How do you spend your time? Do you know? Are you sure of the answer? Or are you uncertain? Here is a suggestion for discovering the truth about your time management, the daily routines you choose to embrace.
Get a day-timer or notepad for your family. Indicate where each family member is and what they are doing at any given moment based on 15 minute increments for one week, Sunday through Saturday. It may seem overwhelming at first, but it is also revealing. The patterns of your family life are to be found in your daily routines. This is especially true of those routines you hardly notice, yet they take time. During this time, live your lives normally, but record your time with discipline. This will provide you with the greatest accuracy so that you may then decide where changes are needed and what goals should be set. Once the goals are set, then you can decide how best to reach them in realistic ways.
In brief, discover your current reality. Then decide your preferred reality. Finally, set and implement specific, realistic, and measurable goals which will help you achieve it. In this case, it is a matter of deciding how best to use your time. We all have the same amount of time. We also have a choice concerning how we use it.
How is God leading you to change your use of time?
There is so much information available about raising children, particularly in terms of discipleship. Books, multi-media, web, and so on. It can be overwhelming. Let’s take a moment and remember the basics, the non-negotiable essentials.
- Prayer. Pray for your children and with them. Worship God. Ask him for wisdom. Pray without ceasing and with joyful hearts. Pray.
- Read your Bible. That’s right. I said it. Read your Bible. It is fine to read about your Bible, or to read devotionals, or use Bible study helps. But none of that should replace actually reading your Bible, both privately and, using appropriate passages relative to their ages, with your children.
- Confess your sin and repent. Ouch. Is that really necessary? You mean in our thoughts, right? Um, no. I mean to other real, live human beings. Particularly insofar as those sins affect others. Got a consistently rotten attitude? It probably affects others, too. Looking at porn? Newsflash. It is not as much of a secret as you probably think. Enjoy talking about others in unfavorable ways? The Bible calls it gossip and has much to say about ceasing and desisting from such behavior. So yea, confess your sin. And not only that, repent of it. That is, stop doing it. Get help if necessary, either from your spouse or another family member, Pastor Phil or another mature believer in the church, or perhaps your small group. And watch the healing begin in relationships.
I could add more, but I wanted to keep this simple. Be a risk-taker. Try adding these three basic practices to your daily life. Watch out for growth in spiritual maturity, not only in your children, but also in your life. Remember, each of these should become foundational to your daily experience. Don’t take a break from them. That is why they are basics. No fluff here. Just necessary practices for the routines of your everyday life.
