4 Steps to Growing a Faithful Home
My husband loves to garden. He enjoys preparing the soil, planning out the space, placing each seed in just the right spot, and watching the plants grow and produce. But something he loves even more is teaching our kids how to garden. He is thrilled when they want to help and get involved, “Can I help?! I want to help!” They are almost jumping with excitement.
He tells them how to plant each kind of seed, space out each plant, and arrange the different kinds of plants. They talk about how long they have to wait before the tiny plants poke out of the soil and how much longer it will be before we get to pick the veggies. Then the kids ask everyday, “Can we go water the garden? Can we go check to see if the plants are growing yet?”
Waiting is hard! We just can’t wait for these plants to hurry up and grow fruit.
But before we know it, the plants are fully grown with zucchini, tomatoes, squash, corn, peppers, strawberries, onions, garlic, and herbs ready to be picked and enjoyed. To see that their days of hard work have turned into something they can hold is pretty rewarding.
This is what it’s like to grow a faithful home. We put in the hard work, and we wait to see any growth. But some days it feels like the growing is never going to happen and we just want to throw our hands up and say forget it.
So I’ve come up with these 4 steps to help us out. (me included- Ok, I really wrote this for me, but it can help you too.)
4 steps to growing a faithful home.
1. Pray. A lot. Before we can prepare the hearts of our children, we have to prepare our own hearts. We need our hearts and minds to be ready to hear the Word of God, so that we can do what it says. There’s no point putting a seed in soil that is not tilled and loose. You’ll hurt your hand trying to get the seed into the ground and you will most likely not get the seed deep enough, so it just won’t grow. You ever feel like that as parent? Your child is acting difficult and just not taking in the things you are teaching him/her. I’m sure God feels that way about me quite often. I can be pretty tough (no, amens, please).
Our hearts and our children’s hearts can’t grow in the Word if they are hard as a rock, or the ground. Prayer is the tiller. The big machine that stirs the soil, making it possible for the seeds to get deep into the soil right where they need to be. Yes, I need to be praying.
2. Read your Bible everyday. The more we put the good things into ourselves the more we can share those good things. I am a different person when I am not reading my Bible, and not in a good way. I am short tempered and cranky. But when I have been in the Word that day, I can focus on what is really important. It’s what grounds me throughout the day, and my attitude is pleasant. The way I respond to our kids is better, way better.
Just like my husband could not show our kids how to garden if he had not spent time reading about gardening and then tending to his own garden, so we cannot expect to show our kids how to live faithfully if we have not been reading our Bibles and living faithfully ourselves. We have to be in the Word.
Scripture give us the good nutrients that our souls need to grow and be more like Christ. I can show my kids how to grow in the Lord when I am actually growing in the Lord myself.
3. Teach your children. We must teach our children how to prepare their own hearts through prayer and through the reading of God’s Word. We have to tell them and model for them by living out what God says everyday. This isn’t something most kids will just do…unless we are doing it. Our kids will copy what we do. If I am on my phone, my kids will want to be on their kindles. If I am playing outside, my kids will want to play outside. If I am taking notes on the sermon, odds are my kids will take notes on the sermon. When I yell, they yell. Whatever I do, they are going to do too. Good or bad. I want them to do the good, so I have to do the good.
I have to serve other people, talk respectful to the kids, show mercy, read my Bible in front of them, talk about the Bible with them, the list goes on. Am I best example of these things? Nope. I want to be. I need to be praying and read everyday not just for my own soul but also for my children’s. They need me to be growing with them and showing them how to live this Christian life. We have to be diligently, meaning intentionally and constantly, teaching our children. Our kids won’t accidentally start following Christ. We have to purposefully show them how.
4. Get rid of sin. There will be weeds in our lives that need to be pulled just like the weeds in a garden. And pulling those weeds is not fun. But if we ignore the weeds, they will grow and take over the garden. They will spread and become harder to get rid of. Weeds take the goodness of the soil away from the other plants causing them to die. We know all of this. We know that sin is like a weed. Yet, we let them grow in our lives.
The sin, the wrong things we do or the wrong attitudes we have, have to be pulled out of our lives. We can’t let them grow thinking they are not a big deal. Sin is a big deal, and getting rid of sin is something we have to model for our kids so that they can get rid it in their own lives.
This step is the hardest one. It’s the daily tending of the garden that takes the most patience and perseverence. My husband could let the garden go if he wanted but the result would be a garden full of pests, weeds, dying plants and very little fruit. It is worth the time and the energy to discipline ourselves and our children to get sin out of our lives.
Growing a faithful family is a daily, consistent effort of praying, reading, teaching and disciplining and praying, reading, teaching, and disciplining again. It doesn’t happen over night. There’s no quick way to go about it. Sometimes I have a hard time waiting for my kids to grow and learn what I have been teaching them. I am anxiously waiting to see them bear fruit of the Spirit. There are little signs of growth here and there that I can see as they mature but the daily grind can wear me down causing me to think it will never happen.
But the diligence and determination pays off.
One day we will see the fruit from all the labor intensive days of growing faithful kids into faithful adults. And that day will be amazing. Until then…we wait, and we keep tending and pulling weeds.
How do you grow your faithful home?
4 Comments
Andy Warren
This was an amazing writing. Thank you for this.
Tracy
Excellent, Mandy!
Terrie
Wonderful guidance for all of us!
Jean
Great advice!