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!

Moulding worshippers out of our children

Are we being examples to our children on how to praise/worship?

I’m not into forcing my kids to raise their hands, or do anything they don’t fully understand at home or church. But I do pray often that they would learn by my example and choose for themselves what they will do. So I have started being an in-public worshipper, as opposed to just quiet devotion times worshipper. An uninhibited God- lover and praiser in my lounge, every morning, while they play. From Planetshakers to Psalty, I sing it, I dance, shout, cry and they dance with me, draw on things they shouldn’t, or climb onto the table and tear up printer paper. Whatever. I pray they will absorb my habits, my passion for God and choose to follow when they are ready and old enough to understand.

God, make worshippers out of my children, let them learn from my example,  raise them up to be passionate for you, break their hearts for what breaks yours.

Grace, my 22 month old, gets into bed most evenings and puts her hands up and sings Psalty’s  ‘I love you.’ THE cutest thing to listen to. Ethan, my 3 year old, went to bed feeling sick the other day, and came out ten minutes later and announced,”I’m better, Jesus loves me. Jesus made me better’ He strung that logic together all by himself and MAN was I proud, and totally humbled at how powerful an example we really are. How he got to that sentence I do not know, whether it was from singing Jesus loves me a thousand times at bedtime for 2 years, or following how we prayed for dad’s beesting to be healed, Im not sure, but I do know that they learn and copy, and it excites and inspires me to be a better mother.