3 Tricks to Make the Most of Your Time at Home

During these days I think many find themselves in their homes a lot more than previously. In a season of things coming to a halt, it can be easy to also halt all activity. To veg out and waste days waiting. Though our activities outside the house may be less, our urgency to continue forward and not wasting a moment is becoming more prevalent. I wanted to share a couple of things you can be doing in your homes over these days that when you come on the other side of this season, you may be thankful for your time.

1.    Establish a rhythm of prayer and family devotion. I want you to imagine for a moment what could happen if on the other side of this season you engrained in your home a daily rhythm of praying together as a family and spending time around the word of God. Everyone reading together, everyone praying together, everyone talking about how God is speaking. You may be surprised what God can and wants to do with that. It could literally be something that changes you and your family for decades. You could look up 10 or 20 years from now and your kids could be leading their family in prayer and family devotion. Your grandkids could be raised in godly environments by simply implementing this daily rhythm to your life. The thing is, often times this can seem overwhelming, but the reality is that you don’t have to ‘kill it’ during this time. You need to just try. You will get better; the times will be sweeter. Every day won’t be over the top, but sweet moments will come and the Spirit will manifest in your house. Imagine it. It will be life and generational changing. A way you can do this is simply having a set time you gather as a family and read through the bible. Our church family has been talking about the F260 plan. It is a bible reading plan through the year and is an easy way for you to jump in and have a set reading every day. Read, keep your HEAR journal (highlight, explain, application, response) and talk through it together. Pray specifically. Talk about what is going on in each other’s lives and pray specifically about those things as a family! The power of prayer playing out in your families could be overwhelming.

2.    Create a family vision statement. This one may seem odd, but I think could be a powerful thing for you and your kids. Depending on the age of your children this will look a whole lot of ways. There is also creative freedom in creating something like this, but it gives you an opportunity to identify what your family is about. To set goals and expectations that may be unsaid and give it life. Here is just a quick set-up for what this can look like, and you can look online for other ideas and thoughts. One of the first things you can do is identify what are the values you have as a family. An example is: we will be a house that worships the Lord/ Love people where they are/ or we will seek adventure. Each family is unique and different and have different visions/dreams/goals but spend some time asking God what this can look like for your house. Once you gather family values together narrow it down to a few that encapsulates main themes you come up with. Perhaps they can be put into an acronym or all start with the same letter, this is where creativity can come into play. Once you have those values identified think of a one to two sentence phrase that you can easily be remember and everyone knows what is meant when it is said.

3.    Dream together. Take some time to talk about long term dreams and vision together with your spouse or your family. Where do you see the next 5 years, or next 10 years? What are some goals you have that your spouse needs to hear! This can be a great time for you to dream about what can be and start to talk through how do we get there. This goes great with the family vision statement and will likely come to mind as you are thinking through that. Take some time to really pray and see how does God want us to leverage our life for over the next several years. Maybe your dream is to take a mission trip together. Or maybe you have individual goals like going back to school, or starting a new job. What are things that need to happen for that to be a reality? What steps do you need to take over the next month/year to help make that a reality? What help can you give your spouse to help them see that goal realized? Use this time to dream together and reconnect as you think about your future.

These are a few things for you to focus on during this season. I believe when you look up months from now you will be thankful that you did! Like, share, and comment below which one of these you are going to try and do in your house this week. Which one of these would you like to see more detailed information about in the future?