These posts will always be free, however, if you find them meaningful and would like to consider supporting our online outreach, you can donate using this link.
Scripture:
My son, pay attention to my words, bend your ear to my speech. Don’t let them slip from your sight, guard them with your mind. They are life to those who find them, and healing for their entire body. More than anything you guard, protect your mind, for life flows from it.
Have nothing to do with a corrupt mouth; keep devious lips far from you. Focus your eyes straight ahead. Keep your gaze on what is in front of you. Watch your feet on the way, and all your paths will be secure.
Don’t deviate a bit to the right or the the left, turn your feet away from evil.
Consider:
My life is busy and chaotic. Even in the summer, when theoretically life is supposed to slow down a bit, everything feels a bit fraught and just slightly out of control. My “decent and in order” side of my heart is trying to learn how to embrace the chaos instead of trying to control it, knowing that the years when life feels this way are vanishingly short, if exhausting in the midst of it.
For a lot of years, I’ve attempted to manage the chaos by implementing various systems which claim to be the final fix for the stress and anxiety of raising young children. I once created, printed, cut, and laminated 100 “choice chores” cards which hung from our refrigerator by metal magnetic clips. Then, the kids - just the two at the time - were allowed to choose their 5 chores for the week. Each chore was weighted with a different value, and they had to choose at least one of each number. When they completed the chore, they earned tickets which went into their assigned jar (labeled with a cute picture of them and their name). When the jar was full they got to go and pick out a toy from the store or get a special treat for dessert. It was an ingenious system sold to me by a Youtuber who was bragging about how it changed her family life.
It worked for about a month. Unlike that youtuber, I worked full time and my husband worked full time. We had an infant and two dogs, two cats, chickens, three fish, and two kids in activities every night of the week. My husband had just started his teaching career and was going to grad school at the same time as he was creating his lesson plans. And, managing this system turned out to be, on its own, a full-time job.
All of which we would have dealt with had the system worked. But it didn’t. The colorful cards, the tickets, the fun prize, might have been motivating enough had either of the parents had the energy to follow through. But it didn’t, because the kids just didn’t like doing chores and waiting until the jar filled up for what seemed - to them - a minor treat at the end wasn’t worth the effort. The system collapsed on itself.
And that’s because behavior modification doesn’t happen through external systems. You can’t change the outwards expression of a problem by creating colorful flashcards and giving yourself tickets. If you could, New Year’s Resolutions would work a lot better than they do.
Change of behavior comes from changes of the heart. Lasting, meaningful “improvements” don’t come from getting a gym membership or buying better shoes or setting up the tools in your workshop. If you want to do something different, make a new and varied step for your future, it starts from the inside first. You have to want the change for a good and lasting reason.
It’s why heart attacks are often the reason people go to the gym. It’s why hearing of a friend’s struggle with cancer often does get people to quit smoking. It’s why weight loss happens after the test results come back.
Our behavior changes when our heart does.
Respond:
What was the last time you made a major change in your life? What motivated you to successfully make the change - and what lessons could you learn from that change to make the next big step towards your future?
Pray:
Moving God,
Sometimes in life we feel out of control and want to make a change. We buy new gadgets, try new systems, and rearrange our schedules in an effort to force the change into our hearts. Help us to do the hard, inner work of change which comes from within first. Give us the blessing of the inward inspection where we seek, with honesty, the reorienting of our next steps. Amen.
