We Read the Story That Started It All

This morning I am up before the rest of my family, praying for them as we begin the new year. During 2015, in addition to the fun and challenge of "putting off" something together, we're taking up the mantle of family solidarity in a much more significant way, as well. This year, we are "putting on" the daily habit of time in God's Word and journaling.

Although spending time reading God's Word each day has been a goal for each of us every year, this year we are shamelessly bribing our children to remain consistent by offering them money—and family pressure—to get it done. We figure there is no greater investment we could make in our children's lives than to help them establish a no-matter-what, it's-just-what-I-do-every-day habit of reading the Scriptures and writing about it.

To that end, we put forth this offer—printed and laminated into a book mark—and placed it in their stockings during the Christmas festivities:

The front of the card:
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”    - 2 Timothy 3:14-17
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“How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, O Lord; teach me your decrees…I will not neglect your word.”
- Psalm 119:9-12, 16b

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The Offer: Read your Bible and write in your journal daily for all of 2015, and we will give you $200 to spend as you like. Miss one day and you forfeit all of it.

The Challenge: Every day. No matter what.

The Benefit: “I’ve never met a strong Christian who does not meditate every day on the words of God. I’ve never met a weak Christian who does.”      – Ben Stuart

“Practice Round”: Starting tomorrow, on Christmas Eve, you may begin. On New Year’s Day, when you officially start this challenge, if you’ve succeeded, you will receive $20 toward a nice dinner out together as a family.

The back of the card:
“I’ve never met a strong Christian who does not meditate every day on the words of God.  I’ve never met a weak Christian who does.”    – Ben Stuart

Journal-Writing Tips
·         Write the date at the top of your entry. I also like to include the time that I am writing, in case I write more than once per day.
·         Write the reference for the Bible passage you read that day.
·         Write something meaningful to you that’s on your heart—either at this season of life, on this particular day, or in response to this particular Bible passage.
·         You might choose to begin with something like one of the following:
- “Thank You, Lord, for…”
- “Lord, please help me with…”
- "This verse makes me realize…”
- "I really need to…”
- "I’m struggling with…”
- "I’m struck by…”
Note: Most people find it easiest to stay consistent with a devotional time if it is done first thing in the morning, upon awakening.

The “Proof”: You will show that you met the conditions by your word, and by having a daily entry in your journal, dated and showing which Bible verses you read that day. These entries are between you and the Lord alone. We won’t read them.

The “Rules”: Your entries may be as long or as short as you like, but the goal is daily time in the Word and prayer. You must write an entry each day, and you may not create an entry for a day you missed on a different day.

The cheap Ollie's calendars on which we'll keep track of our daily progress.
One is for the four of us here, one is for PT back at college,
 and one is for EV (and Ron!) when she gets married in February.

This is a bit of a bittersweet pursuit for us, learning the habit of daily journaling. We've all been given a front-row peek into the personal journals of our dear friend Mark Rodriguez as his mother, Leigh Ellen, has been publishing excerpts of them online in the form of near-daily encouraging devotional thoughts. (See God Is Super Good.) Mark, one of our son PT's best buds, was tragically killed in a random shooting as he drove home from his school's graduation ceremony last May. While this experience has rocked our faith community, where Mark's father is pastor, it has also served to strengthen so many of us in our walks with the Lord. As this was what Mark was all about in life, we know that he is rejoicing, even now, that it is still being accomplished here on earth while he resides in heaven.

Won't you consider joining us this year in our daily pursuit of time reading the Bible—God's very words to us—and in capturing our thoughts through journaling? We are so looking forward to growing in our faith and faithfulness this year! 

After all, consider this, from Ben Stuart: "I've never met a strong Christian who does not meditate every day on the words of God. I've never met a weak Christian who does." May we all be stronger Christians this time next year because of the time we've spent with Him every day in 2015!

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*Entry 8, The 12 Days of Christmas Blog Challenge
The title is a line from the Christmas song "Daddy, Won't You Read It Again" by This Hope.

All Is Calm

I must admit that I ponder New Year's Resolutions as much as the next person--probably more, fact.  (I tend to over-analyze everything!)  As I've been considering the idea of "resolutions" this year, I decided to present my friend Pam's idea of a "Family Goal for the New Year" to my family yet again--it's been three years now--to see if they want to follow suit.

This year, for the first time, they said yes! And so we have begun "No Soda 2013" (as a physical family goal) and "No Raised Voices 2013" (as a spiritual family goal).  It is our family's sincere hope and prayer to be calm, kind, and civil in all of our interactions with one another this year--and indeed, always.  We decided that whenever we have opportunity or temptation to drink soda, we will focus on the sweetness of the Lord Jesus, and on the desire we have as a family to speak in sweet tones to one another.

Interestingly, within a few hours of the commencement of this goal, the following article--"How to Break Bad Habits"--arrived to my inbox (from About.com Guide to Depression Nancy Schimelpfening).  How interesting that one of the examples she uses to illustrate her point is yelling at your kids!

A habit is any action that we have performed so often that it becomes almost an involuntary response. If we consider this habit to be undesirable then we may label it a "bad habit." People spend countless hours and dollars each year attempting to break these bad habits and often do not have any success. Why? Because there is no magic bullet. Change is hard work and there is no short cut to achieving it. The steps a person needs to take, however, can be very simply outlined. To effect a change in habits, one needs to bring the action back into the realm of consciousness and regain the ability to make choices.

What's the Payoff?
The first step in breaking a bad habit is to look at why you find this action so compelling. In other words, what's the payoff for doing this seemingly negative thing? Since you've already classified this as a "bad" habit you may be tempted to say there isn't one. But look closer. There is always a payoff. Let's say your bad habit is yelling at your kids. What's in it for you? You let off some steam and feel a little better for the moment. Or you have a bad habit of leaving the dishes unwashed? The payoff could be that you get to spend more time on the Internet!

What's the Trade Off?
Next, take a look at the trade off. What is it that you are losing by exercising your habit? This step should be easier. Just think why it is that you consider it a bad habit in the first place. Yelling at your kids is a bad habit because it leaves everybody feeling tense and tears down your children's self-esteem. You are trading a temporary release of tension for the emotional health of your children. Leaving the dishes undone is a bad habit because your kitchen is a smelly mess. To have more Internet time you are trading off having a pleasant living environment. When you look at it that way it doesn't seem like you are making very wise choices, does it? There has to be a better way.

Time to Make a Choice!
Now that you've weighed both sides of the issue--your payoff and your tradeoff--it's time to make a choice. It's no longer an involuntary act because now you know that you are making a choice every time you perform this action. You are choosing what you value more: the payoff or the tradeoff! Each time you start to do whatever the bad habit is now you have to actively choose. Which do you value more? Do you value more the relief you get by yelling at your kids or do you value their emotional well-being? Do you value more having more Internet time or having a pleasant place to live?

Substituting Better Behaviors
The whole reason you formed your habits in the first place is that they filled a need. You had tension that needed relief or you had a desire to surf the Net. As you break the old patterns you still need a way to fulfill these needs. You will be not only making an active choice to not do the old action you will also be making a choice to perform a better, alternative action in its place. Instead of yelling at your kids you might decide to go for a run every time you are feeling tense. Instead of letting dirty dishes pile up you may decide to use paper plates when you are eating alone. What the new habit is that you substitute isn't so important as whether you feel good about the choices you have made. After all, the reason you consider it a bad habit is because it leaves you feeling bad about yourself.

It's Up to You
By now you should realize that the only way to continue with a bad habit for very long is to sink back into denial of why you are doing it in the first place. Each time you begin to resume your old patterns the thought will pass through your mind that you are trading X for Y each time you perform that action. You will be forced to make a choice, whether good for bad, about continuing your habit. What choices will you make? The one that makes you feel bad about yourself or the one that makes you feel good? It's up to you.

Our family often jokingly refers to ourselves as the Bickerdings.  The kids can spend the entire day from waking to bedtime bickering at each other, often with sharp tones or raised voices.  We adults are also frequently guilty of harsh tones and attitudes as we express our frustrations with our children's behavior.  All of us need a good dose of reminder about what we're actually saying when we choose to speak in those ways to each other.  Thank you, Nancy!

Oh, how I pray that our family will seriously pursue this goal as a family this year--and that we'll see real strides as the Lord convicts, challenges, and changes us!

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.  And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." (Ephesians 4:29-32)

No Temerating!

After a pamphagous* week-end, I have decided to get careful about what I'm eating (quality and quantity) and commit to some sort of exercise every day. I need to lose a few pounds, and I know I feel a lot better when I eat less and work out more.

It is a strange time of year to decide this, heading into the "feasting" holidays, but I figure if I don't do it now, I might have five or ten MORE pounds to worry about come the obligatory solennial "start-on- January -1-but-end-by-January-13-diet" that most Americans (myself included) go on.

*Pamphagous, by the way, is a word I found on Save the Words, a site which makes you aware of words that are falling out use so you can begin to use them again in conversation and correspondence if you think they're worth saving. (All the italicized words are from that site, too. Do you know what they mean?!) Since I am extremely pamphagous most of the time, but would like not to be, I decided to begin to use that word. Literally, it means "omnivorous," but connotatively it means "eating or consuming everything."

Hopefully, I will develop the lubency for running that my husband and sister-in-law demostrated as they trained for the OBX 1/2 Marathon they completed this weekend; the rest of us joined them only in their mandatory pre-run carb-fest. Blech! I need to get home and have a good, cold salad!

So, anyway, I pledge to eat less and work out more, and maybe lose a few pounds in the process. And I'm hoping not to temerate.

You can look up these words, or find some of your own, on Save the Words.org. Just click on "adopt-a-word," then type the word into the box and click "find." The word will appear in a new box to the right... hover over it for a definition and a smarty-pants, potentially politically-loaded sample sentence.

Autumn Resolutions

In a post entitled Let's Make Some Autumn Resolutions, John Piper challenges toward a life of deliberate self-examination and resolve. I am encouraged, in both senses of the word. I am heartened ("encouraged") to hear teaching that praises the practice, and I am pleased to have been exhorted ("encouraged") toward that end.

God approves of New Year’s resolutions. And mid-year, and three-quarters-year, and monthly, and weekly, and daily resolutions. Any and all resolutions for good have God’s approval—if we resolve by faith in Jesus.

I would like to encourage you to make some autumn resolutions. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, the examined life is not worth living either if the examination produces no resolutions. What examination and experience teach us is that the unplanned life settles into fruitless routine. The drifting life—the coasting, que-sera-sera, unreflective life—tends to be a wasted life.

The opposite of this is self-examination—life-examination, routine-examination, schedule-examination, heart-examination—followed by “resolves for good.” That’s what I encourage you to do. Here’s why I think God will be pleased when you do this by faith in Jesus...

Read the entire article here.

Here's to self-examination, and to prayerful consideration, and to godly resolve. I will making a deliberate point of this pursuit over these last two weeks of August. Care to join me?

(More about the idea of "setting stakes"...)

Striving...

I'm up early this Sunday morning, the only one stirring in my quiet house. And during my Bible reading and prayerful contemplations, I've been having some more thoughts about "resolve" and the idea of "resolutions."

It is one of those times of the year, as the world prepares for "back to school," that new habits are being considered and new plans are being made (or not made).

I am becoming more and more convinced that it serves us ill indeed to live life in a willy-nilly, come-as-it-may fashion. I want to be deliberate. I want to set goals. I want to strive, whether I fail 'pretty-much-all-the-time' or only 'just-about-most-of-the-time.' It is in the striving, I think, that we engage our Master, who declares that we "can do all things through Him who gives us strength" (Philippians 4:13).

I came upon a link to a very old post of Brett Harris's (of The Rebelution fame) concerning his New Year's Resolutions from 2005. Bear in mind that he was, I assume, fourteen at the time of this composition. How many fourteen-year-olds do you know who are even thinking like this, let alone purposing with deliberation to try, with God's help and grace, to live this way?! This is not to praise Brett, but to praise the One who calls him - and us - to live boldly for Him in righteousness and faithfulness. We cannot shirk the call just because we know that in our human frailty we will fail. And we certainly mustn't shirk it in the name of "grace," using our desire not-to-attempt-to-earn-God's-favor-through-works as an excuse to keep us from ever doing those good works that were prepared beforehand for us to do...

Ephesians 2: 8-10: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

And, hopefully, it is to praise the idea of thinking through what you hope to do - through Him, in Him, with Him - and setting out with purpose to do it.

Check out what young Jonathan Edwards declared when he was still a teenager concerning what he hoped to do and be as He walked with God.

What good works have You prepared in advance for me to do, Lord? May I embrace them with fervor, diligence, and joy!

(See some previous thoughts about resolutions and striving here and here.)

Living Life on Purpose

Well, we find ourselves inexplicably and unbelievably back at the NC shore for a short, two-day reprise. It turns out that there were a couple of unrented days at my parents' beach house, the last for this summer, so here we are again. Who could pass up the chance to grill Independence Day burgers in paradise?!

I've been contemplating Independence Day today. As a homeschooling family, we should be doing some sort of creative and memorable history lesson, I know, and, once again, we are simply celebrating like most everyone else does... grilling out, playing in the sun, hoping to catch some fireworks. And I've decided that's okay. It's hard to picture Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson catching some rays when there was so much world-changing to do, but we're blessedly and unexpectedly here, and it fits, and if my kids don't learn American history well enough on the other 364 days of the year, a quick-peek reiteration on July 4 isn't going to make much difference.

And so, really, what I've been contemplating while I've been here is the idea of resolve. Deliberateness. Living life with purpose. On purpose.

I've deliberately determined that, this year, there is no history lesson surrounding Independence Day. I'm okay with that. But I'm okay with it because I've decided it. I've thought it through and given it the attention such a decision deserves (at least to over-thinking homeschoolers who must turn every life experience into an opportunity for learning). It didn't just "happen that way," with me rolling along as life moves on without my thoughtful attention to decision-making.

I've been pondering - and observing from a distance - the person I've slowly become over the past decade or so of teaching that has taught me not to strive. Not to resolve. Not to "try harder," because that's not the way of the gospel. Hogwash. I'm not buying it.

The Year of Jubilee was God's idea. A fresh start. Things made right that had gotten out of whack. He came up with the Sabbath, for crying out loud. A weekly chance to cease from the relentless tyranny of the urgent and to rest. To reflect. To prayerfully ponder and purpose and contemplate. To pursue the Lord and His thoughts and His plans and His heart, and then to set forth on a fresh course for a fresh week with a fresh vision. "Be still and know that I am God," (Psalm 46:10).

And so, ironically, it is in the quiet of rest... in the deliberate pursuit of the Lord beyond the moment-by-moment "Yeah, yeah, I know He's with me always" and into the "Here I am to meet with You, Lord, and seek Your face" that He meets us with the still small voice of guidance, and asks of us the grit to get up and follow. "Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it'," (Isaiah 30:21).

This I have lost. Daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, yearly. I used to set goals at each of these built-in calendar-points. They are gifts from the Lord for such a purpose. He knows we need them, and so He gave them to us. A sunrise in the quiet morning hush. A mandated day of rest and worship and ceasing of tasks. The cool breeze and dead leaves of autumn. The stillness and cold of bare trees in winter. The spring-time bursting forth of fresh green and flowers and fragrance. The bountiful harvest and hot of summer.

I believe He expects us to use them. To walk with Him closely enough to consult Him and ask Him and listen and hear Him as He leads us on our way, through each day and week and month and season.

I used to deliberately meet with the Lord at these times, and set goals in line with what I felt Him telling me... weighty, lofty things I set down on paper and strove to achieve. I was "continuing to work out my salvation with fear and trembling," (Philippians 2:12). There was an appropriate amount of action and purpose to it.

I am finally beginning to wake up from the more recent hazy fog of purposelessness. From the lie that pursuing Him, in all His glory and omni-presence, is somehow mutually-exclusive from goal-setting... from striving... from resolve.

And so, I am considering the concept of resolutions... of "setting stakes," which I wrote about a few days ago. The Lord is faithfully shaking me from the stupor of lethargy and inaction that I have fallen into for who-knows-how-long. I am learning to love and embrace, rather than shun and scorn, the concept of resolve. Of grit. Of determination.

I'll let you know what I come up with - what He shows me in these glorious times together - but for now I've set two stakes in the ground... I'm shooting for six days a week with the "S's of exercise" (sixty, sixteen, or sex) and I'm no longer talking on a cell phone while driving.

Not much, really, but it takes time to get a herd of elephants off your back.

Check out some other thoughts about this same issue from a woman I don't know, but wish I did. Here is her blog post from six months ago. (Don't be fooled by the title). The Beehive: My Resolutions for 1997

"For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose," (Philippians 2:13).

Might as well be legally drunk?!

I just read an article summing up lots of research which indicates that talking on a cell phone while driving is the equivalent of driving with a .08 blood alcohol content (BAC). This is legally drunk in the United States (1), one of the more liberal countries in this regard, sharing the highest BAC limit to be considered legally drunk with a few other countries like Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK. (For many countries it is just .02 BAC to be considered legally drunk. A few countries, including Czech Republic and Hungary, have a legal BAC of .00! That means no alcohol allowed in your blood if you are driving!)

We all know that drunk driving kills. We all know that our reasoning abilities, response times, alertness, judgment, concentration, and coordination are impaired if we have been drinking. We may or may not further realize that our reflexes, depth perception, distance acuity, and peripheral vision are also affected (2), leading to a dramatic decrease in general safety behind the wheel. The crash risk is known to be about ten times higher with a BAC of .08 (3), which is the equivalent of talking on a cell phone while driving!

Apparently it isn't really the distraction of dialing or answering or holding the phone with only one hand free for driving. (These are practices I had stopped doing, for safety's sake, by having my passenger dial for me, and by using a hands-free device.) It seems that the research indicates that attention isn't really affected by merely listening to a speaker who is not present (i.e. the radio) nor by conversing with a speaker who is present (i.e. a passenger in the car with you), but that attention scores plummet when one is asked to converse with a speaker who is not present (i.e. the person at the other end of your cell phone call).

I guess I found my second stake. (See "Setting Stakes" on June 15.)

Setting Stakes

I remember reading an article once - years ago when I was a girl - entitled something along the lines of, "A Mom's Advice to Her Daughter Going Off to College." One thing I vaguely recall was something like, "Flossing works. But only if you do it. Like sit-ups, if you quit, the rot sets in." Or perhaps it was vice versa, but you get the idea.

"The rots sets in" quickly, too, I discovered this morning. Every year, when we gather here on the shores of NC for a family reunion, my sister and my father and I go walking early in the mornings before anyone else is up. Our husbands go jogging, and my sister and I take our dogs and our dad and go power walking. Well, that's what we usually do.

This year we did more "walking" and less "power." Why? Because I couldn't handle it... I couldn't keep pace with them, so I slowed them down. My younger sister has always been more sporty than I am, and she continues to work her body to keep it healthy and strong as she approaches forty. My father, although past sixty, has also kept himself extremely fit since his college football days. (He is the kids' official PE teacher, and he works them pretty much to death three days a week.)

Although Dad and I used to walk together every morning, this past year I bowed out in favor of some spiritual, mental, emotional, and practical preparation each weekday morning for the homeschool day ahead. Though this was very good for me in all of those many ways, apparently it wasn't so very good for my body. The "rot" has set in.

And so have about thirty extra pounds. Sometime over the past five years or so, I have slowly gained forty pounds, only ten of which I've managed to take back off. I still weigh about thirty pounds too much, though I'd be content to lose just ten or fifteen more, really. And why is that so difficult? Well, mostly because the things we know we should do in order to stay fit and trim, work, "but only if you do it."

For a variety of reasons I'm sure I'll explore and ponder more deeply as these next weeks go on, I have become a person who doesn't "set stakes in the ground." What do I mean by that? At the homeschool convention we went to, most all of the speakers we heard spoke of acting with purpose and deliberateness. This sort of decisive action has become all but absent in my life. Whether through bad theological teaching, or sound theology improperly understood and applied, or simply the laziness of the flesh, I have become a person who feels that I can't - or shouldn't - determine to do something simply because it should be done, and then set about doing it. This "grace, misunderstood and misapplied" mindset has resulted in a total transformation - and not for the better, either - of the person I tend to naturally be. I am now sometimes paralyzed to act, in ways that I know are good and beneficial and necessary in my life, for fear of being "legalistic" or "missing the grace."

So, whether it is the teaching itself that is just a little bit "off," or just my interpretations of what I think I'm hearing, I am determining to ignore the voices in my head that prevent me from doing so, and to set a few stakes in the ground. One speaker we heard in Richmond spoke of the time early in his life as a father that he vowed, both to God and to his family, "Every day, if (he was) in town and alive, (he was) leading family devotions." I'm sure he missed some days over the years. I'm sure on those days he was grateful for grace. I'm sure he understood that he was not acting in this manner to win God's favor or to earn His love; he simply wanted the blessings and benefits in his family commensurate with being in the Word together on a consistent basis. And I'm sure he got them, in large part because he set the stake in the ground, set the goal, fixed his eyes on the means of grace that would enable this benefit in his and his family's life.

I'm ready to do the same, no matter how many seemingly contradictory messages about "not trying harder" I hear in the meantime. I want to pursue Jesus, yes! I want to know Him more. I know that, "It is God who works in me both to will and to act according to His good purpose" (Philippians 2:13). But I'm ready to cooperate with His work in my heart and in my life with a little decisive action... a little "trying harder," if you will. I need His mercy every moment I fail, and I need it even more every time I succeed, but I'm ready to have it with me as I walk the road of some stakes in the ground.

The first one? I need to get back to some regular physical exercise in my life. This morning revealed to me just how detrimental my neglect of my body has been. I read somewhere about a study demonstrating that regular physical exercise is as effective as anti-depressant medications in treating symptoms of depression. It is no secret that excess weight is more easily controlled with regular exercise, and that people have significantly more energy for the tasks of the day with regular physical activity. Physical exercise reduces stress, the effects of which can be deadly on the body.

So, here's stake #1, established this cloudy Father's Day at the NC shore: Every day that I'm uninjured and alive, I will practice one of the three S's of exercise. Each day will contain either Sixty minutes of intense cardio activity, Sixteen minutes of targeted strength training for a particular part of the body, or Sex (which I will initiate at the end of the day, if one or the other of the other S's didn't happen).

Sounds like a plan... or at least a really great Father's Day gift!