Well, I’m not quite where I want to be. Yet.
You may remember me revealing that my long-term bad habit of staying up late is impacting my family as well as myself, and how I decided to ask someone to hold me accountable in an effort to change.
The first two days were absolute failures in that nothing changed on the surface. But towards the end of the second day, Saturday night, my thirsty and desperate heart was transformed by a new revelation of God’s tender love towards me, and his never-ending grace. I became aware in a whole new way of how his love for me does not depend on how I am succeeding (or failing) to measure up. Sunday morning, I was able to wake early and worship God the way I longed to.
I have not had the same success since, and I know my heart is getting thirsty again for his presence.
But I have put in place a couple of strategies to help myself succeed:
- Pre-set internet blocks for a certain time in the evening (I do this via my internet filter Net Nanny). I have to manually override the pop-ups if I want to stay online later than the set time; this quickly becomes annoying, so it works well to get me off-line.
- Changed my blog publishing schedule to reduce the number of posts I’m putting out each week. If you’ve noticed fewer posts recently, this is the reason why!
- prepare my prayer spot the night before. I have to stay quiet in my bedroom, as I have a small house and little children, so the temptation to stay in bed is much greater if I don't have a chair or a bible handy.
2 comments:
I love my early-morning time with God - except my body doesn't love getting up out of that bed. One thing that worked GREAT in the beginning was to set my cell phone alarm and put that out in our common area. When it goes off in the morning, I often run out there just to make sure it doesn't wake up the children. Then I'm already out there near my Bible and coffee. :) But lately I have slept through it, and so have the children! I think the thirst, as you described it, is what helps me get out of bed now, on the days that I make it. Net Nanny is a good idea!
You must be having a GREAT holiday if even the kids are sleeping through the alarm! :-) May God make his face to shine on you.
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