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Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Energy to Keep on Keeping On

As I continue to read this book from Elizabeth George, Loving God with All Your Mind , I find myself seeing who I am in a lot of ways. This morning while I was reading, God spoke to my heart about how grumbly and complainy I have been lately about homeschooling not going smoothly, being to busy, my house looking a hurricane hit and many, many more things that I could keep going about.

The section of this chapter was labeled, A Concerted Effort. I thought I would share it with you all:

Once you have set your goals for your lifelong pursuit of serving God, you will undoubtedly want to do your best and give your all to acheive these goals. Like Paul, you will want to press on and hold nothing back. Such pressing on, however, is "untiring activity" which requires perserverance, and that perserverance is a gift of God's grace available to us all. And it is God's grace that keeps the kind of woman I'm describing from being a breathless, harried, frazzled, female. Instead, as one of God's servants, she depends on His guidance and His strength as she presses on. She walks through her days sensitized to His presence and trusting in His perfect timing. She keeps moving, she keeps serving, keeps functioning, keeps growing, keeps giving, and keeps pressing on towards her goals of serving God-but her movement is not frenzied or compulsive. Willing to work hard and persevere for her Lord, she draws strength from Him and focuses her energy and efforts on her goals, balancing her efforts with the knowledge that God is God and that He is ultimately in control.

After reading this section of the book, I began to look at how I have been handling our homeschooling year so far, worried that it wasn't fun enough, but God never said it would always be fun. I also realized that since school started, I have been trying to do all this in my own strength-which is where the problem originates from. I don't want to teach our children that when the going gets tough to run away from whatever is to hard for them. I want to teach them to stand strong on the Lord's strength and to keep on keeping on. That is how we know God is in control-when we still continue to serve Him and trust Him to guide us-even through those hard and trying times.

She also had this to say in this chapter:

As we continue to press, we need to remember that we do not need to rely solely on our own efforts in the race. "Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary." God is there to enable us to serve Him wherever He has called us to do so.

God has called us all for something special-homeschooling-let's not complain like I have been doing when things are not going according to our plan. Let's not whimper like I have been doing when we feel it is to hard. Let's get on our knees and pray to our Father to give us His strength and guidance in this endeavor. As He has shown me lately.....He is trying to teach the kids something. When I pull it away and say it is too hard for them, then I am saying to them....it is too hard to serve Christ.

Let's keep on keeping on!

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