The beauty & importance of devotion times!

So I’ll start off with a question for you.. 🙂 What do you do in your quiet time that keeps you stimulated, growing and excited to jump out of bed at sparrows?

Nothing brings to light the importance to me of devotion/quiet times, than a few chaotic mornings where I don’t have any. I have a few laaate nights, and can’t get out of bed the next morning, or my phone dies in the night and my alarm doesn’t go off, or I turn my alarm off under my pillow without remembering I’d even done that, when I roll out of bed at some late hour. Whatever the excuse.. That sinking feeling settles in really fast as I juggle making oats, getting hungry kids out of jarmies and seeing my hubby off. The day’s hit with a rush and I have no peace. I don’t have a grip on the day, and man do I feel it.

The more this happens, the more I really value that time. I love the days/weeks in a row where I do get up, where the alarm goes off and I don’t care that it’s 4:50am, I’m  hungry for that peace, for that grip on the day, for those prayers over my situations and family, for that time with God listening and pouring out my heart, the time of reading and learning and growing. Because once the kids wake up, the day goes on in the usual homeschooling, housecleaning noisy rush and I don’t have the time or the quiet to hear His still small voice. But the stillness and the peace of that devotion carries throughout the day. I know God has my day, my family, and others that I pray for, in His hands. I feel secure and confident and in control of the day as opposed to a that feeling of being a step behind the kids and the day, trying to play catch up.

A few things I find handy for making sure my quiet times happen are below:

KEEPING QUIET TIMES SMOOTH:

1. Set two alarms
The first is awful, the second gets you up if you put it in a place far from the bedside 🙂

2. Make sure your books, music, bible, etc. are all together in your ‘spot’
Nothing worse than groggily looking for a pen twenty minutes into your quiet time! Cue muttering.

3. Keep a variety of things to read/study
This helps me keep interested and excited; nothing gets ‘dry’

4. Know and get rid of distractions for good
Turn off wireless if you know FB is a weakness first thing in the morning, or move to a room where the kids and dogs won’t hear you and wake up the neighbourhood 🙂

I would love to hear what your variety of things to read/study/pray about is. Here are some of mine:
THE INTRIGUING DEVOTION  VARIETY :

1. PRAYER MAP:  Open Doors is awesome – I have a prayer map (link to it here) of the 10/40 window from Open Doors magazine (read more about them here, which lists the persecuted countries in the world. I pray for one a day, sometimes I pick one for a while.

2. DAILY DEVOTION BOOK: the authors vary, but I love the fresh topic and scriptures each day.

3.  KIDS PRAYER CALENDAR: I made up my own from the scriptures/ideas in the back of the book How to be a God Chaser & A Kid Chaser – by Tenney & Tenney. What a stunning idea, each day has a scripture focus, a prayer declaration & something to claim over your little ones. Love it!

4.  POWER OF A PRAYING PARENT: by Stormie Omartian. A short prayer a day, praying the scriptures over our children. Got to love this book too!

5.  THE BIBLE: I pick up where I left off the previous day, and just read a few chapters at a time. The Word transforms us from the inside out.

6. BOOK OF INTEREST: I plough through a book every 1-2 weeks, it is surprising how fast you can read, when you have that quiet uninterrupted time.

7.  PRAYER LIST: Unsaved family/friends, personal stuff you are praying about on a daily basis, and so on. Someone once said that prayer moves God’s hand, and I absolutely believe that.

8.  DIARY: Not to forget the diary where everything I learn, or want to remember, goes.

What do you do in your quiet time that keeps you stimulated, growing and excited to jump out of bed at sparrows? 🙂 I’d love to hear!

In closing, I read an interesting article recently about how putting ten thousand hours into something makes you an expert in that field. Well, the same thing applies to quiet times. Think over forty or fifty years of daily devotions with God, and reading and learning and studying, and what that accumulates to. Powerful stuff!
In my busy days, where I am rushing and busy and distracted, I remind myself that sometimes, God speaks to us in a ‘still small voice’ (1 Kings 19:12). He may speak in other ways too, but sometimes what I really need is some alone time with him where I keep my mouth closed and just listen 🙂 Life is too loud. Make time!

I encourage you to zealously pursue having your quiet times, and protecting that time, even when you really battle to wake up, or tend to procrastinate. It is hard to wake up super early, but know that that time is a great headstart to your day on many levels! Be strong!

How does she do that.. & I’d give my left thumb for those shoes..

Don’t you sometimes find yourself dissatisfied with some area of your life?
I definitely do!

The lead couple kissing in the driveway before leaving for work, in the movie you watched last night plays clearly in your memory while you’re carrying out the garbage in your PJ’s, seething over an argument you’ve just had with your spouse about dog food. SERIOUSLY?! Get a room, you mutter.
I’m a lousy wife, says the voice in my mind. Sigh.

The picture perfect family on that billboard over the highway smile down at you from a sunlit beach, while you drive home in traffic with two hungry, irritable children and no glimpse of a holiday in the foreseeable future. Your heart takes a dip – every good family goes on holiday. My kids are being deprived, I’m a bad mommy. Sigh.

From then on, for a week, every advert showing holidays has you gritting your teeth in frustration and misery. The joyful attitude of the last two years’ mutual decision to save instead of going away seems like some distant craziness. I.WANT.A.HOLIDAY!  (and I feel darn lousy for not being able to be that perfect family) is what’s really chewing at me.
Intro snappy wife and mum.

What is it that makes us get into thinking like that? What is it that makes us feel utterly miserable and dissatisfied about certain parts of our lives or ourselves? Where do we get our picture of what it means to be a beautiful woman, have an awesome marriage, and a beautiful home?
Have you ever stopped to dig deep and ask yourself?

I have to laugh at myself as this is an example of my train of thought sometimes:

I’ll wake up in the morning on a, say, Tuesday, subconsciously mulling over that fashion mag I read yesterday in the dentist waiting room, and open my shoe cupboard. (well, more like..my shoe microcollection of 5 pairs). Slops, slops, boots, brown heels, black heels. I’m a 30 year old attractive wife, no slops for me anymore. I can look as great as that model.. Heels it is! I whip out the sexiest pair, dust them off, and put them on, feeling instantly sexier for having them on. A flash of fashion mag model streaks through my head. Hot shoes..check. Great wife… double check.. and off I head to a normal morning of two toddlers, housework and general chaos. Sitting on the loo five hours later, I look down at my aching feet and wonder who the heck I’m kidding. Heels and my stay at home mom lifestyle don’t seem to gel as easily as expected.
Back they go in the shoe cupboard, and are replaced by the old trusty slops. Joy . They may not be hot, but they are comfy, I tell myself, feeling unsexy again. Some days I just want to feel more exciting and more important than just a ‘comfy’ wife. I want my norm to be that hot magazine model. I mean, isn’t that the norm? Can I not just step out of bed and into hotness? Every magazine I seem to read lately says so in picture form, or so I believe.

My realisation is that if we’re yoyoing with our emotions and pictures of ourselves, we are getting our skewed pictures from media, a lousy liar of a place.

4 Ways to Get Over that media Malarkey

1. Scrutinize what you see and watch

When Jennifer Aniston wakes up in that movie with perfect bed hair, and that stab of ”oh my word, she is beautiful and I wish I woke up like that, I must be wierd’ runs through your mind subconsciously, STOP right there, look at her and go ‘Really? Do people REALLY wake up like that? Nope, they take half and hour to GET like that. I’m normal, she’s misrepresenting, darn woman!.. move on.’

2. Dip into the Scriptures and take a look at what it says about YOU.

The looking glass for our ‘perfect wife, mom, family and home’ should really be the Bible, not media and everything it portrays. Learn what it says about who you are, who you are meant to be and what your levels are. And then LOVE THE HECK OUT OF YOURSELF while striving for your best.

3. Write/Consciously work out your pattern for your life

Immerse yourself in God’s Word, find what it says about you, your family,  your role as wife and mother, and then set in your heart ‘This will be my ideal, my standard;  this is what I, by God’s grace, will allow to be the pattern for my life and family.” Settle it in your heart & find your peace.

4. From today, be aware of your internal dialogue & master it

Be aware of what dips your mood, your esteem or your outlook on certain things, and nip them in the bud. Become a more self analysing person, questioning what you believe and why. Dig deep and change!