Infusing God into Everyday Life

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How to Infuse God into Everyday Life

When it comes to spiritually leading your child, one of the first things you’re probably going to think about doing is taking them to church, and by the way, good decision. That’s a great place to go not only for your child to get closer to God and to learn about God’s word and to experience the fellowship of God’s people, that’s a great place for you to get that as well. I want to talk to you a bit about a mistake that we sometimes make. Sometimes we think that as long as we’re blocking out time in our family schedule to go to church we’re good when it comes to developing them spiritually and being that spiritual influence and voice in their lives as their parent. That’s not true. Just driving them to church and being a part of their life at church is not the complete picture.

Just to be honest, when we go to follow Christ we don’t just follow Him just a short of period of time during the week, right? We know this, I know you understand this. I want to give you some ideas on how you can make your relationship with Christ and following God something that you do in your everyday life. Here’s what you can do. I want you to have it in your head that you can infuse God and the things of God and God’s word into everyday life. Each day let’s start small, let’s try to find one moment that something happens in your family’s life where you can just mention out loud something of how that connects to God or God’s word. If you begin to think through those moments and really start to be strategic, you’ll see that church isn’t the only time you could talk and think about God, and actually everyday of life, God is very present.

How are you going to do this? Well, I would like to teach you a term that I call God sightings. When I was a young man I used to play hide and seek with my brother, and we would go through the house, and he would hide and I would walk through with my eyes wide open and huge because I knew he was about to jump out at me. That’s how I think you should walk through your day with your eyes wide open and huge, waiting for God to jump out, whether it be at sunrise or a sunset or a kind word from a stranger or somebody buying you a coffee in the coffee line or some way you see God moving in the world around you. Maybe a scripture that you read that just makes a lot of sense; it connects to your heart. Whatever it is, when you see a God sighting, that’s when you share with your child and with your family, and that’s how you infuse God into everyday life. You don’t just have to do it at church.

Texts/Tweets

TIP: Choose a hashtag for your tweets and use it consistently. That will tell Twitter to store a list of your tweets on one place for later reference.

Tweet One: Talk about God when you walk, sit and rise. – Deuteronomy 6:7 #purposefulparenting

Tweet Two: Everyday God sightings bring God into the everyday. #purposefulparenting

Tweet Three: Give God a good reputation; talk about God like He is your hero. #purposefulparenting

Tweet Four: The family that prays together stays together. #purposefulparenting

Tweet Five: Guard your home and keep it holy. #purposefulparenting

Tweet Six: Make God the cornerstone of your family’s life; He is the only firm foundation there is. #purposefulparenting

Tweet Seven: Children who read God’s Word with their parents and pray together are more likely to do the same as adults. #purposefulparenting

Tweet Eight: You are Christ’s ambassador to your children. – 2 Corinthians 5:20 #purposefulparenting

Tweet Nine: Bring God into everyday conversation. #purposefulparenting

Tweet Ten: The most meaningless things can turn into the most meaningful conversations about God. #purposefulparenting

A Third Party

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A Third Party

Now I know it’s not perfect, but being the parent of a child a lot of times can be really fun. I mean, let’s be honest, as soon as they get out of those potty training years, and they can actually start to kind of take care of themselves a little bit more. Now, there’s a lot less physical labor because the baby years is physical labor. Let’s be honest, it’s also sleep deprivation. Right? When you got those small little babies. At some point they kind of transfer, and they’re able to take care of themselves, and they’re sleeping more. You’re able to kind of really enjoy them as they view the world, and you can see the world all over again through their eyes as they see things for the first time. Man, it’s awesome to be the parent of a child.

I want to talk to you, in this video, about what’s coming next. You need to think about what’s coming next because it’s significant, and that is the teenage years. I’ve had a lot of parents tell me that in the teenage years, whereas a baby there was physical labor, being a parent of a teenager there’s a lot of emotional labor. You stay up all night, but you’re staying up all night to make sure they come home for their curfew, or wondering where they are when they’re out. Being a parent of teenager, I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you, it’s no easy task. It’s definitely not impossible, and there are ways you can thrive during that experience.

I want to set you up for that success, and there’s something actually that you can do now that’s going to help your experience as a parent of teenager be way, way, way, easier and more powerful. Let me tell you how to do it. Well, what you do is you hire a third party. I’m not saying you pay a third party, but here’s how you can be strategic. Right now, in your child’s life, you can invite in an outside voice. A person that is going to speak into their lives with some kind of mentoring authority that will begin to build a relationship and will commit to going on a journey with your child along with you.

Why in the world would you do that? Why would you invite someone into their lives in that way? Well, because there’s going to come a time as a teenager when the teenager is going to be testing all of their limits and boundaries. They’re going to test your words. That means, at times, they’re going to tune out your words. That means they’re going to need someone else to listen to. If you’ve been strategic in the childhood years. and you’ve invited that third party into the family experience, and they have someone in their lives that they’ve been talking to for a while and they trust that’s saying very similar things as you’ve said, that means that third party during those teenage years can play a really significant role in the process.

I hope you can see that there’s some real strategic things you can do now to help you in your journey later as the parent of a teenager. One of those big ones is inviting in that third party. I hope you’ll take time to think through who could be that kind of person that I would trust enough to be that influential in my child’s life. The truth is, in the end, your child will be better for it.

Texts/Tweets

TIP: Choose a hashtag for your tweets and use it consistently. That will tell Twitter to store a list of your tweets on one place for later reference.

Tweet One: Mentors can help your child grow personally and spiritually. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Two: Mentors do not replace parents . . . They come alongside them. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Three: Trust is paramount in a mentoring relationship. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Four: A child will remember a mentoring relationship forever. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Five: Mentors are God-appointed guides for children. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Six: In an abundance of counselors there is safety. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Seven: The more positive relationships a child has in his or her life, the better. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Eight: Great mentors aren’t easy to find, but impossible to forget. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Nine: Look for help along the journey. #youdonthavetoparentalone

Tweet Ten: The best mentors see the best in a child and help to bring that out. #youdonthavetoparentalone

How to Fight Fair

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How to Fight Fair

I don’t know if you are a sports fan or not, but I’m just going to bank on the fact that at some point you’ve seen a football game or a basketball game, or something like that. Now, I want you to imagine what it would be like to play those games if you took out the referees, and you took out all of the boundaries. You wouldn’t be able to do it. It would end up in this huge chaotic fight, because in order for sports to work, you need to have someone there as a referee, and you need to have clear boundaries. You know, that works in family life too, and with your child, sometimes your family can get into chaos. I know it’s true, there’s not a home in this world that doesn’t at some point just go into chaos like a sports game without any officials, or without any boundaries, when your home is in chaos, and everyone is fighting. Well, I want to teach you just a few tips on how to fight fair.

The first thing is, draw the boundaries. Draw those boundaries. What I mean by that is, work with your child to make some very clear rules that they’ll respect in the house and that you will respect in the house. Please hear me, I told you to work with your child on this. If they are part of the process, they’ll respect these rules more. Let them make some suggestions. It may be humbling. They may say, “Well, I think the rules should be that you don’t yell at me.” Maybe that would be a good rule, to say no yelling in the house, and when we yell, that’s a penalty.

The second thing is, give authority to your child to call a penalty based on the rules. This is a little bit scary, but it helps keep everyone on the same playing field as far as fighting fair. Now, you are definitely the parent, I’m not suggesting you give that up, but if you break those rules, then the child should be able to respectfully tell you, “Hey, I thought that we weren’t doing that? We said we wouldn’t.” Just like you have the right to tell the child when they break those rules, “Hey,” respectfully, “Hey I thought we weren’t doing that? We said we said we wouldn’t.”

Third, they should be able to call a time out, so should you. Anybody in the family, at any moment, should be able to say, “This is too intense, I need a moment to calm down and think, I’ll be back. I need a time out.” The most important part of a time out though is to say, I’ll be back in 5 minutes, or I’ll be back 10 minutes.” What we don’t want to do is call a time out and then leave and never come back, that doesn’t build trust. When we call a time out, and we come back and want more calm. That gives a chance for us to fight fair, to talk about what really matters, to focus on the issues, not just the emotions that the issues are causing.

Now finally, you need a referee. I don’t know if you have someone that your family can go to, a counselor, or someone that’s trained to help bring both sides together when they are hurting. There’s going to be times in your family, it may be not now, but there’s going to be times in your family, and I would say in your marriage, where you have conflict that’s so deep that you just can’t work it out. Even if you are following the rules and nobody’s getting penalties called in it. Everybody’s staying within the boundaries. You might still get so stuck on an issue that you are facing, that you just need someone to come in as a referee, as that third party that will help guide the conversation and get you to a solution. I think, in my opinion, it’s important to have that person on speed dial so that you know and your family, no matter what you come across, you’ve got a way to find that solution.

Fighting fair is a beautiful way to live as a family. Everybody is going to fight, if you live that closely together in your home, at some point you are going to fight. It’s not bad to fight, as long as you fight fair.

Texts/Tweets

TIP: Choose a hashtag for your tweets and use it consistently. That will tell Twitter to store a list of your tweets on one place for later reference.

Tweet One: Ask God for help when your child spins out of control! #fightinggodly

Tweet Two: You control how you behave, not your child. #fightinggodly

Tweet Three: Arguments are power struggles. Give yours up. #fightinggodly

Tweet Four: Seek God’s help before losing your temper with your child. #fightinggodly

Tweet Five: Fight with love, peace and patience. #fightinggodly

Tweet Six: Don’t engage in an argument before pulling yourself together. #fightinggodly

Tweet Seven: Put off all rage and anger; it’s the opposite of God’s nature. #fightinggodly

Tweet Eight: Conquer your child, your temporary opponent, with love. #fightinggodly

Tweet Nine: The Lord will fight for you. #fightinggodly

Tweet Ten: Victory is only found in the Lord! #fightinggodly