Cleaning the Counters

My kitchen counters tend to be the receptacle for just about anything anyone wants to throw on them. Did you find something on the floor in the kitchen? Stick it on the counter. Did I ask you to clear off the table for dinner? Put all that stuff on the counter. Did you have something in your hands when you came in the kitchen to get a snack? Leave that on the counter, too.

It doesn't matter how clean my kitchen counter is at the beginning of the day, by the end of the day, it's usually heaped with stuff. If I let a few days go by, I can't even find my counter.

I'll admit, I'm mostly a clean it up every couple of days kind of girl. Cleaning off my kitchen counters is a never-ending chore like the laundry. As soon as I do it, I have to do it again. It seems pointless, so I put it off as long as possible, which just makes the chore that much more overwhelming when I finally get around to doing it.

This week, I started designating 15 minutes of my morning to cleaning off my counters, wiping them down and wiping off my table. I haven't mopped my kitchen floor this week, but my whole kitchen looks cleaner because the countertops are clear and clean. I no longer dread walking into the kitchen because of the clutter I know I'm going to find.

Yesterday, I was tempted not to clean them off. I had other things to do with that 15 minutes. However, I convinced myself that clearing the counters was important and spent the required 15 minutes doing that task. I was so glad I did when my youngest daughter came home with a mountain of papers from school. Instead of just adding to the clutter on my counter, I was able to go through those papers and keep them in a neat stack at the corner of the counter for her dad to look at when he got home.

Spending time with God is a lot like cleaning the counters. It's something we need to do every day, so our stress and sin don't accumulate. When we spend time with Him every day, we have a chance to wipe the slate clean -- every day. We get a chance to fill up with His love and grace so we can deal with everything that goes on that day. When we spend time with God each day, we clean out the old frustrations and sin, so they don't build up in our lives, making it harder to unroot them.

Hebrews 10:19-23 encourages us to draw near to God. "Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." Spending time with God, drawing near to Him, is a cleansing process just like wiping off the counters. Our time with Him cleanses our hearts and fills us up with the beauty of His love and grace, wiping away the ugliness of the things the world flings at us.

But spending time with God is as much a habit as cleaning off my counters each morning. It requires making a conscious choice to spend time with Him. Creating that habit is much easier if we learn it when we are young. Help your kids learn the importance of spending time with God.

• Be an example. Let your kids see you spending time with God. Give them opportunities to see you studying God's word and praying. You might want to save the bulk of your quiet time for when the kids aren't around, but do a short devotional or read a few verses of the Bible when your kids can see you.
• Make it part of the routine. Set aside a time in the day, every day, for your kids to spend some time with God. Even a 2-year-old can sit down for five minutes with a picture Bible to begin instilling the habit of spending time with God.
• Make a plan for your kids' quiet time. Buy them an age-ppropriate devotional. Give them a Bible reading plan aimed at their age group. Give older kids a prayer journal to write down their prayer requests in. Giving your kids structure to their quiet time helps them understand what they should be doing during that time.
• Talk with your kids about what they're learning during their quiet time. Ask them to share with you the verses they read or the insight they gained.

Spending time with God helps clean the counters of our lives. It allows us to refill, recharge and sets up our day to focus on Him. Teaching your kids this habit now will help them keep cleaning the counters of their lives as they grow.

Training Every Day

As I told you last week, I spent the week taking my daughter to hockey camp. She spent six hours every day last week doing something related to hockey. Of that six hours, she only spent 2 1/2 hours on the ice. Much of the rest of the time was spent doing dry land training.

Dry land training is where the kids strengthened their muscles and their skills off the ice. At my daughter's age,  that consists of playing games and working on stick handling and agility. As the kids get older, they focus on training their muscles and building their endurance by doing things like running stairs.

Dry land certainly isn't the most fun part of training to play hockey, but it is necessary. The things the kids did off the ice got them ready to play on the ice.

Our spiritual walk is much like training to play hockey. We can be actively involved in ministry and in living our lives as God wants us to. We can put up a good front and never spend any time alone with God. From the outside, it looks like we have a close relationship with God, but on the inside, we're just skating by on what we already know. We're not growing in our relationship with Him because we're not spending any time with Him.

In hockey, your game won't get any better if you don't spend time off the ice perfecting your skills and training your muscles. When faced with the pressure and intensity of a game, you won't have enough knowledge or skill to win.

In life, if you aren't filling yourself up daily with God's word and spending time with Him, then when faced with the pressure and intensity of life, you will falter and fall. Psalm 119:58 says "I have sought your face with all my heart; be gracious to me according to your promise." If we're not spending time with God each day, then we're not seeking His face with our whole hearts like David.

God called David a man after His own heart. We want to follow in those footsteps and become men and women after God's own heart. The only way to do that is to spend time getting to know God's heart.


Spending time with God is a habit -- one we have to take the time to cultivate. It's important that we spend time with God every day, and it's important that we teach our kids to spend time with God every day.

• Set aside a time in each day that will be your family's quiet time. Our time is in the morning before school.
• Get your kids an age-appropriate devotional book and Bible. There are some great versions of the Bible out there, but my favorite for elementary school-aged children is the New International Reader's Version (NIrV). It's written in an easy-to-read style for kids without watering down the Word. It's a full Bible. It just doesn't have a lot of the really big words.
• Talk with your kids about the importance of spending time with God every day. Get three pictures -- one of their best friend, one of someone you see a couple of times a year and one of their favorite sports star, movie actor, or singer. Ask them to tell you how well they know each person. Ask them if they know that person's favorite food, favorite TV show and favorite color. Explain that the more time they spend with a person, the better they know them. We know about the celebrity, but we don't know the celebrity. We have never met them or spent any time with them. We know a little bit more about the acquaintance that we see a few times a year, but we don't know them intimately. Your child will probably be able to tell you all sorts of things about her best friend because she knows that person well. She spends lots of time with her. Explain that the same is true with God. We can know all about Him and never spend any time with Him. To know Him, we have to talk with Him and listen to what He has to say to us. We have to understand who He is and how He wants us to live. If we love Him, we'll want to spend time with Him. We want God to be like our best friend, someone whom we know intimately.
• Spend time with God yourself. The more connected you are with God, the better you are able to parent your children and help them create a relationship with God.

We can go through life, just skating by on what we already know about God, but that creates a shallow relationship with Him. When we hit the thin ice in our lives, we'll know we haven't trained hard enough off the ice to survive the intensity of being on it.

Let your relationship with God bring you strength for the intense moments in your life. Spending time with Him every day means you let Him fill you up with grace and strength so you and your kids can get in the game and face head-on any challenges that come your way during the day.

Be a Good Coach

I spend an awful lot of time watching children practice sports. With a soccer player and a hockey player in our house, we spend four nights a week just going to a practice of some kind. Sometimes practice is pretty boring. The coaches tend to run the same drills over and over again.

My youngest daughter isn't a huge fan of practice. She loves being on the ice, but she doesn't enjoy the repetition of the stick-handling, passing and shooting drills. She would much rather just scrimmage all the time. I keep having to remind her that practice is all about learning skills so that when she is in a game she doesn't have to think about what to do. It will just come naturally.

Parenting is a lot like being a coach at practice. We need to instill habits and values into our kids now so that when they hit the ground running in the game of life, they'll have the tools they need. Helping our kids create spiritual disciplines in their lives like a daily time with God, prayer and scripture memorization will help them to follow Christ when the going gets tough.

When life is tough, we tend to react based on what we already know. That is not the time to suddenly be seeking God. We need to seek God in the everyday moments of our lives so when crisis comes, we don't have to think about how to react.

Psalm 119:133 says "Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me." If our children haven't spent time with God and don't know God's word, they can't follow Him -- nor would they have any reason to do so. No one will blindly follow someone they don't know, especially if that person is asking them to pass through a storm. The more time our children spend getting to know God, the more they will understand who He is and desire to follow Him, even when the going gets tough.



So, grab your coaching hat and your whistle and try some of these ideas to help your children establish some spiritual disciplines:

• Get a new game. Set it up and tell your child to play it without reading the instructions. There will be much confusion. After a few minutes, read the instructions and play the game with your child. As you are playing ask your child how difficult it was to play the game. Point out that life is much like playing the game without knowing the rules. If we don't spend time with God to learn about Him and what it means to be a Christ-follower, then we can't live the way God wants us to. Ask your child about different ways he can learn about God. Talk about how important it is to spend time with God every day, using prayer, Bible reading and scripture memorization to understand how God wants to help us behave.
• Help your child choose a time during the day to spend with God. We do ours in the morning because it fits best with our schedule. Choose at time that works for your child. Make sure your child has a Bible that they can read, a devotional book and an understanding of prayer. You may want to help them the first few days.
• Start memorizing scripture together as a family. Pick a verse of the week and work on it every day at mealtime or bedtime. Talk about how if you know scripture from memory, it can help you during the week. If it's already "hidden in your heart" like Psalm 119:11 says, God will use it to help you decide what to do in instances when a Bible is not available. Keep track of the verses you learn and offer your kids prizes for reaching certain milestones.

Remember that the younger your child is, the shorter their attention span. Keep your expectations at an age-appropriate level. It may be enough for your child to spend five minutes with a picture Bible and a short prayer. Older kids can spend time reading a devotional and doing an activity. Help your child set up a daily time with God that is appropriate for him.

Encourage your children in their daily time with God, and set an example for them -- because that's what a good coach does.

Never Stop Growing

In our house, we know a lot about how the body grows. My youngest doesn't make enough growth hormone on her own, so she takes a shot every night that gives her the growth hormone that she needs. Growth hormone is necessary for growth to take place, but it's also necessary for a whole lot of other things in your body. It helps keep your bones from becoming brittle, and it affects a whole bunch of other systems in your body. Without growth hormone, your body simply will not grow like it should.

Just like we don't want our children's bodies to be stunted in their growth, we don't want their spiritual growth to be stunted, either. We want to help them build the habits they will need to continue growing spiritually throughout their whole lives. The most important way to do this is to model the behavior for them. If you're not consistently spending time studying your Bible, praying and worshipping, then you can't expect your children to do it. If you're not growing, then it's hard to tell your children that they need to grow.

I know that it's much easier to spend time with God when your children are not around, but your children need to see you spending time studying your Bible and praying. Even if all you do is read a couple of verses, make sure your kids see you consistently spending time in God's word. You can have a more serious time of study later, but modeling this behavior for your kids is the best way to impress upon them how important it is.

Help your children understand what it means to grow spiritually. It's kind of an abstract concept for them, so let's make it more concrete.

• Most kids love to look at pictures of themselves when they were younger. Break out the baby albums and flip through them with your kids. Talk about all the things they could and could not do when they were younger. Compare that with all the things they can do now. Talk to them about how it wouldn't be any fun to stay small forever. To be able to do more things, they had to grow. Talk about the things they will be able to do when they get older. Read Hebrews 5:12-14 with your kids and talk about how God needs us to grow in our understanding of Him just as we grow bigger physically. The more we grow, the more God can use us to fulfill His plans.
• On your kitchen table set out some healthy foods that would help you grow. Also set out some junk food. Ask your children to choose the things that will help them grow to be big and strong. Ask them if they can think of things that they might need to grow in their understanding about God. Just like we need to eat the right foods to grow strong physically, we need to put the right things into our minds and hearts to grow spiritually. We need to spend time reading and memorizing God's word, spend time with other believers and spend time talking to God.
• Give your children a journal and a devotional book. Make doing a devotional part of their daily routine, just like brushing their teeth and combing their hair. Have them write what they learned from their devotional in their journal each day. This exercise helps them form the habit of spending time with God each day.

Remember, your teaching is only as effective as your actions, so be sure to be a model of spiritual growth for your children.

Be Still

This week has been really busy in the Fairchild house. I've been running the girls back and forth to camps all week -- my oldest to basketball camp and my youngest to hockey camp. It's been a little crazy trying to get everyone fed and to where they need to be at the time they need to be there. Luckily, this is the craziest week of our summer.

Too often, however, our lives constantly look like ours has this week -- everyone running in different directions, barely stopping long enough to shovel in a meal. This isn't what God had in mind for us and our families. When we're so busy running, we don't have time to stop and let God speak to us, and if we create an atmosphere of constant activity for our kids, they will never learn how to be still.

Psalm 46:10 tells us to "Be still and know that I am God." Jesus often took time away from the crowds and his disciples to spend time with His heavenly father. God wants us to do the same. John 10:10 says "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." That verse doesn't say "I have come that they may have a life that's crammed full."

We do our kids and our families a disservice when we don't teach them the value of having some quiet, down time. It's only in those still, quiet moments that we can truly hear God's voice. Often, I think, God is speaking to us, but we're so busy trying to get to the next activity or plan the next play date that we simply miss hearing Him. We don't want our children to grow up unable to hear God's voice through the noise of all that's going on around them.

In this era of busyness, how do we teach our children to enjoy the still, quiet moments, and how do we go about creating some of those moments with our families?

• Take a good, hard look at your schedule and set some limits. Your children do not have to be involved in every activity the school, the church or the soccer team offers. Decide what the limits are for your family. Our girls are allowed to participate in one sport at a time along with church activities and Awana. That may be too much or too little for your family. It works out just right for us most days. Your schedule should not be so packed that you never eat dinner together as a family and the best time you and your kids spend together is in the car. While you can have some great conversations in the car, that shouldn't be your only contact with your kids.
• Begin early, instilling a habit of a quiet time in your kids. Set aside some time in the day that each member of your family has a quiet time with God. My girls each have a devotional book. They do a devotional each morning as part of their morning routine. They can't do anything else until their morning checklist is done, which includes their devotional time.
• Carve out some times in your family's schedule where you don't plan anything. Just spend the day at home. You'll be surprised at how freeing it is to have a day at home, just spending time together. Your kids will be more relaxed, and often you will, too.
• Pick a clear, starry night and have your family lay on a blanket in the back yard contemplating the stars. Talk about how God made the stars and knows how many there are. Get a glimpse of the greatness of God through His creation. Spend some time being still and praying together as a family.

Remember that God wants you to have a full life but not one that's so full that there's no room for Him.