“To make Christ known to your kids.” What if that truly became your “one thing?” What kind of difference would it make? Not just someday, but every day.
Here’s the way I sort of look at it. I don’t think any of us would disagree with the notion that if 100 percent is full capacity on what our personal calendars and career obligations can accommodate, life is always trying to cram about 120 percent, 130 percent, 140 percent—a lot more than 100 percent anyway—into a space that can only hold so much, no matter how well we multitask or how little sleep we get. So while you and I tend to consider ourselves the exception—that somehow the same rules of capacity don’t apply to us, with our clever and capable ways of managing things—guess what? They do. So every day, like clockwork, between our varied assortment of have-to-do’s and want-to-do’s, we each top out by necessity at our maximum 100 percent. And whatever else we intended to include or to swap out for something else, all those extra things get stuck off to the side somewhere, undone, untouched, even if we’ve displaced them with lesser things. That’s just the way it is.
And that’s why knowing our “one thing” is so important. Because when we’re clear about what we absolutely do not want to leave this earth without doing, based on what God has shown us through His Word and His Spirit, we’re going to make dead sure not many days pass us by when that “one thing” doesn’t factor somehow, to some degree, into our 100 percent. We’ll see to that.
But not without a plan, we won’t.
No matter how much we say we want it.
Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in San Rafael, California, conducted new research to test for some of the same variables that allegedly went into the classic “Harvard Goals Study” and “Yale Goals Study” of the 1950s—or whatever it was called—either of which has now been debunked as urban legend. And though these current findings aren’t quite as dramatic as those bogus numbers from yesteryear appeared to indicate, the facts still remain impressive enough to create some solid conclusions. They confirm that people who don’t just think about their goals but who (1) write them down, (2) turn them into action points, and then (3) hold themselves regularly accountable for their results are nearly twice as likely to achieve them, by a difference of 76 percent to 43 percent.[1]
That’s strong. That’ll challenge your pre-sets. Clear, written, actionable plans with built-in accountability work. And when you consider that the stakes of the plan in our case are whether or not our children will be given deliberate opportunities to own and stretch their Christian faith and to experience the real activity of God in their hearts—right here in our homes where they can personally see it and feel it—I don’t think we’ve got much of a choice to make. The difference between being halfway successful and almost guaranteed successful is, for us, the difference between lifelong regret and generations-long legacy. It’s the difference between hoping our kids received enough spiritual lessons in children’s church to navigate a grownup world, as opposed to knowing we’ve poured Scripture and truth into their hearts at up-close, personal range which, as God says in His Word, “will not return to me empty” (Isa. 55:11).
So it’s worth whatever changes we need to implement in order to make this happen. And it’s worthy of the same (or greater) level of planning that we’d give to anything where the success of the matter was significantly important to us.
Looking back, I’d say that’s basically where I found myself during that most convicting stage of my life journey as a husband and parent. I was sure that God was stirring a new fire in me—for Him, for my family. And I was sure I needed to do something to follow up on it. But what? And how? Because, hey, it’s no humility play on my part to tell you: I did not feel adequate for what I was being led to do. Even this many years later, God and His grace remain the only logical explanations for any fruit that’s come from this simple attempt at trusting Him. But that’s apparently how He wants it. He loves infusing His Spirit into homes and families whenever parents—especially fathers—say, “You know what? I accept. I know I’ve failed, and I know I’ll keep failing. But if You will show me how, Lord, I will do this. I will follow You in what You’ve called me to do, and I will lead my family spiritually to the best of my ability.”
I believe that’s probably where you are. And good—because that’s a long part of the way there. The most essential part.
But there’s just one more little thing. And if we mean it, we’ll do this part too—because it’s a key component in our obedience to this calling, just as much as our eagerness and willingness and desire for our children to develop as believers.
It’s this: We need a plan.
You may say, “I know. I want a plan. But I’m just not really the planning type.” Are you sure about that? When you go out looking for the parts and equipment you need for an all-day Saturday fix-it project around the house, do you just aimlessly drive around town, looking for whatever store might possibly carry what you need? Do you not instead have a pretty good idea where to go and what you’re hoping to find when you get there—even if your main strategy is to bring the broken piece with you from home and to walk it up and down the aisles at Lowe’s until you find a new one to match?
When vacation time rolls around in the summer, do you gather the kids in the car, bright and early on a beautiful Monday morning, crank the engine, turn around in the driver’s seat, and say, “Okay, guys, where does everybody want to go this week? The beach? The mountains? The campground? Your grandparents? Where.”
No. Because you’ve already planned it. God has designed us to be planners. Hasn’t He? He’s wired us to do our best work and discover our most reliable path to success when we know what we want and know where we’re going.
Planning, in itself, is not the problem. The problem is that we typically spend a lot more time planning those vacations of ours than we ever spend mapping out a spiritual itinerary for our family. Yet while we keep making vacation plans, and 401k plans, and exercise plans, and even imaginary plans for what we’d do differently if enough money or opportunity ever came in, too many of us shy away from making the “one plan” for the “one thing” that might just do away with our need for making half of those other plans. But when we become truly serious about doing something different in regard to the spiritual discipleship of our children, we need to flip the switch to a new kind of planning. And we need to do it now.
Get started today with our family HomeKit – www.victoriousfamily.org/homekit (click on our HomeKit page)
[1] http://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/dominican-research-cited-in-forbes-article
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