Freeing Up Our Time, Part 1

As mentioned in previous posts, we’re not required to build a theological seminary within the walls of our homes in order to hold family devotions. However, conducting these activities does require time, a short commodity in many of our lives. Sometimes finding a spare ten or fifteen minutes is asking a lot of us.

Many of us parents have been asked to buy into this notion that promoting simplicity in our lifestyle hurts our children and stagnates us. If we’re not chauffeuring our children to multiple extracurricular activities or engaging in our own committee work and self-improvement courses, we’re somehow falling short of the mark. It seems our well-roundedness is dependent upon the time spent away from home letting others guide our cosmic walk through life.

As Christians, we need to be ever observant of the eternal significance that any of our activities or behavior has. That doesn’t mean that each and every thing we do has to have deep spiritual impact. It does mean that it has to have godly purpose to it. This is part of developing a purposeful mindset for missions work with our children, and what we need to evaluate when trying to find time to fit God into our homes. For example, does the:

… fishing trip help us relax so we can be a better parent, spouse, employee, or is it a reason to get out of the house and our responsibilities?
… working on the evangelism committee pull us and our families closer to reaching others for Christ, or does it just feel good to be part of something bigger than ourselves?
… playing on the JV or varsity basketball team promote godly character, or does it just give the child something to keep him busy with and out of trouble?
… attending a play date teach the value of friendship, sharing and putting others first, or an excuse for dropping the child off while we engage in more grown up activities?

What we must first evaluate is where our focus is and how much of God is in it. Instead of trying to fit God into our busy schedules, we need to work our schedules around God. If the Lord was never in the decision to do the activity in the first place, the activity has to go. This is the first thing we do to free up time in order to hold family devotions.