Your kids should not be resting on the back burner.

You ever see those overly committed parents that are involved in everything and wonder, “How do they do it?”

You ever see that kid that grew up in such a godly, Christian home that ran astray the moment they were given the opportunity?

These two have a ton in common. Don’t see the correlation between the two? I do and I see it day in and day out.  Too many people focus on the ministry that they think they are called to do and forget about the first ministry in which God has called them to serve, their family. These are the same people that are concerned about helping other people, kids, young adults, or even grownups.  They look like they are so giving of their time to reach out and help those in need around them. What many of them do not realize and seem to not understand is that they are also giving up their child’s time or their spouses time, something just as precious if not more so.  They are the same people that love their kids but think they have time later on in life to work on or with them.

Does this mean they were not called into this ministry in which they are serving? No, of course it doesn't mean that. But sometimes it does mean that God didn't ask you to jump in as far as you have. I hear a lot from mom’s that they want their kids to see them serving to show them what it means to be the loving example to others of Jesus. Which seriously is OK, it’s OK to want your kids to see you serve. It’s not ok though when your kids don’t see you at all? Or if they do see you with their eyes they learn to harden their hearts towards you because other people’s well being and faith seem to come far and above their own.

This may sound like gibberish to some but I’ll tell you first hand its truth. If you focus more on the outward ministry that others can see and not on your home ministry eventually it will come back to bite you in the butt.  

My parents were in ministry full time, and a good portion of their kids walked away from the faith (myself included) for periods of time, some long, some short.  Does this mean my parents were terrible parents? No, they weren't terrible parents but when you feel like you are on the back burner compared to other’s children and even some adults you learn to resent them, especially once you become a teen.  As a child you don’t comprehend things the way an adult does. Instead of thinking mom and dad are saints for helping people, as a child you will start to think you have done things too wrong for your own parents to even want to be there for you.

Or take my friends family for example, good Christian family with genuinely a good heart.  The problem was they were so busy serving in their church and community they forgot to take the time to actually speak with their children about the importance of the same things they were teaching other peoples kids.  When their daughter wound up pregnant no one understood why or how something like that would happen to such a nice Christian family. The daughter was totally to blame for it all because she should have known better, even though she felt like no one had actually been there for her.

I am not saying we  as Christians are not called to serve outside of our house and family, the Bible speaks very clearly we are to reach the world and help those around us. But, there is a fine balance between serving by doing what God has called you to do and doing more than he has called you to do. God never asks us to serve so much that we neglect to serve our children and raise them properly. Spend time with them, listen to them, and love on them when they are little so they have a safe knowledge that you are there to talk to them when they are preteens and teenagers when they need your insight the most. If you forget about them while they are young and they feel like they are an inconvenience to you while they are little, they are going to think they are even more of an inconvenience to you when they hit their teen years, when they feel the most vulnerable and don’t understand the world around them as they are growing into an adult.

Spending time serving with them or letting them see you serve others is great. But your kids also want you to spend time serving them, even if they can’t put those thoughts into words.  By serving them that means being with them, hanging out with just them, playing with them and even at times being the parent and disciplining them to bring them back to teaching them to what is right and wrong. Love on your children, they need you to constantly show them that you care about them and their spiritual future just as much as you care about others they see you serving.

God will never ask you to serve others so much that you can’t seem to find time to also serve your family. if you feel like you can't find the good balance between the two ask God to give you wisdom to be able to balance out both ministries in life. Your first ministry is always going to be your family!

Dear God, I need to see you, hear you, or something!!!

Ever have those days, weeks, months where you just long to see God somewhere in your life? Those times where it seems as though He is nonexistent? It's frustrating, and makes you question God, your faith, your beliefs, everything, just wondering if it's all worth it? Or if you are just crazy?

Honestly, I started this blog posting stuff in the middle of this season of life. The feelings of questioning Him, where is He, is He around, if He is around does he really care? What happened to the girl 9 years ago that was so sure that no matter what happened there was a God who cared about me, there was a God walking beside me? For over a year now, probably closer to 2 years, I have known and believe God exists and know He is there. I started the blog more or less to find that person again from 9 years ago. I have faith that He's being quiet in this moment in my life for a reason. Is every day easy to wake up and say, "Ok God I still can't feel you, but I trust you are there so have my day." No it's not easy to wake up each morning saying that or"praise Jesus." or being thankful. To say I wake up that way every morning right now would be a lie and be being fake. I'm lucky if I wake up with that kind of spirit once a month.

I can tell you from past experience though that God is real, that He does love me, that He cares about me and that yes, I believe this time of Him being quiet in my life is more of one for me to learn and grow in my faith. I use to think this was a time He was using to make me 'prove' myself to Him.  I had walked away from my faith before and come back begging him to take me and put me together. I had done it more than once and eventually walked back away from Him every time I had come running back, caring little to not at all what He wanted from my life or cared if I was doing something that pleased Him. So to me at first this was me thinking God wanted me to 'prove' my self to Him that I was serious, that I was real about my decision to follow Him.

The difference I realized is that God hasn't been asking me to prove myself to Him for over a year, because my decision this time was on my own. I was no longer living in a world surrounded by "Christian" people I was trying to please and fit in with, meaning I had nothing to prove to God as my decision was real and directly from the heart. I was nervous as heck the first time I talked to my husband about even going back to church and finding a church home, but I did it. I knew what I needed and I knew I needed God leading my life. So to say God needed me to prove I was serious was probably way off as He knows the heart. I was broken down, lonely and thought I would be on this journey alone this time with no others around me to join. (I was wrong my hubby came with me!!)

I believe through this season God isn't asking me to do anything but keep trusting.  He doesn't expect my faith to be fake, but tried in order to make me stronger.  I also believe that this season is partially to do with where I am at in the existence of life. I have two kids under the age of 5 and one on the way. This is an exciting yet also tiring and trying time in life. It's hard to always feel God near when it's hard to find hours a day (or even two minutes) to spend praying and reading the Bible. It's hard to find ways to be spiritually rejuvenated day in and day out.

 I think many mom's in my shoes go through this at this season of their life.  Feeling that maybe God has 'forgotten about them" or doesn't care because He's got bigger things to worry about.  But, I also know that God is bigger than my understanding and mind. I know He hasn't forgotten about me. And though there may be bigger things in my eyes to worry about in this world God deals with them all in His timing and He sees each person equal and the same. He deals with each individual problem on His terms.

I can say that I do know after talking to many other mom's who have gone through the baby and toddler stage that they say they have, been there done that. Sometimes just knowing that can help me make it through another day. Just knowing that even if I can't feel God or see Him directly affecting and using my life that some day, when I am no longer sleep deprived and feeling like a hamster running in a wheel, that on the other side I will see God and how He helped me through each day that I did wake up feeling alone and without Him.

So, I have to remember to keep on trusting, even when it's hard. To keep on fighting for what I believe to be true, even if I can't feel God always next to me. I can't give up on what I believe because if I give up on it that means I didn't believe it in the first place. Believing something means that you trust it with your whole being.  It will effect the way you live, think and do all things in your life and just because you can't always prove it doesn't mean you stop believing it to be true and real.

So, even though there are many days that I can't feel God or see Him directly in my life I have learned to keep on keeping on, and holding onto the things I know to be true and real. I know what I believe, what is true even when I can't see it or feel it.

Reading through the Bible shouldn't have a deadline

“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Psalm 119:11

For the last year I have heard our pastor and other Godly leaders talk about reading through the Bible in a year. My husband and I diligently started working on that goal together at the beginning of the year in 2011 and made it up to about the middle of June with keeping up with the readings. I'll admit that we made it 3 months longer than I wanted to. It's not that I didn't want to read the Bible it was the simple fact that I was getting annoyed and feeling like reading it was more of a chore than a joyous way to get to know my God and Savior better.

I hate feeling like everything has to become a chore. Then when I started getting sever morning sickness I'll be honest any spare time I had went straight to sleep and on occasion praying hard for strength to get through the first months of pregnancy. The idea of reading the Bible and making sure I finished the readings every day went out the window. It wasn't that I didn't love God, or that I didn't want to know Him, the point was I was lucky to have 5 minutes of life, so I went back to what I could handle, which was a daily devotional that lasted no more than 5 minutes. I wasn't trying to put God on a back shelf or say He wasn't important I just honestly couldn't keep up with life through those months.

Through those 4 months of sever sickness with baby I obviously fell of the band wagon of getting through the Bible in a year. Then there was the guilty feeling of being a failure. How could I have not kept up with it? But then I realized, my faith was still growing; my love for God hadn't subsided or died it had actually grown. Through the little time I could manage to talk to God and read I hadn't completely lost sight of what was important. I had taken time to memorize a few extra new scriptures and found many old ones that had once been near and dear to my heart that otherwise I might not have picked up during reading the Bible through in a year.  

The problem for me with reading through the Bible in a year was not just the feeling of it being a chore to get through, but it also was like a race. I don't really think God intended us to race through the Bible just to say we have done it. Sometimes, I think God intends us to be able to read His word and study it out but it might take more than a year. I know lots of people who have read through their Bible's now and still can't tell me an good understanding of it or even tell me where half of the things they quote to me are.

 The psalmist talks about hiding God's word in your heart so you don't sin. This means you can’t just race through it to know it all and have a good knowledge of it, but you should actually take time to understand it so you know what God expects and wants of you.

I am the person that when I read the Bible for my own sake I love it when I come across something that stumps me, makes me ask questions or makes me have a new thought. However, when I have those thoughts or questions I want to be able to feel free to also stop reading and do a little more in-depth research to understand my questions or what I have read. When I was reading through the Bible and just trying to make it through in the year I never had time to go in depth with all the questions and thoughts and things that came up because I was trying to just get through the reading and then I would forget it and hardly ever get back to it to actually meditate on what God had in store for me to actually learn.

I encourage all people at some point to read through your Bible cover to cover. Start at the beginning, but don’t race your way through it. Reading through your Bible should never have a deadline, but you should have a goal to be open to letting God at any moment through anything you are reading bless your heart with new found thoughts and ideas. It may only take you a year to get through it, but it could also take you 10. Just make sure as you read through it that you are open to letting God speak to you. Don’t put a limit on when you should be finished. I find so much more joy in peace of reading the Bible with God than reading through it telling Him to hold on, or “I don’t have time for you to actually speak to me through it.”

So am I undermining what my pastor is preaching? By all means NO!! I don’t’ believe our pastor ultimately cares if you read it through in a year. I believe he is just trying to encourage all of us to make sure to be in God’s word and to spend our own personal quality time with God getting to know Him.

Reading through your Bible isn't a race, it's a destination of ending it with a better understanding of our miraculous and huge God!

Spirituality is not a competition, so get over yourself!

I have such an amazing God! Truly I believe I do. I know He loves me and I don’t have to prove it to make sure it’s true. I look around at Christians and get so upset with how many of them play the Christian version of, ‘keeping up with the Jones'.’ You know those people who want to make sure they are equal to or above the people around them, with the biggest house, car, best kids? Well I am talking about those people who do that on a spiritual level.  I am talking about the people who have to try and prove how spiritual and Godly they are by always sharing the things that they do in order to prove that they love God so much more than you and that God loves them more than you because of what they do and you should look to them for advanced spiritualness because they are superior to you in the faith.

I don’t have to ‘prove,’ my God loves me to anyone around me by the things I do, have or say. I don’t have to show how spiritual I am by pretending that everything in life is hunky dory. I don’t have to prove anything about my life to know that to God I am equal to all those around me. Just because you may own a big home, a fancy car, speak the right words, or hang out with the ‘overly spiritual’ people means that God loves you more than the next person. We are all on equal ground.

God doesn’t see the person who is a missionary in Uganda any more special than He sees you or me sitting here in the US. He doesn’t measure me up to the person that has witnessed to thousands or has a million dollars and gave more than I make in a given year to the church. Each person is blessed with different abilities, talents and situations for all sorts of reasons and He puts us in the places we need to be to reach the people he wants us to reach out too. He may only have you reach one person and to your sister a thousand and one.

What I do not understand about the Christian perspective is the constant competition that seems to be out there to see who is more holy, or more Godly than the next person.  Part of Christianity really reminds me of living in high school all over again with how we can treat one another so poorly.  We can be so thoughtless and treat each other with such superiority that we honestly start to believe that ‘we’ are the answer to everyone else’s problems and if they would just ask me, they would be so much better off spiritually.

If we take a look at what the Bible says and what Jesus says regarding this we would soon realize that these actions are not just weird, they are wrong! We are to build each other up as Christians and encourage each other. We are not to play superiority games or try and make sure everything we do is seen by everyone so they all know just how spiritual we are. Being a good Christian is doing those things, but not having to tell everyone in the world that we helped the homeless today so we get the reactions we are looking for when we do tell people that. The Bible is very straight forward about such actions of bragging about your good deeds.  In Matthew 6: 1-4 Jesus says;

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Sometimes letting someone know a good deed that is done is helpful for building them up spiritually when they are feeling down, or alone, or that there maybe is no good left in the world. Or sharing a story of how God has helped you through something is awesome, but only when it is for the cause of building up someone, not for the cause of trying to prove how spiritual we are or how much we think we need to prove God loves us. When we all remember we are all sinners on the same path to heaven, going through life together it becomes easier to just be, and not try to be something more than we are. We are all Christians, really to each other we have nothing left to prove, for we all know that we are saved by the same amount of Grace and Love that flowed down from the cross.

 As Christians our job to each other isn’t to prove how God loves us more or how He loves us at all, our job is to build each other up spiritually and to encourage one another. Our job to none believes is to try and help them understand why we are happy and free to be the way we are because of Jesus love for us and we are to share it in a giving, loving manner not with an attitude that we have a superiority complex and think we are better than them because of what we know, believe, and have.

God never intended His love to turn into a competition He intended it to be shown and given to all equally no matter of personal circumstances.