Today Matters

When my eldest was a toddler and I had a (screaming) newborn strapped to me 24/7, I decided to take on the leadership of a Mum's Bible Study at my church. I am a dreamer and an optimist and so I thought it would be totally fine to lead this group of mums with young kids and prepare a thoughtful,  engaging, and transformative bible study each week. No problem at all! The problem is that one of my greatest giftings is that I am very good at 'winging' it, and so after another week of no sleep, constant physical touch, desperately trying to keep on top of the house, hours upon hours of failed sleep training (read : sobbing), and attempting to maintain some form of sanity, I would turn up to Bible Study with not a single thing prepared, with not a single prayer prayed, and not a single verse read. Thankfully, the participants were made up of my lovely friends and so there was much grace and a lot of chatting and catching up which gave me time to think about what the heck we were going to do. I would often just laugh at the hilarity of it all and resign myself to spirituality taking a back seat in this crazy, messy stage of life.Which is totally true. But also not - because we can spend our whole life finding reasons to just 'wing' our spiritual lives and hope to God that it all comes good one day. Let me explain...Not long ago I decided to embrace the new fad of early morning rising as a way to find some space in my day for quiet, and for creating space to sit and read God's Word. Some may think that it is a crazy thing to CHOOSE to get up at 5:00am, but this was literally the only time in my day that I could make work as a regular habit (and just google the benefits of 5am wake ups - apparently it will do everything from bring you peace, make you skinny, and transform you into an entrepreneur!! Ha.). Anyway, my desire to practice the habit of rising early with the simple intent of soaking in scripture came about after hearing Nancy Guthrie talk about the incredible investment it is to lay a firm foundation for our faith - and this should be considered with upmost importance. The way she spoke about it drew me in in such a way at I desperately longed for that reality in my life... and so I decided to find a way to make it happen. Let me share with you those same sentiments that transformed my thinking about spirituality in this stage of motherhood.

Each day we make choices about how we will spend our time, who we will talk to, what we will listen to, what we will read, how we will pass the fleeting hours. When there are so many demands and needs from the family I sometimes forget that we still have a choice about the way our day unfolds (mostly). So I decided to take an inventory of where my time and focus went each day and I discovered that there was actually lots of unconscious habits I had never been aware of that were taking my precious time. It can be quite revealing just how many hours can dissolve into mindless and messy busy work. I wasn't particularly thrilled with how much of my time was filled with things that really don't deserve the time I was giving them. So I took stock and make some clear, conscious decisions about my life lived today, namely finding a way prioritise my spiritual life in the mess of motherhood.

The habits and the choices that we choose today - to love God and his word, to say “yes” to his promises, to cling to him when we can’t understand what he’s doing, to praise him when our eyes are filled with tears - are hard choices. Seeking God, putting him first, getting in his Word when we feel like you don’t have a spare minute in our day, and prioritising your spiritual life and development not just your to-list for the day, will reap the beautiful fruit and benefits and blessings in years to come. But making this a daily practise is so important because we stuff it up daily and need the constant shaping, moulding, and remembering. Whether we are 30, 40, 50, or 60, or older, there are days we totally blow it - we fail and we don’t trust God; we lean on our own understanding; we get self-conscious and run from the truth; we get caught up in activity and busyness; we choose slave before Saviour. That's why sitting with the scriptures daily reminds us why the Gospel is such good news and how it offers us grace upon grace when we fall on our knees. It invites us to go back to the cross, humbling ourselves, and say “God, I tried to live this day without you. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t intend to, but that’s just what I did. I lost my patience. I got sharp-edged, or angry, or critical with one of my kids or my husband or somebody in the workplace.” Thankfully the Gospel is for sinners and not for the perfect. I have to remind myself daily that Jesus himself explained that he did not come for the healthy, but for the sick - for those who are lacking, yearning, hurting, failing. This suddenly gives me reason to not hide this part of me but rather to hold it high before Him and thank God that can transform our brokenness into beauty (more about that another day...)

Living out the Gospel in this season of young children will stand with us for life and will prepare a solid foundation on the rock, so that when worse storms come - as Jesus says they will in Matthew 7- and beat up on your house, we will stand firm because we have built it our life on the rock, that is Jesus, and the truth of His word. This foundation gives us security when all feels like it is falling away, it gives us guidance when we don't know right from wrong, it gives us an identity that doesn't change based on our behaviour, and it gives us certainty in the unknown. But laying this foundation takes time - it isn't something that pops up over night or happens by chance, and it comes down to whether I am willing to participate in laying it down.

If I am living for pleasure, for stuff, or for beauty, there’s no sin in those things and God invites us to enjoy these things. But if these are the priorities of my life, if my time is being spent on things that are temporal, if that’s where I'm focusing my heart, then when those storms come up in my life I will find that my house has tumbled to the ground in a big sandy mess. And it is in those moments that we ask how your faith didn’t stand strong. Why it seems like your life blew away. Friends, the choices we make now - that we all make now - are the things that will determine in large measure the fruitfulness and the joy of our lives down the road.So, what you’re doing today really does matter. The choice to prioritise your faith and spiritual health is directly effecting your future self! Whether this is through choosing to wake early or set aside time before collapsing into bed to read God's word, or the kind word said to that child whom you actually just want to shake in frustration, or the decision to spend ten minutes listening to a devotional instead of the latest cold-case murder podcast, or the minutes spent before school pick up silently praying in your car instead of scrolling the socials. These choices may seem small but they are not -they really DO matter as they are shaping who you are and who you are growing to be. Just as we are all completed committed to brushing our teeth everyday so that they don't fall out and turn into ugly black witch teeth, so too should we be completely committed to tending our faith and spiritual health. Just start and then hang in there, choosing it even when you can't be bothered - because God going to honour and bless the faithful and wise choices you make today. Go girl!!