Hands and Hearts

I read a devotional for moms everyday during the week, and if I remember it on the weekends. This is part of one, which touched me personally, because I know that my children are looking up to me, and that scares me. What I mean by this is.... Have you ever seen your worst parts of yourself come out through your children? Have you ever wondered why you never have to teach your children to lie or cheat, but spend the biggest part of their life trying to teach them how to be honest, trustworthy, and productive? That is because it is easy, they quickly learn that it is easier to just lie and do what they want, than tell the truth and get into trouble. It's doing the hard things like teaching them right from wrong, potty training or how to share, that defines us a good parents. These are usually never ending lessons and the best way to teach them is to live them. When I see my daughter (who is two going on three) getting frustrated and upset. She will say certain phrases or have a certain action that I recognize as my own. My first thought is do I really act like that, and the answer is apparent, she had to learn it from somewhere. So I pray Lord please help me to be just like you because they want to be just like me. Then I see some good things too, like when we go to church, my daughter holds her hands up and really gets into the music during praise and worship. That makes me feel like I am doing something right. That is why I commit myself-daily to the devotional, for not only myself but for my children.
This one in particular was about how there are something’s only God can do. However, there are also things in the Christian life that God asks us to do. She uses James 4:8 as an example, this scripture urges us to come near the God with the promise that he will also come near to us, it also urges us to look into our hearts daily. Whether it is something that we have read that we had no business reading, spoken impatiently to a child, or gossiped about a friend, our hearts need cleansing daily. As our hearts encounter sin throughout the day and we would be wise to purify them. Think of it like this, we accomplish numerous tasks throughout the day all of which require the use of our hands. What do we do for work or ourselves that we do not use our hands? Most of the time we cannot be productive without getting them dirty either. Whether it is cooking, cleaning or working our hands come in contact with germs and many other things that we do not want to think about but it is unavoidable. On that same note we cannot avoid sin, we are call to live in a world full of it. In order to do anything productive in your spiritual walk you have to come in contact with sin. He did not ask us to save the saved He asked us to save the lost. In time if we don't cleanse our hearts the same thing would happen if we did not cleanse our hands they would become filthy and dirty. Not only would other people not want to come it contact with us we would not want our hands to touch the most important things in our lives, like our children. We should take the same thought and apply it to our hearts, when the filth and dirt cake up on our hearts how long before no one wants to come into contact with us?
Washing our hands is a process of cleansing that we repeat throughout the day, riding them of the germs and dirt we come into contact with. Think about how many times a day you wash your hands. Why would you not do the same with you heart? The process is not the same, for cleansing of our hands, we go to the sink; for cleansing of our hearts, we go to Christ. If we cleansed our hearts as many times as we washed our hands we would have a genuine walk with God that are children could easily follow. As we move toward Christ, he moves toward us. He helps us see things in our lives that shouldn't be there, and he helps us cleanse them.

Putting together the swing set

My husband and I, like any good parents of a soon to be three year old, just bought a wooden swing set. We got a good deal on one at Toys r Us and when it came in, we read the instruction, that about gave me a heart attack. Eight to twelve hours for assembly, all in two boxes! My first thought is that we can put this together in no time. It might take an average person eight to twelve hours to put this together, but we are set ups at Briggs and Stratton. HA HA. That was the funniest thing that happened. Ten hours and sunburns later it was still not finished. We had boards that were backwards and we did not know it until we were on a step that required holes that were on the other side of the boards or a plastic piece that went somewhere else. We were outside all day and still did not finish it. After I don't know how many hours and chasing children all day we just called it quits and said we would finish it next weekend. The following Saturday it took us about an hour and a half to finish it. Man it is GREAT to be parents!