God In Our Everyday

People ask me questions all the time, I think it is because I am so open and willing to share pretty much anything.....it is certainly not because I have all the answers. I am just like them, walking this crazy road of parenting and doing my best not to stumble off the path God has laid before me. Most question can be answered with one or two sentences and a practical example. However, the other day a mom of two small children asked, "how do you work God into your everyday?" This is not an easy answer and can be done in thousands of ways....if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. This question got me thinking and therefore, the next few posts will be practical little things we do to allow God to be seen in our everyday.

We do most of the obvious things people would think of: we pray, memorize verses, and have family devotions. Our prayers look different each day...besides prayers at meal times, we encourage each other to pray: before big events; when we feel anxious or concerned; when we hear fire or ambulance sirens; when we see tragic things on the news; when we have devotions; when we are sick; when we are "fighting" with friends; and especially when we are seeking God's best plan for our future (jobs, spouses, dreams). We memorize verses, but not everyday. We probably work an one or two verses a month as a family, they memorize a few more at church each month. I find these verses when I am doing my daily devotions, if it looks like a verse my children need to know, I write it down and the next time a situation occurs, we memorize the verse (usually making up motions to the words so it is easier to remember). I am sad to say that we do not have family devotions everyday. I would love to, and I think they are great! However, we do have family devotions, we have devotion books for each person in the home, and our children see us doing personal devotions and attending Bible study. We also do something known as "highs and lows."  Some days we simply talk about our day by asking for everyone's "high" (the best part of their day) and everyone's "low" (the worst part of their day). Although this is not a formal devotion time, it is a wonderful time of sharing and a time when we can take an event that happened in their day and show them how God is working throughout their days.

I have talked about this before, but one of the most influential things we do is serve. Our family goal is to complete a service project every month. We are currently serving our church every week, but that has now become part of our family DNA, so we again are looking at monthly service projects. These can be large or small, but it is important to include everyone and to do a variety of things so no one looses interest. I have several suggestions listed on the "Let's Serve Together" page of this blog.  We have been serving monthly for so long, that our children have grown to believe that this is just how you do things. You serve others, plain and simple. I can not stress enough how vital serving is to our family dynamic, I truly believe it is the most influential thing we do.

The final thing I am going to mention today is knowing your goal. We decided along time ago, that the top goal for our children was saving faith in Jesus Christ. Our children's salvation is more important than anything else. It is more important than their education, more important than how they play in the game, more important than any other goal society puts in front of us. When making decisions this goal is first in our minds. (I am not in anyway saying that education and other things aren't important, they are, and we desire for our children to do their best no matter what they do!)

I hope this series of posts bless you and your family. Our family is in no way perfect, and we make lots of mistakes, but we love the Lord and are doing our best each day to bring Him glory!