Giving Up

Day eighty-five

I was up early this morning to see my man off for his first 10k run.  I am really proud of him for sticking with his running program.  Good luck!

Speaking of sticking with something, I can't believe this is day eighty-five of posting my blog. Honestly, there are days when I just want to say, "I'm done, this is too much work," but I accepted the challenge and I intend to finish it.  My husband's attitude must be rubbing off!

My prayer this morning was focused on my attitude.  I am really grateful for all the blessings and opportunities the Lord gives me, but my words and actions don't always reflect that.  I get frustrated or overwhelmed and look for a way out.  So I shared my plan on ways to keep a positive attitude with the Lord (I am learning from my studying) and asked Him to guide me through my day in such a way that my attitude will be a blessing to others. 

Genesis 35

Chapter 35 starts out on a good note; God is once again leading Jacob, which prompts Jacob to do a  little house cleaning to rid his family of the unrighteous things in his household (Gen 35:1-2).  It appears that some members of his household had been affected by the worldliness of the people surrounding them.  He asks them to get rid of the “strange gods” (idols), to clean themselves up, and to dress appropriately.

This got me thinking, what is my family willing to give up in order to be closer to God?

Movies

 It was some years ago that we decided not to watch rated-R movies.  We were never really into the nasty rated-R movies, but even the mellower movies had bad language and that is something we didn’t need in our home.  It was hard enough to teach my sons not to use bad language, we didn’t need them watching the actors and actresses whom they looked up to using the same language we were saying was unacceptable.  And the whole nudity issue made the decision that much easier. 

Music

This is probably the most difficult area for our house.  We all love music very much; listening to music is an everyday thing for us.  We love all types of music.  I don’t think there is a genre that we don’t cover. But when we stopped to really listen to the lyrics it was really disappointing, the messages were not as positive as they should be and the language was quite bad.  We all had a hard time deleting music from our computers and mp3 players.  Why do they have to ruin a perfectly good song with bad language?

Computers

The content on the computer hasn’t really been an issue, except for those disgusting pop-ups.  When the boys were younger we used our parental controls and as they got older we talked to them about what to avoid.  The challenge at our house is spending too much time on the computer.  It is easy to get sucked into the web there are millions of sites to visit and games that can be played.  It starts with checking your email and the next thing you know a couple of hours have gone by and nothing else has been accomplished.  This is an ongoing challenge at our house, but we are working on it together.  We set limits and we have learned to speak up when we think that too much computer time is taking up some of our family time.

Video games

As the only woman in the house I had a battle on my hands with this issue.  I’m not really into the games like the men in my house.  They get playing and it is much like the computer, they get sucked in and nothing else gets done.  From the beginning I was adamant about what was acceptable to play.  I have been very unpopular because of this, its okay, sometimes you have to be the bad guy.  I still consider myself pretty lucky; they mostly respect my rules and only tease me a little now and then.

These are some of the challenges that many families are battling with today. They are different from the challenges that Jacob’s family faced, but they can do the same damage; they can pull us away from God.   Jacob knew that if his family was to receive blessings they needed to prepare themselves.  He started preparing them by asking them to give up those things that were unrighteous.  This is still true today.  How are you preparing your family?  What are you giving up?