is going great for everyone but my 1 1/2 year old.  He's used to just going to bed later around when Mommy goes to bed.  Anybody have any suggestions to help him get to bed earlier?  I think ultimately what it's going to require is persistence.
2. Getting ourselves to bed - This is also going pretty well, providing that the 1 1/2 year old cooperates and goes to sleep a little earlier.  He's averaging 9:30 p.m., right now...
3. Waking up earlier - I haven't reached my goal here yet.  I've made it to 6:30 a.m. for a day or two, but most of the time it's been 6:45 a.m.
4. Cooking breakfast - I have done this most mornings, except for a couple where I've gotten up a bit late and we've had cereal.  We have eaten together every morning since implementing this new routine though!
5. Taking care of the dishwasher - This has been happening most days (I fell off my horse a couple of evenings with getting everything totally cleaned up in the kitchen, but I got back on it the next day!).  This is actually a joy to me, because looking at an empty or almost empty sink during most of the day is much nicer than a pile of dirty dishes!

So, think of some goals you've made recently in your life.  How are you doing with those?  Have you gotten off track?  If so, what did you do?  How should we respond when we get off track in our goals (especially when these are godly goals)?  What should I do when...

• ...my children don't get to sleep well and I can't seem to drag myself out of bed the next morning?
• ...the dishes stay in a pile on the counter all night, because I chose to do other things the evening before?
• ...I miss my quiet time with God because I did not get myself out of the bed when I should have?
• ...we get off track homeschooling in the morning because of an interruption and our entire day is shot (academically at least!)?  
• ...you fill in the blank...?

In short, persevero!  That is what we should do.  Persist, persevere!  If you get off track one day, one week, one month, get back on track.  Begin again and God will be with you.  We are told in Lamentations 3:22-23: 

"The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." (NASB)

Commit your goals to the Lord and ask Him to help you.  He is faithful to provide us help in anything that brings glory to Him.  Also, keep in mind that any goal that is of benefit to your Christian family or your walk with God will not be looked upon kindly by Satan.  So, he may throw some obstacles in your way to make you discouraged, but do not give up!  Persevere!

God's Word has quite a lot to say about perseverance.  Here is one example from Romans 2:5-8 of what we stand to gain for persevering in following Christ after accepting His gift of salvation:

"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)

I don't know about you, but that is some strong motivation for me right there!  Also, if any of your goals involve giving up of self, please don't let that be a hindrance.  Look at what Christ persevered through for us when He came to earth and gave Himself up to death on the cross because of our sins - my sins and yours!  Paul presents Christ's "giving up of Himself" so well in Philippians 2:5-8:

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men.  Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

Let's make this our aim.  Do set goals for yourself and your family that will bring glory to our great God and do not focus on your own fleshly desires!  Commit these goals to the Lord and He will prove faithful!  Persevero!

  

The Necessity of Reevaluation in Your Spiritual Life

In the introductory post for this series, I talked about why reevaluation is necessary.  Now I'd like to specifically look at certain areas of life in which this is especially valuable and we'll start off with our spiritual lives, as well as those of our family.

In my own life, I personally find it easy to get overwhelmed with the many demands of life and then my time spent with God ends up on the back burner.  After a short while, I really start to notice a difference in my life and it's time to take another look at what I am doing to maintain and grow my relationship with God.  There are several things that I find key to maintaining growth in my spiritual life: prayer, time in the Word and service to others.  These things can be maintained by sheer will, but without the motivating factor of love they can be worthless and become very difficult to maintain long term.  In I Corinthians 13:1-3, Paul writes:

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." (NASB, emphasis mine)

The driving force behind all these actions that give us growth spiritually should be love.  And why?  I John 4:19 tells us:

"We love, because He first loved us."  

All these actions are a demonstration of our love toward our God who first loved us.  All of these areas should be applied in our spiritual leadership of our children, as well, and our encouragement of them as they grow and develop their own personal relationships with God.  Let's look more closely at these three key areas.

1. Prayer

We're told in I Thessalonians 5:16-18:

"Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (emphasis mine)

You know, sometimes we talk about seeking the will of God, and that's great; but, I love it when we have verses like this one where it's so clear!  Why should we pray?  Well, the number one reason to me is because God commands us to and the other major reason is that it is our means of communication with our Heavenly Father.  We should want to and we desperately need to pray.

Consider the description in the New Testament of the church as the bride of Christ.  How does a bride feel about her groom?  She loves him so much that she wants to be with him all the time.  When she gets exciting news, he is the one she wants to tell!  When she needs advice, she wants to talk to him about it.  When she feels like having coffee and a chat, she seeks him out.  He is her beloved and her love for him motivates her to spend all the time she can with him!  This is how we should be with God.     Prayer is our avenue of communication with him.  Think about what happens to that bride's relationship with her groom if she doesn't invest time talking with him.  Their relationship deteriorates, possibly even to the point of divorce.  She does all of her communicating with other people and suddenly the bride and groom may even feel as if they don't even know each other any more.  Get the picture?  This communication with God is vital to our relationship with Him!

2. Time in the Word

In II Timothy 3:14-17, Paul writes to Timothy:

"You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." (emphasis mine)

Spending time in God's Word is necessary for our growth as Christians.  This is God's means of communicating with us.  Think about how important it is for the bride to get to know her beloved.  Reading His Word is how we get to know God.  It's like one big letter just for us, telling us everything about Him that we need to know and how He wants us to live.  We should want to spend time reading it because it teaches us more about Him.  We want to know how He wants us to live, because we desire to please Him.  Again, it is all motivated by our love!

3. Service to Others

A major way that we demonstrate God's love to others is through service and this also helps us to identify with Christ's sacrifice as we lay down our selfishness and give of ourselves.  When speaking of the final judgment, Christ says in Matthew 25:34-40:

"The the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'  Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give you something to drink?  And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to You?'  The King will answer and say  to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' (emphasis mine)

Truly, these actions of service draw us closer to God.  They help us identify with the sacrifice that Christ made for us.  Although most of us will not be called to sacrifice to the point of laying down our life, we do need to die to self daily and put others first.  For the motivation behind this one, consider I John 3:16-18:

 "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in the person?  Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.  (emphasis mine)

Clearly, our service to others is motivated by our love for God and our desire to show His love to others!  

Application

I'm sure we all see how these things are vital to our growth as Christians, but how do we actually implement them?  It can certainly be hard with all the things in this life that press at us on all sides, vying for our attention.  First of all let's look at some questions to ask in relation to each area to assess how well your efforts for spiritual growth are working right now and then we'll conclude with some ideas to help spur on that growth.

• Assessing Your/Your Family's Prayer Life
• Do you spend time each day in prayer?
• When you receive a great blessing, how quickly do you thank God for it?  
• If you encounter a problem, do you first try to solve it yourself or do you begin by seeking God's intervention and trusting Him to lead you?  
• Do you pray together with your family?
• Do you encourage your children to pray?

• Assessing Your/Your Family's Time in the Word
• Do you spend some time each day in God's Word?
• If you encounter a problem, do you first seek guidance from God's Word?
• Do you make a regular effort to memorize God's Word (Psalm 119:11)?
• Do you spend time teaching God's Word to your children (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)?

• Assessing Your/Your Family's Service to Others
• Do you purposely plan ways for your family to aid others?  
• Do you involve your children in those efforts?
• Do you train your children in service by allowing them to help with activities they are mature enough to handle?
• Do you strive to put others ahead of yourself (Philippians 2:3)?

These things can be difficult to maintain and we have to deliberately carve out time to dedicate to these activities.  Also, we need to constantly ask the Lord for strength as we work on establishing better habits in these areas, because you'd better believe the devil will be working overtime to stop any activity that creates a stronger Christian!  Here are some suggestions in each category of ways to encourage personal growth and growth of your children in these areas.

1. Prayer

Some of the suggestions below can be much more difficult to implement depending on your season of life.  My season currently involves several small children, which can make spending time alone with God rather difficult.  I either have to manage to get up early enough to do it before it's time to start breakfast and everyone else is still sleeping or to get all the children down for a nap at the same time (rarely happens!) or to stay up later after all the kids are in bed.  None of those things happen very often at this point in my life, but I definitely make an effort to spend time with the Lord together with my children and this, I think, is also a great benefit to them.  Here are some suggestions:

• Try to carve out at least a small amount of time each day to spend time in prayer privately (Matthew 6:6).  At my house, this doesn't necessarily happen when everyone is far away from me and I'm completely alone, but I think it can even be managed while you're alone in the kitchen washing the dishes and the children are occupied with daddy or playing somewhere else in the house.
• Pray with your children daily.  We try to do this most evenings together when we have family worship time.  This gives us a chance to see if they have prayer requests that we can bring before the Lord together as a family, as well as model prayer for our children.
• Teach reverent behavior to little ones while others are praying.
• Encourage your children to pray out loud.  Our kids usually take turns praying before the meals while daddy isn't home, and occasionally they pray after daddy thanks God for our dinner meal, as well.
• Talk with your children about things to be thankful for and then praise God together for those things.

2. Time in the Word

Here again it can be difficult for me, as with other young mothers, to spend time with my undivided attention on God's Word.  I don't get a lot of chances to spend a long amount of time just studying unless it occurs during some of the above-mentioned times, which I am grateful for when they do occur!  Also, it seems that there are many other tasks that would be much easier to accomplish when the children are not around which are competing for my free time!  Here, prioritization is called for, and spending some devoted time in God's Word definitely needs to be top priority when I have those opportunities.  I am also working on getting up at an earlier time each day so that I have a regular opportunity to spend personal devotion time each morning, but that is definitely a work in progress!  

• Spend some time each day in God's Word.  There are so many ways to do this.  You can simply pick up a Bible and read a set amount of Scripture or you could listen to preaching.  You could also listen to the Bible read aloud while working on other housework.
• Spend time as a family in God's Word daily.  Even if you don't get some time alone in God's Word, pick up a Bible and read a selection with your children or, if they are old enough, have them do some or all of the reading of the passage.  We try to read a chapter together each evening during our family worship time.  Then we have opportunity to talk about it with the children as well.
• Make a conscious effort to memorize God's Word.  We have a memory box that we work on most school days.  There is a great and simple Scripture memory system found here.  This is what we use and it's worked well for us.  I also post verses I'm working on around the house in places I tend to be for longer periods of time, like beside the kitchen sink or on a mirror.
• Teach!  This is a great motivator for me, and even planning posts on this blog has been a spiritual boost as it requires study and application of God's Word.

3. Service to Others

This one is a little easier to me as we have ample opportunity every day in our homes to model service to our family.  It takes a little more effort to plan service to others outside our homes though.  This is still very simple to do, even from home, and you can easily involve even very young children.

• Be sure you are serving your own family cheerfully (II Corinthians 9:6-8)!
• Let your children help you think of people that you can serve together.
• Have your children draw pictures to put in cards of encouragement to others or have them write their own note if they are capable of doing so.  
• Let your children help you pick out canned goods and other non-perishable items in the grocery store to take to your church pantry or other place that provides food for people in need.
• Sponsor a child as a family.
• Pray for the missionaries your local congregation and/or your family support.
• Encourage your children to serve those in your own family.
• Let your children help you prepare and deliver meals to those who are sick or in need.

There are so many ways that we can improve each of these areas in our lives!  I'd love to hear ideas that have worked well for you or your family in your spiritual walk!  Please leave a comment and share so others may benefit from your experiences.  God bless us all as we strive to grow more like Christ and closer to Him!