The most worrying trend I’ve noticed as I have ministered among believing women is how many even long-time Christian women have difficulty with studying the Word of God in a direct way for themselves. And sadly there is a definite correlation between our lack of biblical depth, breadth and fidelity and our inability to respond in faith to our problems, challenges and our culture.
I get that the Bible is intimidating. Believe me! It’s why I wrote my 5 day free email course, DWELL, to address this very thing. It’s why I designed the Dwell Journal and the “Wandel Joernaal”, to help us push through our intimidation, overwhelm and reluctance around the direct study of God’s word. I know first-hand that devotionals are so much easier to understand, with the content often crafted to answer one specific need or question. And especially newer devotionals feel so much more relevant to us, chiefly because they often make us, the reader, the main character in every single story.
The Bible is no lazy man’s book! Much of it’s treasure, like the valuable minerals stored in the bowels of the earth, only yield up themselves to the diligent seeker.
Arthur W Pink
Here are 4 dangers we are consistently exposed to when we don’t learn to read the Bible for ourselves:
Disconnections & Distance:
Biblestudy is not primarily a pursuit of head knowledge, although, as I always say, you can’t trust someone you don’t know. It is primarily a pursuit of God himself. God’s word is his primary revelation about himself. It’s where he speaks to us most directly this side of heaven. Our time in God’s word should grow not just our understanding but also our intimacy.
Think about it this way: There is a marked difference between the intimate relationship between a husband and wife who spend time together doing both meaningful and mundane things and a teenage romance where the communication consists of text messages and memes. The first and most important danger of our dependence on devotionals is the effect it has on our personal relationship with God. When we think that we should get a specific message out of every interaction with God it robs the relationship of its joy and it becomes unnatural – because it becomes all about feelings and experiences. If marriages were dependent on feelings and experiences they would not last very long.
Our reliance on devotionals has created in us a strange expectation when it comes to “quiet time”. Instead of simply enjoying time with God, we constantly assess if it’s “doing something” for us. Instead of seeing it as intimacy and relationship building, we measure it for its “impact” and “self-help”. But when we ditch devotionals and come to the word with the understanding that we are growing closer to God through it, we allow ourselves to be free to enjoy our relationship with God as the gift of grace that it is. That is so much better than the devotional-driven mindset that causes us to be constantly morbidly introspective about the relationship and whether it makes us “feel good” or what it “does for us”. What if we chose devotion to God over devotionals? Devotion reflected in a dedication to spending time with Him regardless of how “personally relevant” or “exciting” that felt.
Deception:
When bitesized theology is all we have, it only takes someone who dresses in a relatable way and speaks in a confident way to convince and sway us. But if you know your Bible, you will not by swayed by tone and trend, but by truth. If you want to know how to test a teacher, know your Bible. Knowing God’s word for yourself is your best safeguard against false teaching. The blame for the growth of movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation (Bill Johnson and Bethel), the popularity of emergent (Rob Bell) and affirming (Jen Hatmaker) teachers, can be squarely blamed on our lack of Biblical literacy. Even though these teachers and their content present to us a version of Jesus almost unrecognisable from his portrayal in the gospels, we remain unable to apply the scriptural proof test to what they say and write because we simply do not know the Bible well enough!
Here’s something crazy. AW Tozer, in his book THE CRUCIFIED LIFE, spoke about applying a Scriptural Proof Test to “phrases and mottos that on the surface look great but are not rooted in Scripture or that mostly bolster one’s self-image,”. Nearly 60 years after his death, as we see more and more “self-help spirituality” in devotionals and “Christian” books marketed to women, you have to wonder, would any of them pass the Scriptural Proof Test?
If you are using human teachers as the sole means of understanding God’s word, by what will you judge the teachers?
John Piper
Dehydration:
Relying on second-hand revelation as the filter through which we get to know the heart and character of God is like relying on predigested food to sustain us in this marathon that is life. Pre-digested truth will not ultimately feed the truest and deepest longings of our souls and they won’t be enough when the trials come. God’s desire is for us to abide in his word, to actually live there, not to always only rent space from other people who live there.
But so many of us are unknowingly malnourished. And after a while, if we keep skipping meals, a page-a-day devotional here, an inspirational Instagram post there, we eventually do not feel hungry anymore. And it’s when the storms of life come upon us, as they inevitably will, that we realise that second-hand revelation is not enough to sustain us. We should see time in God’s word as a waterpoint, a feeding station for the race we are all called to run. It’s the waypoint we need to persevere because it is where we grow in our (first hand, experiential) knowledge of and confidence in God. That is why David can say Psalm 119 v 11: because I have treasured your word in my heart I can do your will.
Our ability to keep running our race is directly linked to our ability to keep returning to God’s word for sustenance.
Diluted Witness:
The number one accusation made about Christianity is an accusation made against Christians. Against us. That we are hypocrites. And we are. It’s the human condition. Even the people who call us hypocrites are hypocrites. But our inability to apply our faith to how we interact with our neighbours (or the guy next to you in traffic), pay our bills (or don’t pay them), exercise integrity in our business dealings and compassion in our context and, in general, the lack of the fruit of the spirit in our lives, can all be chalked up to us having very little by way of an authentic daily walk with God and a clear picture of what we really need to be obedient to.
This has been my experience. When I have spent time in God’s word and in prayer: It is like putting on a pair of glasses at the start of the day that influence how you see the rest of your day. It changes your expectations, your outlook, and your thinking, and therefore influences your actions, reactions and feelings. When our eyes are opened in that way, we see God operating in our lives more clearly, and we become first-hand witnesses. And our witness becomes authentic, fresh and relevant because it’s not the well-fitting story written by someone else at the start of every devotional chapter but your lived experience of walking with God. What if we tried that every day? Maybe then they will say about us what was said about Peter and John in Acts 4, that we are ordinary people made extraordinary just because we have “been with Jesus” (V13).
A mom reached out to me on Instagram as she was processing disappointment with her child after something they had prayed over just, well, didn’t happen. She ended her message with this statement – why do I keep praying when God has other plans? And I was like, yeah, I so get it!
There is not a mom I know who has not carried the heartache of our kids’ disappointment in them like a wound. And for praying moms it’s a double whammy, right? Because we are at the same time teaching our kids about God and about prayer, wanting to foster faith in them. And let’s be honest when the disappointments (read – unanswered prayers) start stacking up, it shakes our faith, and erodes our resolve to keep praying and Lord God with respect, it makes You a bit of a hard sell. Don’t we all just deep down want a God who will do what we want? There are few things in life that expose our misshaped views of God than our response to unanswered prayer.
We come to everything in our lives with biases and agendas, including prayer, which is simply the nature of being human in a fallen world. And the question, why pray if God does what he wants anyway, speaks to a core lie we believe about what prayer is and who God is. Here’s how Oswald Chambers puts it:
Our common ideas regarding prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God himself.
Oswold Chambers
Here are 4 truths about prayer that can really help us:
Prayer is about relationship more than requests. You will not have a good relationship with someone that you only ever ask stuff of. We hear it all the time, communication is the key to good relationships. That involves not just speaking but also listening. Have your learned to listen in prayer, not just speak?
Listening in prayer is about reading the word and allowing God to inform and guide your prayers. It’s about getting comfy with silence, making space for God’s spirit to minister to you. And that means it’s about planning and patience too! These things do not come naturally to us but they are all a vital part of building our relationship with God through prayer.
Prayer is transformational – Prayer is not about bending God’s will to ours, it is about Him shaping our will to His. Prayer is about partnering with God. Yes, God is sovereign, He will do what He chooses, but scripture is full of examples of how God chose to work through the prayers of His people. Scripture and hopefully even your own life, has examples of how God brings about His purposes through our prayers.
Prayer is about love. We often pray as though prayer is about convincing God of something, twisting his arm to be on our side. This reveals much about what we think He is really like. What if we started praying not with the conviction that we will get what you want but with the conviction that He knows exactly what we need? And then trusting that? To me that in itself seems like it would be transformative.
The late Timothy Keller said something once that has always stuck with me. “God will only give us what we would’ve asked for if we knew everything He knows.” I know right? Read that again! Here is what I always comfort my kids and myself with:
We don’t know everything but God does. And He loves us perfectly. And He is trustworthy. There is comfort for us in light of unanswered prayers or disappointing situations in knowing that the God who knows everything knows what is best for you or me better than we do.
..and no, it’s probably not because you’re not trying hard enough.
No shade, but I don’t buy into the new year/ new you nonsense. And that is not because I don’t like resolutions, in fact, I am a huge fan. I have a whole bookshelf full of journals and a stationary bill to prove that a new year does not, in fact, equal a new you. Resolutions contain the matter of our values and aims, and without something to aim for, well, you are just like a guy playing darts with a blindfold on. That’s true.
But, and this is a big but, resolutions in themselves hold no transformative power. The things that kept you from pursuing Christ in His word, putting Jesus first, making time to read or disciple your kids, saying no to that second piece of cheesecake or third glass of wine and yes to a jog around the block are still there. They do not magically disappear because the date changed and you wrote some stuff down.
Our resolutions often peter out by February like a 40-something woman by 9PM. And that is why, so often, we turn back to that neatly written list halfway through a year only to realise: This was just a prop to prop up my fears at the start of a new year. It was all for show. Like a politician’s Bible.
Here’s why I believe our resolutions don’t work:
They address behaviours and not beliefs. We seldom do the deep introspection of asking ourselves why we have allowed our health to diminish and our weight to increase, and what it is behind those 4 pm cravings and the long work day with no time for exercise at the end of which we inevitably drown ourselves in Netflix. Instead, we put “exercise more” and “eat less” on our resolutions for the year. Look at your resolutions today and ask yourself, what kept me from doing these things last year? What is the belief/ lie/ conviction/ attitude I am holding to that is keeping me from progressing? This is something I speak about a lot in the Mommy Diaries because we do this with our kids too. We address the behaviour without addressing the cause of the behaviour and so we don’t give our kids (or ourselves, as the case may be) the tools to actually change.
They can seem very pass-fail. Let’s say we set a goal to have a daily time of devotion. Often the result is that we believe we have only succeeded if we had time in God’s word at 5 AM for 30 days straight. See? Pass/ fail. Which kinda makes you wanna give up, right? Here’s something I think is better. What if instead we gently corrected our priorities (and diaries) so as to gently direct our time and therefore our effort towards putting God first more regularly instead of less regularly? What if instead of setting a finite goal we identified an area where we know we need to do some intentional work and aimed for progress in that area? Then, if you managed 3 quiet times this week and 4 next week, that is a pass, not a fail, if your goal was “Spend more time in God’s word” and not “Have quiet time every day”. Ya feel me?
We try to go it alone. Most often with our white-knuckle-willpower and the latest self-help book under one arm. But life change comes from heart change and heart change comes from God. Your growth in discipline, maturity and character is not a DIY Project. The transformation we seek is valid, but the means by which we seek it are often insufficient. We need Jesus to transform us into His likeness, and resolve alone isn’t enough. The Bible tells us to “commit our plans to the Lord” (Prov 16 v 3), and it’s a verse we love quoting at this time of the year! But here’s where we go wrong: to “commit our plans” does not mean to make our plans, piously pray about them and then go on our way. That word “commit” is the Hebrew word “galal”, which means to roll away or roll down a burden, the way a camel, in order to lay down a heavy load, must kneel down and tilt over so as to roll its heavy load onto the ground. So to commit our plans to the Lord means surrendering them to Him in recognition of our need of Him in every area. How would you approach your goals differently if you had a greater sense of your dependence on Christ?
Our new year’s resolutions most often reflect our discontent. I am not saying there is anything wrong with desiring change but 1) often the change we desire is circumstantial or external and 2) the real power for change actually lies in contentment. Not discontentment. So we enthusiastically (even spiritually) set those – often external, often circumstantial – goals and then say “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4 v 14). But if we ever read this often misquoted verse in context this is what we would see: The thing Paul was able to do through the strength Christ gave him was to be content in all circumstances, with a little, with a lot, with abundance or with need. Because THAT is what the strength of Christ is for. The strength of Chris is to power our contentment. Not our discontentment. But, if we read v 11 – 13 we would also see that Paul said he “learned” to be content. Learning implies a process. What would change about your new year’s resolutions if learning to be content was the driver and not your perpetual discontent?
Whether resolutions are your vibe or not, don’t place your hope in your ability to change yourself. Because if that was actually possible, Christ died for nought. If you believe what the gospel tells us about Him and about ourselves, that true transformation is only found in Him, what would you resolve to do this year? How would that truth change the focus of your resolutions from outward to inward?
Need inspiration? I once came up with a list of “what not to do” as my new year’s resolutions: read it here.
Now let me just confess this upfront. I’m a list maker by nature. I love the idea of ordering my thoughts and hopes and dreams into the most beautiful outline, most creative presentation, as though simply the act of putting pen to paper and making it look instapretty can provide the impetus required to push through on every lofty ideal for the new year. And when the 31st of December rolls around I am just about giddy with the”blank page, second chance, do-over” 1 January presents. But here is the problem with New Years Resolutions:
The truth is that we are all actually plagued by this one question: “How best should I live my life?” In recent years this has changed to “How do I live my best life?”… like it’s some kind of external construction that a vision board and a protein shake with kale will bring us. But deep down we know, our life flows from the inside out (Luke 6 v 45), not the other way around. Whatever we might want to change on the outside (exercise more/ spend less/ eat healthier/ be more patient) must first change on the inside (understand why I don’t exercise/ understand why I overspend/ understand why I comfort eat/ understand why I yell in the traffic), and there is only one way to change on the inside. Transformation doesn’t happen with goals or lists or plans. New Years Resolutions bring with them the allure of “This year I will “do” differently, when what we all really need is to “be” different before we can “do” differently. What we really need is an inner work. And so I have struggled and written many times about how best to approach a new year that doesn’t call us to fall into a more/more/more or a do/do/do trap that has no lasting impact.
The only thing I’ve ever seen cause true change in people’s lives is a deep and overwhelming understanding of the Gospel. And the only thing I have seen cause that change to be lasting and enduring is the work of the Holy Spirit through God’s word in the life of a believer. God’s word is penetrating (Heb 4 v 12) and more effective (2 Tim 3 v 16 – 17) than any insta slogan or vision board or hustle culture book with a relatable catchy title on the front and a lot of self-help covered in Christian-ese sauce on the inside.
And so at the start of every year, I ask God to give me a word for the year. I pray for it, and it starts to take shape during my devotional time, as I read and meditate, where a theme or word just keeps popping up or just deeply resonates and drives me in my reading. This word then serves to inspire me to live a life of faith, serves as a daily reminder of His truth and can become a prophetic marker in making decisions and moving ahead.
As you read and pray over the next few days, here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you identify your word for 2021:
What area in your spiritual development has your conscience, the Holy Spirit been directing you to pay attention to?
What do you most need that only God can give that will help you take the next step in your calling?
What familiar themes are you noticing in your reading of God’s Word that seems to come up repeatedly? Remember His word is the first place He speaks. Whatever else we “hear” in the world must first line up with what we see in the Word.
If you could ask God to accomplish one thing in your heart this year, what would it be?
If you came to the end of 2021 and you looked back, what would you be praising God for accomplishing in you?
Hustle culture and its proponents have, by and large, ignored the fact that the call on the life of a believer is primarily about 2 things: Others and God’s Kingdom. Not self. In fact, to follow in Jesus’s footsteps is not merely less of self but the death of self. Not our vision for our life but His. Not our benefit but the benefit of those around us and the advancement of His Kingdom. If we say we believe the Bible we cannot separate ourselves from these truths.
So, whether you choose a word of whether you are a new years resolution or goals type girl, the best way to stay aligned with God in the way we enter into a new season is to choose goals/ words/ verses or markers that will:
Glorify God and Grow us
Give God space to move and guide us
Grounds us in His love more and more so we can be truly, deeply, internally transformed more and more.
Teaching kids about prayer in times of uncertainty
In this year we have faced trauma at school, family members threatened by a dire drought, and now, Covid 19, it’s effects reaching into every corner of everything we do, have, own, trust in. Never before has it been more important to be able to pray. And I was confronted through all of this with this question: Do my kids really know how to pray? Do they know why we pray? Do they truly have access to the power of prayer in times of loss, uncertainty, worry, fear and trial, or do they just know how to pray before they eat or before they sleep?
So here is what I told my kids about prayer:
We should pray because it’s a conversation with God:
Imagine living in your house with your parents and your siblings, and never talking to them. Imagine going to school and flat out ignoring your friends. That would be so weird. It would make you feel awkward and it would make your friends and family feel awkward too. Talking is one of the things we do to maintain, foster and build relationships. And prayer is talking. With God. That is why prayer must be honest, just like any conversation between you and someone you love whom you know loves you back. Just like when you talk to that person, prayer doesn’t have to be full of fancy words, not flowery or over the top. Prayer is a conversation, not a sermon, a monologue or an eisteddfod performance. And just like talking to someone who you know fully accepts and loves you, prayer can change the way you feel, the way you see things and even the way you act. And that is why prayer must go both ways and include talking AND listening, just like any conversation. Otherwise, you are just making a speech. The problem is that we are all better talkers than listeners for the most part, and that is true when we are around people we can see and hear! So listening to God, whom we can’t see and whose voice is not audible, is even harder. But it’s not impossible, and prayer can be a time of talking and listening if we do exactly what we would do if we had a friend we wanted to listen to, which is to intentionally keep quiet.
Set aside the time and create an opportunity for God to speak to you. Yes, you can pray any time and anywhere, but setting aside disciplined prayer time where you are not just venting to God means you are creating space for Him to speak to you.
We should pray because it’s a command from God:
And just like all other types of commands, God insists on them because he knows they are good for us. God through prayer wants us to keep the channel of communication open between us, because He knows that without communication, relationships don’t survive and thrive. And if prayer is a command, that means when we pray we are being obedient, right? And before you think obedience is boring, think about it this way: Another word for obedience is trust. So every time we obey God, we are also trusting Him, and when we trust someone, we share our hearts with them, everything about our lives, the good and the bad. And that is what prayer is, and act of obedience and an act of trust. And that is why prayer is so powerful
We should pray because Jesus did it:
Which shows us that it must be a very important thing. And when we start copying Jesus, the more we will become like him. And the great thing is that Jesus, in the way He himself prayed with and for His disciples, shows us exactly how we should pray
Faithfully (Rom 12 v 12)
Even for our enemies (Matt 5 v 44)
In watchfulness about what we notice and gratitude for what we have (Col 4 v 2)
With the help of the Holy Spirit (Eph 6 v 18)
We should pray because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. And also because God gives His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for these gifts and thanking Him for them.
Heidelberg Catechism
We should pray because it’s powerful and releases God’s power into our lives and the lives of others:
The Bible tells us that the prayer of the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective (James 5 v 16), and thanks to Jesus dying for us, we all are “righteous” because we have Jesus’s righteousness. God uses prayer in the lives of us and of others because His desire is always for a relationship, to partner with us in bringing about His will on earth.
The Bible we read about many instances where the power of prayer overcame enemies (Ps 6 v 9 – 10), brought about healing (James 5 v 14 – 15), conquered death(2 Kings 4 v 3 – 36) and defeated the power of the demons (Mark 9 v 29). God uses prayer to bring healing and restoration, to give us wisdom and to open our eyes. It is a way to draw on the infinite resource of power that is the God of the universe!
Note to parents:
Prayer is a posture, it’s a conversation, it’s correcting and it’s a contribution to the work of the Kingdom, and in The Mommy Diaries I expound on how to journey with our kids on this and also how to teach them to pray. All orders of The Mommy Diaries during lockdown will come with an amazing free resource by Rev Leigh Robinson called “A solid foundation: Biblical Truths our children must know by heart before the age of 12”. Perfect for discipling your kids and using all the time at home to sow eternal seeds!
For blog subscribers, there is also a handy infographic with an easy rhyme that teaches kids about praying anytime about anything, some quick crib notes to help you answer those tough questions on prayer (if God knows everything why should we pray?) and how to use the ACTS acronym to teach your kids how to pray.
I’ve have written about new years resolutions a couple of times. A new year is a great time to reassess and re- envision, and so we all enjoy making a list of things we think we should do, even of things we think we should stop doing. As a working mom with a side hustle, I was recently asked to write about work-life balance. And you know what. I couldn’t. Because there is no such thing! It’s all nonsense. Work-life balance is stupid.It think it’s one of those “yes you CAN really have it all” concepts, that when you actually try it, you soon realise it’s pie in the sky, a concept that makes people (especially women) feel frazzled and unhappy and that they are invariable letting someone down. And here’s why:
Balance is a static state, and I don’t know what your life is like but I can tell you right now my life is THE.OPPOSITE.OF.STATIC. Schedules, realities, priorities, energy levels and people are constantly in flux, they are not fixed. That is why it’s the very idea of “balance” as an expected or desired state that is making us feel stressed out and constantly guilty about all the things we are not doing. Aiming to have it all in balance is aiming for something that is not achievable. I advise we all add it to the list of things we need to let go of, like fitting into those white jeans we wore in our 20s. Instead of making the illusive “Work Life Balance” part of your new year aims, here is what I want to suggest instead:
Work from a place of peace, not towards it…
Unwittingly, we all divide up our life between work and non-work – “getting through” the one to “get to” the other. All of our life is in compartments, work in the one, play in the other, toil in the one, comfort in the other. We think, work, believe and prioritize like our peace will be found in peaceful circumstances and surroundings. But God calls us to relate to peace as something we already have, not something we have to “get to” or “work towards” or “bring about” by controlling/ changing our circumstances. His Word tells us that Peace is a Person, Peace is a Promise, and Peace is a precious Gift. So in every task we do, in everything we engage in, we are called to do so from a place of Peace, from that Source of peace, from a Position of peace, not towards it. When we see our life like this, all the strands of work and play and difficult and easy, successes and failures start forming one single tapestry. It changes our perspective and infuses all aspects of life with more meaning. Not just the bush-break/ beach-holiday parts. And peace as something we already own, as something inside us, empowers us to withstand the pressures and strains that are evident and unavoidable in every season of life. We think of peace as a place we need to arrive at where it really should be a departure point. That perspective can change everything.
Make flexibility a fitness worth mastering…
Now, let me be honest here, I love me a diary. I love a to-do list, a schedule, a planner, a nice crammed-to-the-brink-with-colourful-blocks Google calendar. But nothing, and I mean nothing will give you a little productivity and planning reality check like a sick child. Or a backed up loo. Or load shedding. Or a dead car battery. Sometimes things happen, things we don’t control, and when we have rigidly structured all of our time and focus because we believe that will give us balance, that will give us peace, those “life happens” moments really mess with our attitude, our perspective and our sense of accomplishment. In my dancing days, we learned that strength and flexibility are inextricably linked. For one muscle to flex, another must give and release. I used to believe white-knuckling it through my days, obliterating obstacles in the way of my sacred to-do list, was a show of strength, but sister, strength without wisdom is just brute force and it will flatten you because here’s the truth: when the wind blows, the grass must bend.
Your level of peace when calamity/ uncertainty/the unplanned strikes is directly related to where your faith lies and who (or WHO) you believe is in control. If that’s you, you will be anxious and overwhelmed. If its God you will have peace.
Murray Brown
When we embrace flexibility, when we learn to “roll with it “ (yes, I know, the A type in you is literally wanting to run away right now, I feel you!) we are in fact surrendering our agenda to God’s plan, opening ourselves up to embrace the realization that yes, even the bumps in the road are a part of our life before God, Coram Deo. We are submitting to the One that has already called us to do everything, even the unexpected, and NOT just the things we planned to do that was on today’s list, as though we are doing it for Him (Col 3 v 23).
Flexibility helps us live from a place of surrender, not striving. If you can learn to be flexible when things don’t work out, then it’s just a “change of plan”, not a “disastrous disappointment”. And if we let them – those very disappointments can become divine appointments with God
Choose rhythm over routine…
This is the best way to practice your flexibility “fitness”. As moms, we are drilled about routine from early on. It’s the holy grail of parenting when your kids are between 0 and 8. And that’s a good thing. Kids need stability and regulation to thrive. But I think we are all in that mindset that if we could just be more rigid with our own routines maybe we’d get more done. But it inevitably leads to disappointment when we’ve had 2 weeks of great workouts/ study times/ work or whatever and then suddenly our kids are writing exams or it’s the school holidays or it’s all of a sudden Christmas time. Then we feel frazzled and upset because we had it all worked out and now we feel like we need to start from 0. Then even the call to respond to a person in need becomes something we have to “fit in”” to our routine, which to be frank is just a terrible place from which to serve someone.
What if you chose rhythm over routine? The idea of rhythm is a flexible approach that is conscious of the fact that you do not live in a bubble, but that your days and routines are influenced by the rhythms of your people and your context, the seasons of your journey and your city and ahem your kids. Sometimes there is intense, productive activity, sometimes there are periods where your focus must shift, and sometimes there is a need to respond to where you have an opportunity to serve others with Christ’s love.
Even Jesus’s life attested to this. When he was called on to turn water into wine, to serve and respond to a need, he wasn’t upset because he actually came to “party” and now he had to “work”. He didn’t say “hey ya’ll are interfering with my downtime here!” or “this was not on my schedule for today”. He was simply engaging with the very next thing, the very next good work that God had prepared in advance for Him to do. Rhythms help us to respond, routines keep us rigid. In a rigid routine, we sacrifice our peace and we deny that a sovereign God ordains meaning in all our moments, even the ones we didn’t plan (Psalm 139 – like all of it!)
Choose fruit over fear and meaning over more….
There is a guy who juggles at the corner of Republic and William Nicol Drive. Now, incase you didn’t know, here is the thing with juggling: every time you add a ball, you have to throw the balls you have HIGHER to give yourself more time to catch all of them. It’s almost diabolical. Doesn’t matter what type of mom you are, how many jobs you do in or outside of your home, or even how many kids you have and how many extra murals they do, we can all identify with how much the whole thing feels like juggling. Porcelain plates. Or hand grenades. And every time we add another goal, activity, to do or must do, another expectation, another yes, we have to throw the balls we already have higher and higher. Take more risks. Fit more in. Take more vitamins. Get up earlier and go to sleep later. But here’s the truth:
More does not equal meaning. Multitasking and doing/ adding more can never ever deliver on the meaning that you are hoping your life will have/ your kids’ lives will have. There is no fruit without focus and there is no focus if you have to do everything fast. But if you’re schedule is too full, fast is your only option. Focus is one singular thing, it cannot be divided into many things because then, ultimately, it’s not focus. Then it’s just dissipated, distracted, divided attention that serves no one.
I know, I know, us moms wear many hats, we hustle that split shift of work/ wife-ing/ mothering/ all the other things like real hardcore mom bosses, but sometimes it just feels like we did a whole lot of stuff not very well. Something that helped me was to see my day as having various pivot points, each presenting an opportunity to be present. To sow focus so that those moments can bear fruit. Because if I am trying to serve my kids lunch but I keep checking the emails piling up, not only will my laptop be full of peanut butter (this is not good) but neither the emails nor my kids get my full attention. And in the end the precious time with my kids does not bear the fruit of connection it had the potential for and the work does not reflect the excellence I was aiming for and I am exhausted and I feel like a fruitless failure. This is a quote that challenged me this year and that I want to challenge you with:
“Never is a woman so fulfilled as when she chooses to underwhelm her schedule so she can let God overwhelm her soul”
Lysa TerKeurst
Often we add more and more to our lives and our schedules out of fear. Fear that we (or our kids) are going to fall behind, fear of not enough, but fear cannot produce anything of value. Fear is not fruitful. But faith is. It’s the only thing I’ve seen that produces anything of value in our life.
I can’t wait to talk to my sons about girls, sex, dating – said no mom ever! I know, I get it. But I once heard a parenting expert explain your child’s understanding of these type of topics as files being opened in the filing cabinet of the brain. The file will be opened, named and will start containing information gleaned from what they hear, see and their environment. By being intentional about these awkward topics, we are in essence taking the initiative to “open the file”, thereby having a chance to input shaping information that is in line with our worldview, convictions, and morality. Every other piece of information that then comes into the “file” get’s tested against the truth that we put in first. Should we remove our intention we give way to the alternative, a view on women, dating, sex, shaped by the barrage of messaging, content and images that the world is consistently producing and offering up.
I didn’t want to write this. Newsflash: Being a boy mom is not dissimilar to being a girl dad. You experience the same fierce protective streak and compulsion to grab a shotgun. However gracious and “live and let live” you may appear you still secretly harbor the conviction that no one will ever be good enough for your offspring. Even if he is currently obsessed with slouchy pants and continues to be amused by his own farts.
So you can imagine my reticence when The Elder returned from Holiday Club with a hand full of notes secretly passed (some things never change). He had an expression somewhere between bemused and confused on his face as he read me a note from one girl who asked to wear his beanie, another his jacket. When I asked “what do you think about that son?” and he said “I guess they like my clothes?” Ummm, I realized I had some work to do in helping him work out how he should respond. Because how he respond doesn’t just affect him, but as he is being shaped by this interaction so are the girls he is interacting with, all of them at an age that is forming the neural pathways and emotional understanding of those interactions for years to come. Yes, we have ticked the boxes on the body and sex conversations. But this blog is about the fuzzy stuff. The stuff I want him to keep in mind as my son, as someones’ future boyfriend, as someone’s future husband. So here is what I told The Elder about girls…so far….
Be honourable – Every night before my boys go to sleep I say to each of them: “You are my treasure”. And so I have told The Elder that he must remember that when he is interacting with a girl, she is also someone’s treasure too, her mom’s, her dad’s, and God’s. And all treasure must be seen as precious and must be handled with care. Every person we encounter is an image bearer.
Be kind – “respond to girls in a way that protects them and protects you”. My son is 11, an age where possibly there is a disconnect between the feelings he has and his ability to express them. So arming him with “scripts” that enables confident responses that are also kind is how we have chosen to help him. For example: “ I am too young to have a romantic relationship, but I would enjoy getting to know you as a friend. “ or “I am too young to have a girlfriend, but I know how to be a good friend so let’s do that instead.”
Be a gentleman – Even as a 40-year-old woman, I can still recall valentines day slights, offhand comments that I shouldn’t have heard, boys being insensitive boys, all of these things I remember from being an insecure pre-teen girl. So if I am going to be the mom of a pre-teen boy, maybe I can spare some girl having similar, shaping, sore memories. My boys don’t have sisters, but they have 3 girl cousins, and a slew of friends who are like family, so when I tell them to treat every girl like she is Lila, Isabel, Jua, Hannah, Sophia or Ava, Pia or Sienna, they get it (please Lord Jesus, I hope they get it!). I take pains to help them make sure the little girls in the class that the boys know might not get anything for Valentine’s day gets something, albeit anonymously. I (try) to keep sexist joking and name calling out of the house and discourage them (strongly) from participating in it at school.
In a world of man-bashing (mostly rightly so) we as boy moms should try to encourage positive masculinity and chivalrous behaviour that has nothing to do with long-dead ideas about men and women, but has everything to do with very much alive #everybodyalways #kindnessalways thinking and the golden rule of putting others first that helps our boys to shine a light in the world.
Be careful – puberty and its company of feelings and hormones are hard to manage. And in the right (and by that I mean the wrong) situation, it can be like a car rolling down a hill, i. e hard to stop. Encountering attraction and trying to understand it is tricky for boys, so sound advise for this life stage is to stay in a group. “Don’t put yourself in a compromising position!” For now we steer clear of concepts like “dating” or “going out” until a more appropriate age.
Be aware – “Not only are you as a boy going to be dealing with your own growing awareness of the opposite sex, but you will also be dealing with girls who are going through the same thing.” In every person, the outside is most often a reflection of what is going on on the inside. So I told my son than when he encounters a girl who seems like she is overly desperate for male attention (albeit via what she wears or how she acts), give her a wide birth and keep a careful but kind distance. There are possibly things going on in her heart/life that you can’t help her with and that your attention is not the answer to.
Yes, the pre-teen and adolescent path is a messy meander of navigating confusing, overwhelming thoughts and feelings. However unpopular it might be, that’s where we as parents come in.
Make peace with the fact that you are going to be the good guy in your movie and the weird guy in theirs (there will be allot of “Awww Mom ! Gross ! I don’t want to talk about this with you!”), and launch as deeply as you can and as quickly as you can into the “girls” conversation. Yes, if you are a boy mom, leave the sex convo to the father/ father figure in your boys’ life. But when it comes to the emotive stuff, remember what it was like for you when you were a girl and use that as a jump-off point to help your boy be the kind of boy your 10-13-year-old self would’ve wanted to encounter.
When did ordinary become a bad word? Was it when social media started making even a grilled-cheese-sandwich dinner look “extra”ordinary? (Thank you Amaro filter!) Instagram feeds full of “Don’t let average describe your life” #mondaymotivation has all of us drinking the cool-aid, and unwittingly buying into a side order of perpetual dissatisfaction with it! Is that not why we have a generation of unmotivated, deeply depressed millennials? Simon Sinek (you’ve seen the Youtube video right?) describes millennials as people who want to make an impact, but who want to reach the summit of impact without climbing the mountain required to reach it (a problem by the way, that he lays squarely at the feet of failed parenting strategies. That and unfettered access to technology. Ouch!). I for one think the argument is legit. Because ask anyone, ask Steve Jobs, ask Billy Graham or whoever you view as someone who has done something extraordinary and they will tell you that 99.9% of the steps taken to reach anywhere or anything extraordinary in life are unbelievably ordinary.
So this is what I told my boys about being ordinary…
That it takes courage to be ordinary: If you asked my kids what my husband has achieved in his life, they are likely to be vague about the longevity of his business and his acumen on a mountain bike and with a calculator. But they will be able to tell you in detail about the after work ping-pong matches, the daily swimming pool maintenance and the conversations around the dinner table that their dad was present for. Sure, it’s an ordinary middle-class life but I can tell you right now, that there is nothing ordinary about dads going home daily and diligently to see their families instead of staying late for just a few more emails or just another drink. Nothing ordinary about saying yes to cleaning the pool or killing the spider or hanging the picture on a Saturday and no to becoming better at golf or entering Ironman or whatever other bucket list item will take them away from their families for more hours. Those are the thousand small deny-thyself moments that declares something about where someone’s heart is at. Ordinary is hard because it’s unseen, un “post” worthy, unremarkable. Like the laundry pile and the admin file and the go the extra mile of any messy mom life!
Ordinary is all the seeds of surrender and submission and all the hard and unpopular
choices that build a life God rewards. There is nothing ordinary about faithfulness. It might not be glamorous but is sure is rare.
That we shouldn’t value achievement over discipline: My kids have the amazing privilege of having world record holder Peter Williams as a swimming coach. At our recent club awards ceremony, we were struck by the fact that swimmers received recognition both for points scored/records broken in races and for characteristics and attitudes displayed during training. It spoke to their coach’s conviction that coaches are daily called to the deep purpose of character building and that they are doing more than preparing kids for races, they are in a thousand laps and a thousand ways preparing kids for life. Because the truth is that how you train builds your character, and how you win tests that character.
It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes us, its the consistent habits and behaviors of every day. Having goals is great, but who will you become on the way? Saul had many achievements, but David was a man after God’s own heart. The loud flash of achievement might be what the world honours, but the small daily grind of discipline and service is what God’ honours. If my kids won every medal out there but did not have love or the guts to show up for the everyday ordinary of their own lives, I couldn’t be more of a failure as a parent!
Everyone wants to be special, shine in a moment. But the truth is that it’s the mosaic of unremarkable events that make up days and years that end up making a person.
That obscurity is not the enemy: We live in a world where the humblebrag has been cultivated into a fine art, with everything from how many books we read to how well we rode or ran a portion on Strava (even if we stuck to our Bible reading plan) being broadcast to the world. My kids know that a portion of my day job deals with industries built on celebrity and fame. And it’s normal for kids of a certain age and stage to gravitate towards careers and talents that would get them noticed, like playing a sport for your country or gaining recognition as a musician (both ideas that I actively, maybe obsessively discourage. And no I don’t feel guilty about it. I flipped that switch years ago).
I have noticed that as parents we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get our kids to aim for a definition of special that has been shaped by the world. Instead I hope to show them that God makes us all in a very particular way to tell His story to the world, and this has nothing to do with fame and celebrity. Every pot for a purpose (2 Tim 2 v 20)! Some people are charismatic leaders who bring out the best in others. But it takes equal if not more courage to be ordinary and do the ordinary things and respond to the most ordinary of callings with extraordinary passion.
If we can guard against comparison and a world-shaped-view of value and worth we will stop being so uncomfortable with obscurity.
That each day counts, not just the big days: The message of Scripture is not that only the big days, big things, big people count.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” Rom 12 v 1-2 MSG
God calls us to number all of our days (Ps 90 v 12), even if they are not stand-out, red letter days. Because He knows, you are what you repeatedly do. He knows, the ordinary is where the true story lies, where the true you is crafted and revealed.
“The only way to live a truly remarkable life is not to get everyone to notice you but to leave noticeable marks of his love everywhere you go- Anne Voskamp.
Wise people know that their present will one day be their past and it will show up in their future. This is why the Apostle Paul calls us to “ redeem the time” (Eph 5 v 16). A quiet, ordinary life, unknown to the world, can still be one of much fruitfulness and joy to God. That fruitfulness grows in the realisation that nothing God does in our lives is ever wasted. Most of the time we don’t have to be awesome, we just have to be obedient.
For me, it usually starts with an overly ambitious to-do list and the Sunday night blues. My approach to the one: dogged white knuckle determination to conquer. My approach to the other? Red wine. And popcorn. Together.
Neither of the approaches is particularly successful and usually, by mid-week, there is panic, rushing, yelling, and the feeling like everything is spinning out of control. But there is no need to reach for a productivity book or download yet another to do list app (Yessss, I see you!)! Believe me, that is about as useful to me as watching a youtube clip on calibrating your oven temperature (yes, apparently that’s a thing). Here is my ninja action plan when I feel the to-do-list tsunami heading my way on a Monday:
Ask the difficult questions: Are you overcommitted? If the answer is yes, the next question is why? Is it FOMO? Do you equal worth to productivity (shamefaced as I write this!). Ok, so here is the reality check: Time is a finite thing, we are not able to create more of it and in fact, God deemed the amount we got to be sufficient. So if you are constantly trying to fit more into your day ask yourself why that is? Lack of discipline in what you say yes or no to? Does busyness help you hide from a calling God has given you or a truth you’d like to avoid? Ride the elevator all the way to the bottom floor where your heart/ your ego is pulling the strings and gain some insight into those brutal motivations. Without that no productivity strategy or mantra will help you change.
Stop kidding yourself about what is achievable and learn to prioritize: Just because you wrote it down doesn’t mean it’s achievable! #truthbomb. I know, you are only writing it down because it gives you a sense of control right? I know because I do it too. Learn to prioritize. Our overconnected world with pings and notifications make it seem like everything belongs in the urgent & important box and that it all requires your immediate attention. It doesn’t. If prioritization is hard for you, ask a friend or your husband or accountability partner to help you. Nothing focusses your priorities like sharing your very-ridiculous-God-complex-to-do-list with someone and getting a once-removed perspective (once they stop laughing in your face!) on what truly are the important things to accomplish in a day!
Check your truth: Our to-do list, our children’s schedule, our expectations of ourselves, just like every other action and conviction in our lives, stems from what we believe. Have you ever measured the truth your actions are based on, against the truth of God’s word? We may say with our mouths certain things that we believe, but based on the fruit that I see in my life and the lives of 99.9% of woman I know, what we actually believe is that we can and should have it all, do it all, be the be-all-and-end-all for everyone, and do it in a Pinterest perfect way that also seems effortless in order to gain the admiration from the outside world. Have you checked any of those convictions against what God actually says? If it’s true that we live according to what we believe, then maybe it’s time for a new belief?
Shorten your list: Stop sneering I am serious. There is a huge school of thought dedicated to the idea of a 3 item to-do list, a TODAY list if you will, that helps you prioritise (i.e identify what’s most important), focus (i.e not waste time on trivial to do’s just for the sake of the sense of achievement you get when you crossed it off the list) and gives you a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day because it’s supremely achievable and speaks to more long-term goals. A shorter list will revolutionize your productivity whether you are a stay at home mom, and exec, or someone who works from home or part-time because it clarifies and simplifies every day’s priorities.
Guard your peace: Like it’s a cash in transit van in the UAE. Like it’s the last glass of bubbly at a kiddies party. Busyness is one of the ways the devil can consistently distract us from God’s fingerprints in our lives.
There is a constant concatenation of spiritual events manifesting in your everyday life that you could miss if you don’t lay down your plans and pick up the light yoke offered by the One who is actually in charge here.
Honey listen, it’s not the circumstances that are overwhelming, everyone is busy. It’s the perspective that we should be getting to everything, the conviction that we should be making it look easy and have it all under control, that is the thing that truly wears women out. It’s the lies we believe that we use as a jump-off point that is the thing that actually snookers us.
If we release our desire to control it all and do it all and be it all, repent of the idea that we actually can and should, the fear we experience in being overwhelmed and the frustration we experience every time even the smallest thing threaten the precarious balance of our schedule, will go away.
Between being a time management expert, a fitness guru and clean food aficionado, a work-life balance genius and actually having it all the expectation of women today is ridiculous. Because with every new idea or strategy about what we should do or be, comes the accusation and implication of what we are not. So we find ourselves in a constant cycle of shame for which there truly is no basis. I hope this coming week you will be able to make a decision of the will to resist being overwhelmed by clinging more tightly to the truth about who God is than the lies about who you are supposed to be according to the world.
There are more than 3 things. Obviously. Like, that a certain time of the day – the time that was previously referred to as happy hour – would now be referred to as unhappy hour. And that someone else’s bathroom, sleeping and eating habits would be dominating my conversations for the foreseeable future (and that I would see absolutely nothing wrong with that!). While I was pregnant with my firstborn, I read all the books. I knew about sleep training and pureed organic veggies. But there where soul challenges that I was about to encounter on my journey into parenthood that no one ever told me about.
(This blog is an abbreviated version of a talk called The 10 things I wish someone had told me about being a Mom – for more info on booking a talk or workshop please click here)
I have only been a mom for 11 years. According to Malcolm Gladwell that makes me an expert. But he’s wrong. I am categorically not one! But let’s face it, as moms, we really just need all the help we can get, and if you are reading this that means you agree with me on one thing – This parenting thing is flat out hard! It’s by far the hardest thing I’ve done and I grew up with 3 brothers and I am South African and I’ve competed in an International Beauty pageant! I will take on 12 competitive blonds with perfect teeth over an 11-year-old boy on a mission any day of the week!
So here are a few thing that I wish someone had given me a heads up about:
THAT IT WOULD SHAKE THE FOUNDATIONS OF MY IDENTITY AS A PERSON:
When I became a stay at home mom, I dreaded the “So, what do you do?” Question in social settings. I felt unjustified telling people I was a stay-at-home mom. It used to be so easy to talk about the career I was so proud of, and the awkwardness I felt at this new role in my life made me realize how much of my worth and identity I found in what I did for a living.
Woman are meaning makers and meaning-seekers, and when we become moms no one highlights to us the risk that we may now exchange one wrong source of meaning and identity for another. That we may very well go from being defined by our work an achievements to being defined by our home and our kids (and their achievements). That we may go from performance reviews and bonuses to the bar for our lives being Proverbs 31 (oh my goodness can you even imagine!) and the definition of our worth as our kids and their achievements! Can you imagine living under the pressure of having the justify your mom’s entire existence with every school report, or good night’s sleep! Is it any wonder even our kids our stressed!
But God never intended for us to bank our identity on the role of a dice, on the changing landscape of our roles or our seasons. Because then every word spoken in criticism of that becomes the definition of who we are, then our (absolutely inevitable) mistakes and failures (and that of our kids) are not learning opportunities or life happening, but a declaration of who we are, failures, as moms, as people. No, God’s anchor for our identity is the unchanging conviction that He holds about us, and His unalterable word over us.
Because the gospel says that we are who we are not because of what we do or achieve but because of what Christ did and achieved.
When we are in Christ, that is the final word over us.
Then our mistakes or failings will never be the defining story of our lives because grace means that we have never really blown it.
Then all that ever needed to be achieved is finished and that is a work us moms can rest in, not strive for.
Then whatever our accomplishments, achievements, and successes become a reflection of His grace and glory in our lives.
Living this truth as the anchor of who we are testifies much more greatly to our kids than striving for achievement!
THAT WE ALL LIVE BY A DEFINITION OF SUCCESS, WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT
When my eldest was in Gr R they once filled in one of those cute forms for Mothers day, they go something like this:
My moms name is ___________
Her favourite Color is _______________
Together we like to _______________
But it was my son’s answer to one question that really stopped me in my tracks, literally. Where it said My mom says (Fill in the blank) a lot, he wrote HURRY UP. Jip, it was right there in black and white, “My moms says hurry up allot”.
As a mom, I defined how good the day was by how much I had gotten done. For me, productivity has always been the ultimate measure of success. Don’t be lazy, don’t slow down, do do do, go go go! If at the end of the day, the To Do list had lots of little red tick marks on it, then it was a good day. Conversely, if a kid got sick or the car broke down or I locked myself out of the house (jip, it’s happened!) then, the day, and by definition, I – was a failure.
Whether we know it or not, our definition of success, what we deem to be the ultimate measure of “good and enough” in our lives, is what drives our decision making, what we say yer or not to, what our schedule looks like (and our kids schedules) how we spend our money and our time. Comfort, status, being liked, all of these things could be our definition of success, the thing that cracks the whip in our lives so to speak, without us even knowing it.
The challenging thing about becoming a parent is that you are no longer preaching the sermon, you are living it, and they are watching.
So I had to ask myself, what am I reflecting to my boys about what I believe true success is, and I was forced to come up with a new definition of success.
So let me ask you this. If someone were to look at your life, your schedule and your bank account, what do you think they would say your definition of success was? Because it’s this definition that is messaging to our kids what we deem to be most important.
THAT THE DAYS ARE LONG BUT THE YEARS ARE SHORT
I didn’t say this, but since I heard it I tell everyone. Because I wish someone had told me!
Because we kind of all journey through life the way kids journey to the coast, always asking “Are we there yet”. In Highschool we just want to finnish and be a grownup, at Varsity we just want a real job and be independent, when we start out work we just want to reach the top and earn money and success, when we are dating we just want to get married, when we get married we just want to have kids, and then when we have kids and the shole adulting and parenting thing is suddenly very real and very scary and if we are honest, something that we would sometimes very much like to run away from! we’re like, oh my word this is so not fun! And we look longingly at older couples with older kids sitting placidly at restaurants enjoying a quiet meal (while our toddler picks gum up off the floor under the table and we are wondering if there is a changing station in the restrooms!) and we ask ourselves, when is this going to be over?
But now that my boys are 9 and 11, I can’t help but wonder, did I make the most of that time, those tough, early years? DID I see it as a shaping, refining, satisfying blessing God intends it to be or was I just white-knuckling it to get it over with!
Embrace the discipline of the moment instead of the distraction of your iPhone. God has given our children to us so we can teach them, but I have learned more and more, that He has also given them to us to teach us!
Embrace the mundane of the menial so you can find it’s meaning. Because wisdom is a treasure
Be present with your kids so you can make Christ present with them, because in every circumstance we are His witnesses, testifying to our kids what it means to follow Him in every circumstance.
Running on empty – that is how I sometimes feel as a mom. I get to the end of the day and feel like I have nothing left, like in every area, with every offering, I am lacking. Ok, so be honest, sometimes I also feel like that at the beginning of the day. Like my only hope is to just try harder, like trying harder is my slogan, my motto, my anchor. Like I am starting off from a place of lack. But that’s a lie. According to the God’s word, I have a promise not of lack, but of abundance! A promise that says I will be equipped for the Godly work of mothering with more than what I need, “that He is able to make every grace overflow, abound to us, so that in every way – always having everything we need – we can excel in excel in every good work” (2 Cor 9 v 8)
And is that not what we are busy with as moms? The good word, the work of raising the next generation of Christ followers (please
Lord!), the work of raising someones’ future husband or wife! It is the abundance for thís that Paul employs the Greek word Perisseuo for, to describe just how much grace we will receive – grace in excess, beyond average, to surpass/ overflow/ have leftover! And with every sunrise, it’s new, there’s more! Yes, please!
Make extravagant grace your slogan Momma, your motto, your anchor! I am praying for you!
(or lost or frazzled or disorganized or distracted or overwhelmed..basically, if you’re a modern-day woman)
I get it!
I am fairly confident that if you are reading this, you have a strong cerebral conviction that you MUST pray. Prayer is good. But sometimes you find yourself in a season where your prayers are trite, one-way conversations that sound allot like shopping lists and allot the same and that happen in the car or in the few minutes before you go to sleep. Or you find yourself disillusioned by a season of pleading desperation that didn’t actually “work”, and didn’t make you feel any more connected to God. Can I get a witness? I know what it’s like to suffer from distraction, frustration, lack of urgency, discipline and motivation in my prayer life. I have had to claw my way back into better habits and rhythms only to fall back into losing prayer in the blur of countless stressful days strung together. So here are some tips, from one struggling, distracted woman to another:
Determine your why: We have a ping pong table at home. It’s become a great opportunity for quality time between my husband and our boys. But my husband, God bless him, once made the fatal error of offering one of our boys a reward if he beat his dad at a heated game of ping pong. This, sadly, set a precedent whereby our son would only play when there was going to be a reward at the end. What my good husband was after, was quality time with his son. What my son was after, was a reward. It came to a point when I had to ask him a tough question: “do you spend time with Dad because of who he is to you or because of what he can give to you?”
Sometimes this is what our relationship with God is like. And this can be most evident in our prayer life.
There is no point in my starting off by saying “You must pray” if you’ve lost your “reason why”. And if you have lost your reason why, ultimately all I can tell you, is that our prayer life (or lack thereof) will reflect what we truly believe about God (eish, I know, truth bomb right!), whether we seek Him out because we have realised that in Him we live and breathe and have our being (Acts 17 v 28). Or whether we only hang out with Him if we can get something/ need something out of it. So first start off not by asking yourself, why don’t I pray, but asking yourself, what do I believe about who God really is?
Direct your thoughts and words: I have confessed before that my brain is always going in a thousand directions at once. I am like a laptop with too many tabs open. That is why “getting in the zone” to pray is hard for me. I also sometimes battle with praising and even thanksgiving beyond the tired, thoughtless phrases that I’ve so overused, and I’ve battled to find the words to pray for the people I love in a more directed, focused way.
So I cheat. I’m not even joking! I use a cute notebook with dividers in it, for all the areas of my life and people that I pray about and for. In fact, my prayers for my kids come in a whole little notebook of its own. I use it during my quiet time (if you struggle in that area, here is my cheat sheet for that too).
In here I write down scriptures, promises to pray for them, affirmations and praises to help me fix my mind on God.
So go on honey, head out to Typo, I am giving you permission to indulge your stationery fetish. Call it an investment in your prayer life. Buy something that can lie open in your hand (that is why I use ring-bound notebooks), that you can easily and quickly add to. I have found that without a firm foundation in scripture, my prayers are just like shopping lists. On the other hand, God’s Word is like a prayer vocabulary and when we use it to shape our prayer language (so to speak), prayer becomes a deep, rich, two-way experience, instead of a one-way list of requests. And having something written down to pray through, for me, is a concrete move against my own internal noise which I battle to quiet down.
One of the purposes of prayer is that it aligns us with God’s thoughts and desires, and when we pray scripture we have the opportunity to internalize His very character and for our daily life to be framed by it.
Actually writing down your prayers is also a way of staying focused during your prayer times. Even if you just have 5 minutes, use them to journal your prayers, giving substance and depth to even the shortest bite of time you are spending with God and inviting Him into your world.
“Don’t just read the Bible. Start circling the promises. Don’t just make a wish. Write down a list of God-Glorifying life goals. Don’t just pray. Keep a prayer journal. Define your dream. Claim your promise. Spell your miracle.” Mark Batterson – The circle maker.
Dedicate time: I know that many of you are in a life stage where even a simple quiet time is a challenge, much less dedicated time to pray (are you a young mom? Check this out) I am not saying there is anything wrong with praying in the car, or praying when you make the beds – we are supposed to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thes 5 v 16)! But when I am talking to my husband while driving to an event we might be talking, but we are not necessarily connecting, right? It wouldn’t be considered “building intimacy”, right? To build connection you need to be fully present. To build intimacy you need to take time – ask any husband who has tried to rush it an failed! And so in my marriage, I may not be able to dedicate time and resources to a full-on date night, but we can sit down and have a cup of coffee, be present for and with one another and listen/ talk for as long as a cup of coffee takes. And if you are in a busy and distracting season and it’s all you have, believe me, that is all it takes: 15 minutes in which connection is rekindled, in which time is given to sharing and listening, and we find ourselves walking away anchored in, steadied, heard, connected. So set it out in your mind for your coffee break at work, or the quick lunch you grab before fetching the kids. Put your phone away as you sip that coffee, and instead of being filled with the highlight real of someone else’s fake life (yes, I know you’re are scrolling Facebook when you’re waiting for the kettle to boil!) , open up your prayer book or journal if you have one, and allow yourself a few moments to be present with God and to be filled with the real sustenance of the gift of rest.
Dump Perfect: in fact, apply this across the board to every area of your life! We often approach the disciplines of our spiritual life (devotions, prayer, fasting etc) the same way we approach diets, fatalistically. We go at full tilt, knuckling down for a time, until we fall off the wagon (thanks Cinnabon!) and then, instead of saying, “aww man, I shouldn’t have eaten that whole thing, but ok, I am picking up where I left off”, we say;”Aww man, this day (weekend/ week) is a write-off, I am giving in and I will start again on Monday!” In our spiritual life, we have this set idea that our interactions with God should look a certain way, take a certain shape and amount of time, make us feel x,y or z, and if we can’t have/ do that, we might as well not even attempt anything. And in that we lose our unction, we lose sight of the importance of the spiritual realm and its impact and then we wonder why we feel like our prayers hit the ceiling. I love the saying: “perfect is the enemy of done”. Because surely a simple, sincere prayer uttered in a moment of awe, understanding, desperation, is better than a perfectly crafted doxology left unspoken?
“If in prayer I come before a throne of grace, the faults of my prayer will be overlooked.” Charles Spurgeon
Dare to be honest: I hope you also have a group of friends in your life where you know you can be your authentic, uncensored self. Friends who love you in such a way that they don’t make you feel like your too much, or not enough, for whom you don’t need to dumb down or dress up any part of yourself in order to feel at home. I am blessed to have a few like that. And if I compare how I feel when I am around them with how I feel when I am around people in front of whom I can’t be myself, I know who I would rather hang out with, and I appreciate the authenticity of those relationships all the more. It’s no different with God. We are bound to seek Him out all the more if we experience the truth about His loving character and nature to us if we enter in with a conviction of His grace. We are bound to avoid Him if we have allowed the burden of sin and shame to pile up like dirty dishes in our soul, bound to skirt formally around Him if our picture of Him has become affected by half-truths and earthly wisdom and religiosity.
You have permission to be unhappy before God, desperate, ungrateful even, superficially joyful, just plain you.
Just take a stab at praying through the Psalms if you don’t believe me.
In Genesis Hagar refers to God as El Roi, as she experiences God as One who truly sees her in a world where she feels utterly unseen. You are seen darling, and loved, chosen, sought out not just despite of who you are, but because of it. That is the God we draw near to when we draw near in prayer.
Can I encourage you in whatever season you find yourself, to make small shifts in your schedule and perspective to have your daily life transformed by prayer?
“To pray is to change. All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives. For those explorers in the frontiers of faith, prayer was no little habit tacked onto the periphery of their lives, it was their life. It was the most serious work of their most productive years. Nothing draws us closer to the heart of God. “ Richard Foster
He walks up to meet me after school, feet dragging, face hanging. A hard day, a hurting day. At first he doesn’t want to share it, but the crumpled note spills out of his backpack and tears spill onto his cheeks and my heart just breaks as he explains. I can spot a list of lies like a fake pair of Ugg boots, but to this 8-year-old soul, the list must be true, especially since it was written by a friend. Maybe I should say, a “friend” <just picture me making snarky air commas in your imagination>.
Even a list of lies can hurt hard.
And so we have the conversation about rejection. The sermon I’ve had to preach to my 39-year-old heart a few times this year.
First forgive: The hard work that feels like the vegetables on the plate of each believer. Get the hard stuff over with first! It’s hard to forgive. Period. And the brussel sprouts? It’s harder still to forgive someone who might never even say they are sorry. But the work (and it is work) of forgiveness is not contingent on an apology. And straight up: the level of difficulty is the same whether your 8 years old or 39 years young. We have to set our pride aside, draw close to the Gospel, realise that God holds nothing against us because of Jesus and so we can’t hold anything against someone else, and then let go of the offence. Although it’s not fun to see my son hurting, it’s a great opportunity to explore stories and examples in God’s word that shine the spotlight on Christ’s work of forgiveness towards us and take the conversation from there.
See what’s true about you: A couple of minutes in front of the mirror quickly proved that this particular list did not hold up to the facts. But the real lies that I wanted to deal with where the insidious unseen ones that could so easily take root in his little heart and mind. Just like any of us, he was going to internalise the actions and thoughts of this person towards him in a certain way. I wanted to address the faulty circuitry of the negative self-talk that this could cause in my son, right up front – because I know how hard it has been for me to rewire my thoughts to God’s truth this late in my life. Speak life over your children Mommas – take every chance you get! Provide the alternative to that inner voice that says “You are not good enough”.
Because the kid who has an enemy at school has a friend Jesus. And the one who had a nasty list written about them has his name written in the palm of God’s hand. And the kid who is not “good enough” to be included/ selected/ invited was deemed worth dying for by the King of Kings. No list of flaws, whether real or 100% made up, can undo that.
See that rejection is a part of life: We all face it, and it moves fairly swiftly as we get older from not being invited to that birthday party to being judged as less than or not good enough for <I know you have something you can insert here>…But much more vital than my son understanding that rejection is a reality I want him to see that in his rejection, he is identifying with Jesus. Betrayed by a friend, judged harshly by religious people (his own people!) misunderstood and misquoted, not well liked, in fact downright unpopular in some circles. It hurts to be (mis)judged and misunderstood, it hurts not be known, but Jesus misses nothing, He knows that and he knows us. Oh, the comfort of that! When we feel at our most rejected we draw nearer to where we are most accepted. Jesus knows! He knows rejection and He knows us. When we share scriptures like Isaiah 54 v 3 or Psalm 55 and others with our kids in times of betrayal or rejection and share the stories behind them, we are also shedding light for them on the supreme relevance of God’s Word to their little lives right now.
See that person differently: I wrote recently about an experience I had where I realised the way someone had responded towards me had very little to do with me. One of the first things I always ask the boys when they tell me about someone who is mean to them is if they know of anything specific that is going on in that person’s life? Just because you can’t see the reason on the outside, doesn’t mean there isn’t something inside that person that is making them act in a hurtful way.
There is a reason why people do what they do and sometimes that reason has nothing to do with you!
Hurting people hurt people and once my kids understood that it was easy to talk about a bully or a meanie as someone who might actually be in need of our compassion and prayer. Enter teachable moment about praying for our enemies (more veggies anyone?). God calls us to regard no one in the flesh, (2 Cor 5 v16) but to see people the way He sees them and when we do that we can’t not feel compelled to pray for them.
See others differently: Once we have been a rejecTEE we can be so much more sensitive to not being a RejecTOR (and we can take the opportunity to repent of all the times our words or actions might have made someone feel the way we just felt!) Remembering the feeling is only useful if it helps us grow. I explained to him how this will actually help him be a better friend to others and a better brother to The Elder. Harsh standards and stiff yardsticks destroy friendships and hurt hearts. But we learn to be gentle with people when someone has been harsh with us.
See meaning: Another hard but true lesson for this momma this year was that man’s rejection is sometimes God’s redirection. Nothing escapes purpose in the life of a believer, thank you Jesus! I had an opportunity to share with The Younger about this particular lesson in my life and how I saw afterwards that Rom 8v 28 is really true and God can be trusted.
When people make a list of our shortcomings (whether real or made up) our first and most natural response is to want to make a list of our own that proves them wrong.
But the justified don’t need to justify.
Our egos want to “show” them, exercise revenge, force the situation in a direction that would make us feel ok again.
But we live by faith, not feelings.
And I would hate for my son’s choices (and by definition his life) to be driven by a desire to be right or a desire to be liked, neither of which are worthy goals for a child of God. Likability is completely overrated if your approval lies at an Unshakeable Source, and being right is irrelevant when you have been made right by One Perfect Act of Love. And that is where the peace is found, and the courage to move forward!
And is that not what we are busy with as moms? The good word, the work of raising the next generation of Christ followers (please
