Ready-Set-Go is an every morning challenge in our house. Someone inevitably either cannot find a pair of socks, their P.E. bag, someone ate someone else’s lunch items or, just maybe, on the way to school they remember left-behind homework.
Ready is often MIA when it’s time to go. The utopian ideal of tender wakings leading to calm, ready-to-take-on-the-day stances become mornings fraught with frustration – and I feel as if I’ve failed as a mother even before the day has reached Go-status.
I wanted to reclaim the potential of the morning. I wanted my boys to exit the vehicle – not made at themselves, their siblings, or even me. I wanted them to exit my sphere and enter the school’s sphere with a bit of faith and hope poured into them.
Now, we get in the car, buckle up, try to do a quick review of items needed, turn on the ignition, start the drive to school – and we each give. One leads us in The Lord’s Prayer. Another leads us in the 23 Psalm. When there were more in the car, one would read a Proverb and another would lead us in song.
Then I would lead us in prayer something like this
Please Father let each of us rise up to meet the challenges of the day knowing you hedge us in before us and behind us. I thank you that your angels encamp about us, protecting us from unseen threats.
Please Father, reveal to each of us the gifts you’ve placed within us – that gifts potential for right now – whether it’s in the classroom, the playground, the workplace or at home.
Please Father, if a once-easily-mastered subject becomes challenging, I pray that each of us understand that the gifts you gave us carry us so far – and our work ethic helps carry that gift further, to where you planned it to go.
Your word encourages to work with all our might what I hands find to do (Ecc 9:10) and I pray that each of us does our best as a praise gift to you, Father. I pray that you give the world your best, as a love offering to God, regardless of how the receives it or thinks of it – because God sees it and receives it. (Mother Teresa)
Please send laborers to open our eyes to your truth, enabling each of us to not just talk the talk but walk the walk.
Let each us of let others know about the love of Jesus Christ either through their words or actions, that they see their classroom as a mission field needing prayer, and that they develop a heart to pray for the hard to love as well as the easy to love. I pray that they boldly pray for the bully in the bathroom, the child who sits alone at the lunch table, the one who looks and behaves lost.
Then we pray for people we know who need prayer. I also encourage the boys to find 3 people to pray for throughout the day.
By the time we get in the car in the morning, we’re already not worthy of this amazing Father who loves us more than we can imagine. I could avoid Him because we’ve all so missed it. I could just wait for a better day to take my boys to the feet of God, or find a place more holy than my messy van.
If I did that, though, I would be teaching my boys the wrong message. I would be teaching them that God doesn’t want them until they’re perfect – that God doesn’t want to hear their prayers in a messy morning. That’s what the deceiver wants us to believe.
God wants me to teach my boys how to reach to him in the beginning, middle and end of a messy morning. He wants to redeem those mornings that fail at ready.
Praying with them on the way to school does that. Letting them lead parts of that prayer time teaches them how to take the reigns in redeeming a messy morning. When we give the morning to Him, we are ready, set to go.
This school year, don’t pass up the opportunity to redeem your messy mornings. God’s Ready. Set. Just waiting for you to Come.
CLICK HERE to request to join our FACEBOOK GROUP and CONTINUE the CONVERSATION!
- Ch…ch…ch…CHANGES Are Coming in 2017 for TMI - December 27, 2016
- What New Thing Are You Ready to See God Do in Your Life in 2017? - December 26, 2016
- Heaviness and Newness - December 23, 2016
