Kicking Things Off

Living deliberately?  What does that look like?  What does it mean?  Just by living aren't you living deliberately? 

It all started with a Date Night...some of you may remember those others may be scratching your head.  Date Night is where you spend some quality time with your spouse without the little people that live in your home. 

Our Date Night was Saturday night.  We headed off to dinner and during the conversation we talked about our kids.  What will our family look like in a year?  5 years?  10 years?  And as we started talking we talked about things we have done with our kids over the years and things we haven't done. 

Have we done our primary function as parents by pointing our kids to the cross at all times?  No...epic fail. 

Have we consistently let our kids see us in God's word or having a quiet time?  No again.

Have we made sure to instill in our kids Biblical truths and make sure they have scripture hidden in their hearts?  Not so much.

Have we let our kids hear us pray for them out loud?  Have we prayed blessings over our kids before bed or when they head out the door for school?  Nada.  We are 0 for 4 here people...not such good odds.

So we talked about how we want to raise our kids...Patrick is 15.  We probably have 3 good years left before he will go to college and start making monumental decisions all on his own.  Have we prepared him or have we done the minimum and just hoped he picked things up from church or other people?  Josh is 9 and he is starting to show a very compassionate heart for others.  Have we helped develop this?  Do we put him in situations to help bring out his heart?  Colin is 3.  What can he tell you about Jesus?  Does he have a basic understanding of God and his love?

The answer to most of these questions is that we have done the basic stuff.  We take our kids to church.  We try to instruct them in right vs. wrong.  We monitor their computer use.  We keep in touch with who their friends are.  But is that enough? 

The answer we came up with is no.  Not by far. 

So we are going to live deliberately in 2012.  We are starting a couple weeks late but no time like the present. 

We want to invest in our kids and pour things into them over the next year and hopefully well beyond that.

So this blog will be talking only about my kids and things we as a family are doing to try and live deliberately.  There may be funny stories...who am I kidding...if you've met my family there WILL be funny stories.  There will be thoughts about things we try that work and don't work.  But we want to see how God moves in the next 12 months when we stop doing the basics and start living deliberately.