"Spiritual Disciplines in the Context of Marriage and Motherhood" by Mariel Frost | KFW 2023

Okay, the first five minutes are going to be the hardest, and then I'm going to get on a roll. So I've got a lot of notes, but the good news is, as I printed it really big so I could see it without my glasses, so it's really not as much as it looks like. So, um, yeah, spiritual disciplines in the context of marriage and motherhood. So, um, first of all, we want to ask, what are spiritual disciplines? And so this is a very simple definition: biblical practices that a believer does to grow spiritually in Christ and to build their relationship with Him. If you Google it, you'll find all kinds of different lists of what should be included on that list.

Um, and lots of people have written books about it and study guides and blogs and podcasts, but I, um, just decided I'll touch on these seven basics. Prayer, Bible study, and fasting are the pillars. Journaling, worship, memorization, and discipleship, I think, are also really important, but there's lots of other things that could be included. These are just the ones that we women can really do. You know, like we're not in charge of our charitable giving, usually, um, or where we fellowship or things like that so much. So these are the ones that are under our control as wives and mothers and as women. And, um, in the context of marriage and motherhood was the, um, assignment that was given to me, if you will.

But I know that there's a lot of you here that aren't married and you're not mothers, and that's fine. I think a whole bunch of what I'll have to say will be very applicable to your life, just exactly where you are. But, um, I'm going to be unapologetic about the fact that that is kind of the context in which we're talking. So, um, maybe you'll be married or maybe you'll be a mother someday, or maybe you won't. Either way, that's fine. Um, but that's kind of where I'm coming from. So that'll be the context. Um, and then also, you know, we could have dropped the S on spiritual disciplines and just made this a talk on spiritual discipline because, um, I'm going to touch a little bit on some practical things, but I'm also just going to talk about the benefits of being spiritually disciplined.

Um, and I've got a lot of material, and I'm hoping we're going to get through it all and still leave time for us to hear from you. Um, but I don't want to overwhelm anyone. I don't expect that all of this is going to apply to any one person here. I want you to kind of go through and pick up the nuggets that apply to you, um, even if it's just a phrase or a single thought, something that's going to bring you courage, like next Monday, um, or two weeks from now when something just hits you, you know, right in the face that you weren't expecting. So that's the goal here.

All right, I'm going to start, since nobody really knows me, with a, um, very brief bio. The reason I have a picture of that sign there, um, that's a was the ice cream sign that my husband and I met under 38 years ago. He owned an ice cream shop, and I went to work for him. And, um, it was the ice cream shop closed, went out of business, and the sign was forgotten. And, um, a number of years later, we found it the back of his dad's barn, and we hung it up in our house. And it has been a reminder for me ever since that my primary role, since I said I do, is I am Mike's.

I'm Mike's wife, the father of Mike's children, and now as he ages, I'm Mike's helper. And so that's the context of my life. And there's some pictures of my family, I should just say very briefly, um, that we both, my husband and I, were raised in non-Christian homes. Um, we were born again a year after we got married, um, which is 32 years ago now. Um, after about 10 years of walking with the Lord and the Lord graciously discipling us, we decided to move to North Carolina to a more conservative church. That was our first introduction to anybody like you all. Um, and after being there for 17 years, we moved to Ohio, which is where we live now.

We go to a very small church called Remnant Christian Fellowship that's not affiliated with anybody in particular. We're a pretty eclectic little group, but we are happy there. So that's our brief bio. Oh, and I have 12 children, most of them still live with me. Um, yeah, one is about to be married, one is married.

I will say this, everyone in my household is potty trained. They can all tie their shoes, they can all read. I'm down to homeschooling only four students, and, um, many of my children do have a sincere and growing relationship with the Lord.

So from this stage of life, I can look back and I am so humbled. And, um, you know, when I look around at some of you young moms with your babies in arms and your toddlers and you're trying to get them to sit still through these sessions and everything, I am just so glad that I'm through that stage and I made it. Some of you older women are like, "Yes, I know what you mean," but I am so humbled, um, that God carried me through, and I am just so confident that He will carry you through too. And, um, that's kind of, yeah, Lamentations 3:20 says, "My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me."

And, um, and it goes on in the next verse to talk about hope. When I recall these things, it just gives me hope for the rest of you. So, um, yeah, in regards to the spiritual disciplines, um, most of us know what we're supposed to do. Um, but I think most of us would also agree that there's higher ground. And the problem is not our good intentions. The problem is summed up here in Psalm 73:26, "My flesh and my heart faileth." And the answer is this, God is the strength of my heart.

So what does the Bible have to say about, um, the spiritual disciplines? I think I mentioned that there is no biblical list of what you're supposed to do to be a good Christian on a daily basis. But it does say in First John 2:6, "He that saith, 'He abideth in Him,' ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." So how did, um, Jesus walk out the disciplines? What do we see from scripture? Um, I'm not going to do an extensive Bible study, so you don't have to turn there, but I'm just going to point out a few things. Um, in Luke 6:12, it says, "And it came to pass in those days that He went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God."

There's lots of verses that tell us that Jesus prioritized prayer. Even though He had a busy day of ministry, He often went aside and prayed. It also says in Luke 9:23, "Um, and He said to them," this was Jesus talking, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me."

So apparently, Jesus really expected that this Christian life would require a daily denial of ourselves. Um, interesting that this was all said before the crucifixion, and He said, "You need to take up your cross daily and follow Me." I'll touch on being a living sacrifice later, but you know, He wasn't talking about dying for Christ. I hope we're all willing to do that, but He's talking here about us being willing to just go through life carrying a cross. And, um, that's going to be probably more needful for all of us than just dying a martyr's death. And sometimes it's a little harder.

And then in Matthew 22:29, it says, "Jesus answered and said unto them, 'You do err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.'" In other words, Jesus was implying that if you don't know the word of God and haven't tapped into God's power, you're going to be an error. You're going to wind up erring.

And then in Luke 10:41 and 42, Jesus seems to be specifically speaking to us, mothers who are very busy, and He says, "Martha, Martha, or Marielle, Marielle, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." So what was that really good thing that Mary was doing that He commended? She was sitting at Jesus's feet, and Jesus is saying here, "That is the most important thing that you need to do." And I know some of you are going, "Ugh, I know, and I'd love to, and if I just had an hour a day to spend at His feet, that would be great."

Um, I get that. And if it were really an either/or thing, like either I spend time devoted to God or I have a clean house, or either I spend time devoted to God or I can homeschool my children, or you know, you put anything in there, even if it was really that cut and dried, it would be worth it, according to Jesus Christ, to spend time at His feet.

That's what it says. And I have found that that's the way it is. If I prioritize prayer, if I prioritize spending time with God, it actually goes better, you know, homeschooling. It goes better doing the dishes. It goes better discipling my teens. Everything goes better. So it's not an either/or, but even if it was, it would still be a priority to spend time at Jesus's feet.

So here's a few Greek words just to make myself look really intellectual. I like these. Orthodoxy is the Greek word that talks about what we believe. Orthopraxy is what we do. It's our practice. And so what we believe needs to turn into what we practice or what we do. That's what the spiritual disciplines are going to do. Pistos means faith. Pistos means faithful. Pistos is a noun.

It's a person, place, thing, or idea. Pistos is an adjective. It modifies nouns, right? So what we have becomes what we are. Faith needs to become faithful.

So sanctification is the goal of spiritual disciplines, and sanctification is a journey. And sanctification is also something really kind of unique. Um, sometimes you'll hear the phrase progressive sanctification. It's the only part of the Christian life that we partner with God in. He does the saving.

We can't save ourselves, and our works can't save us. And He does the glorification. He will justify us and translate us in the end. But in between, salvation and glorification is what we call progressive sanctification, and we partner with God in that process.

And yeah, we partner with God. We can cooperate with Him, or we can slow Him down. It's not an event. It doesn't happen at a particular day. Our salvation, our progressive sanctification starts on a particular day, and it's nice if you know what that date is, but sanctification's not an event. And it's not a to-do list. It's not like we can go, "Okay, sanctification, check, did that." And it's also not a race.

We are not going to get anywhere if we're just looking around saying, "I think I'm doing better than her," or "I think I'm doing worse." It's not a race.

What sanctification is, is it's a walk. And I just was struck with this realization several weeks ago that when Jesus walked on the water that time, when He came to His disciples and they were in the midst of the sea, He had been on the mountain praying. And I looked at a map, and you know, based on where He had been preaching and where He probably went into the wilderness or up into the mountains to pray and where the midst of the sea was, it's probably several miles from the mountaintop to the midst of the sea.

So He, after a very busy day of ministry and then an all-night of prayer, He stands up and He walks down the mountain and across the seashore, gets to the water, and He keeps walking on the water. And that was an amazing miracle, wasn't it? But He walked.

He had to put in the effort and do the walking. And I think that's exactly what it's like for us as sisters. You know, God is going to do the miracles. He's going to make the water hold us up, but we have got to do the walking. It's a walk.

And it's a walk along a very narrow way, and there are ditches on both sides, and I don't care what issue you want to look at, you can fall off onto this ditch and you can fall off into that ditch. And some of us are more prone to go down one ditch than the other, but we are all vulnerable on all sides. And when we're overcorrecting from falling on this ditch, we're especially vulnerable to fall into that other ditch. So it's a very narrow way, and it can be very challenging. I just think of the context of being a wife and mother. I mean, we've got to eat, but we need to not give in to gluttony.

We need to fast, but we have to prepare food for our family. We have to push ourselves to do our very best, and yet we need to not become proud. We have to endure suffering and yet not give in to despair. I mean, we're just constantly walking that narrow way.

But God gives us the grace to do it. All right, I just want to very quickly go through, um, those seven things I had on the board, prayer and whatever, on the slide. Um, this is not a how-to. There are so many really, really good resources and probably so much wisdom in this room.

If you're somebody who, after I go through these next seven slides, says, "I need more specifics," go find an older sister, and I'm sure there's lots of information they can give you, but I'm just going to give a couple little pointers on some of these disciplines. So prayer, I find that the two major challenges in prayer are finding the time and being able to stay focused.

When it comes to time, I think it's really important that we incorporate prayer into the rhythms of our life. If you're not at a season where you can spend a lot of time set aside for prayer, then pray for things as you're going through your day, and it will disciple your children and be a blessing to all the people around you.

Yeah, when you hear of a need, stop and pray for it. Don't just say, "Oh, I'll pray for you," because the reality is, if you actually set a time aside in your prayer closet to pray for all the things you say to people, "Oh yeah, I'll pray for you," there's no way you'd get anything done, right?

And so just go ahead and say, "Well, can we pray for that right now?" And do it. And it's a great way also to deal with gossip. When somebody comes to you and they're just going on and on and on about, you know, kind of tearing a situation or a person down, you know, listen compassionately for a little while and then say, "You know, since you brought that up, can we just stop and pray about that?" And it's amazing, people who really didn't want to pray for the situation but just wanted to talk about it, they don't come to you anymore, and it's wonderful.

The other thing we can do is the Bible says to pray without ceasing. So what does that look like? Well, I realized just recently, it's kind of embarrassing to say this is recent, but I realized that I have this running conversation going on in my head all the time.

I'm constantly like rehearsing a conversation I had with my husband or that I want to have with a sister or whatever. And I was just like, "Why don't I take those thoughts captive? Why don't I make that running conversation in my head a conversation with God?"

And then it will be praying without ceasing, and it's working. It's amazing. Then there's also, um, intentional set-aside prayer. And, um, my daughter Isabelle pointed out that if we are faithful in the intentional times of prayer, it makes the praying without ceasing a lot easier. And I have found that definitely to be the case.

But there's no certain amount of time that you need to set aside for prayer.

Yeah, different seasons of life require different things and will allow you more time or less. Okay, so then the second thing is focus. Here's just a little couple things that I find helpful. I set a timer on my phone, and I set it for one minute, and I start praying for the first oldest member of my family. And just about the time when I'm either starting to fall asleep or my mind is starting to wander, my little timer goes off, and I switch to the next person on my list. And so that's very helpful. You can also write out your prayers.

You can journal your prayers. You can pray scripture. The other thing that's helpful is if you take your distracted thoughts captive by doing this and say to yourself, "Okay, this thought keeps coming into my prayer time." Take it captive. Don't just try and get rid of it. Take it captive and look at it and say, "Is this something that God wants me to pray about?

Or is this something I'm really concerned about? Is it something that's bothering my conscience? What do I need to do with this distracted thought that keeps coming back?" And then lastly, I'll just say this, that the Bible does say a few things about, um, the morning. In Psalm 5:3, it says, "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up." I know that some people are morning people and some people are not, and that's fine. I'm a morning person. The way I prioritize my day is anything that's really important that has to be done, it gets done before noon.

So I pray in the morning. But even if you're not a morning person and even if you can't do a whole bunch of prayer in the morning, it is a great time for you to at least start your day thinking about God. Just swing your feet over the edge of the bed and say, "Okay, Lord, how do you want me to do today?" Just start there. Start the conversation in the morning.

I really like this quote, which isn't there. It's a good reminder that, you know, intercessory prayer is another really important kind of prayer. And we are our children's and our husband's primary intercessor. And what intercessory prayer does is it's penetrating the hearts we cannot open, shielding those we cannot guard, teaching where we cannot speak, comforting where our words have no power to soothe. No ministry is so like that of an angel as this, silent, invisible, known but to God. It's a very pure ministry. There's no pride in it at all.

Okay, the Bible, it's the very bedrock of our faith. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that it's profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and for instruction in righteousness. So therefore, I say we should study it zealously, meditate on it deeply, and communicate it accurately. It's just really important, and I could go on and on, but I'm not going to for the sake of time.

Fasting, I think what regular fasting does is it helps us reset our priorities. It helps us better appreciate the things that we easily take for granted. And we usually associate that with food, giving up food. I don't know about any of you ladies, but while I was in the childbearing years, I was either pregnant or nursing most of the time. And I don't think I ever went a single day where I fasted all day. I just couldn't. So I didn't. But I found out that there's lots of other ways you can fast. You can give up, um, snacks or desserts, or sometimes our family would do like just a family rice fast where I wouldn't have to think about what to make because we just had three meals of rice.

And the children could have rice with milk for breakfast, and they could have rice with, you know, sprinkled cheese on it for lunch and for supper, and they loved it. And if anybody actually absolutely had to eat, you can have your rice, and other than that, we're fasting, you know, and it's kind of simple.

But there's other things to fast from besides food. I found through the busy years, I fasted from books and magazines. I just didn't have any time. I felt like, how could I possibly sit down and read this really good, wholesome book or this great magazine, you know, that sisters would give me the free subscriptions to because they wanted to be helpful, and it talked all about wonderful homemade cough syrup. How could I sit down and read that when I hadn't read my Bible?

And so if I didn't have much time for Bible reading, I certainly was going to fast from books and magazines as good as they are. And when I need a cough drop or a cough syrup recipe, I'll ask somebody specifically for it.

So I also found that I needed to fast from sleep. That was really hard. But being a mom, it's really stretching, isn't it? Like some nights you don't sleep much. And there were times when I was just like, "Lord, this is really tough. And now you want me to wake up and spend some intentional time in prayer and Bible reading?"

But it was like the Lord just said, "Well, how much do you love me? Do you love me more than your bed?" I had to say, "Yes, I do. Of course I do." I mean, I might not wake up an hour earlier than the children, but I can at least, you know, get out of bed if I made a deal with the Lord often. "Lord, if you wake me up before my alarm, I'm going to give you that time." You would be surprised how many times he took me up on that just 15 minutes extra. And I'd wake up and just like, boom, my eyes were open, and then I'd want to just roll over and go back to bed, and he'd say, "Whoop, remember?

Hey, you told me you'd give me these extra 15 minutes. Let's have some time together. Okay, I'll fast my sleep."

We'll talk more about social media and our phones. Maybe that's something we could fast from too, but we'll get to that topic. Also, I want to say this.

Sometimes I got bitter at God, like, how do you expect me to fast, especially food, when, you know, I'm just surrounded by food all day? I'm in the kitchen. I'm trying to feed a family, and it's just no fair. If I could go off, you know, on a mountain somewhere, then sure, I could handle this. And he just so graciously told me, "Mario, when I was in the desert, every single stone could have been a loaf of bread for me. I know what you're going through. It's okay. Do it anyway."

Journaling, I just want to mention it really quickly. It's not for everyone. For me, it's really, really important because for me, I haven't really learned a lesson until I've written it down. Other people, you know, they don't really learn a lesson until they write a song about it or whatever. But for me, writing it down is really powerful. We talked about writing prayers. That can be helpful.

It's not only a place where we can talk to God or express our feelings, but we can also start hearing from God. I have often started journaling my thoughts and ended journaling God's thoughts. And that's really special. It's a real good way to know God, to expose our hearts, but also to be safe.

Worship, it's a pretty broad term, but specifically through song. Again, this varying levels of importance to people. But singing is something that you can just incorporate it into life as a mom so wonderfully. You can do that with your children. It can alter the whole mood in your home if you just start worshiping the Lord and singing.

Also, worship, family worship. If your husband is not making a priority of family worship, and if you have the privilege of homeschooling, which I did, then you can make worship part of your school day, and it won't get undone, left undone.

Memorization, I think we all know how important it is. Also, this is something that you can incorporate into your school day. You can do it with your children. I've been appalled at how bad my memory has gotten, even though I'm not all that old yet.

But yeah, it's just important. It's important to have God's Word hidden in our hearts. So just do it.

And discipleship, I mean by this, the need we have to all of us have a Paul, somebody who's a little further along that can disciple us. You know, younger sisters especially, avail yourself of the wisdom of the older sisters. There are so many women in our midst, in your congregation, who have things they could speak into your life, but they are not going to volunteer it necessarily. I have found that the older I get, the less I want to volunteer because I'm starting to realize how much I don't know. I didn't realize that when I was 25.

And so same thing probably goes for other older women. But if you younger ladies draw them out, ask them specific questions, there's probably a wealth of information and wisdom there for you. But you also should have a Timothy. You should have somebody younger than you, no matter what age you are, that you are discipling, that you are pouring into. For most of us, that's our children. And if that's all it is, is your children, then don't feel in the least bit apologetic. That's enough. If you are actually raising true disciples, it is going to take just about all you've got to give it. And especially if you have, you know, a bunch of children, they're all at different ages.

They all have different needs. Pouring into their lives, if that's all you do for the next 20 years, is a totally full-time job. But if that's not a full-time job for you, then purpose to go out and find somebody who needs to be discipled. And that should be easy enough. If you're part of a fellowship, there's usually somebody who could use your input.

All right, so I'm going to switch gears now, and I'm going to talk about the next bunch of slides is just benefits or the rewards of practicing the spiritual disciplines. If we do the spiritual disciplines, we will learn to embrace an eternal perspective.

Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and his soul was troubled just like ours are at times. And he asked the Father to save him from this hour, just like we often do. We say, "Oh Lord, you know, I can't face this, whatever this is." But then he did something that we can only accomplish if we are spending time at Jesus's feet. And that is he acknowledged that his trial had a purpose that transcended his own concerns. And he said, "But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name."

If we're spending time in the spiritual disciplines, we'll be able to say that too and have an eternal perspective on it. Without an eternal perspective, we will run from suffering, and with it, we embrace God's will regardless of the personal cost.

We will also learn how to evaluate our motives.

So the question here I had in mind was, do I want to look spiritual or do I want to be spiritual? What's good about the spiritual disciplines, prayer and Bible study and memorization and fasting is it's basically hidden.

And so it guards our hearts against hypocrisy because nobody usually knows if we're really doing those things or not.

So, you know, we need to be painfully honest with ourselves, with our motives, and ask ourselves, am I more concerned about making good impressions or with pleasing the Lord?

Yeah, I think I'll leave it at that.

Spending time with the Lord, it helps us establish profitable habits. We will be under pressure what we have rehearsed in our leisure. I'm sure some of you have seen that come out. If you're in the habit of running to the Lord on a normal day, you will run to the Lord when the crisis happens.

But if you're not in that habit, you won't. You'll fall apart.

And this has really come to me as far as the habits part. We had my mother, stepmother-in-law, living with us for five years until just recently, and she has dementia. And so I've done kind of a lot of study about dementia recently. And when everything is stripped away from us, including our minds, the only thing that we have left is that which we have done repetitively.

It's our habits, and those will still be there for us. I'm just going to read this quote. It's from a doctor and a Christian who works a lot with Alzheimer's patients. It says, "One woman I was testing to determine whether she had Alzheimer's disease asked to stop the testing. She said to me, 'My memory is just fine for what I need to do.' And I asked her a little bit more about her routine. She lived in a nursing home, and she would get up each day and walk to the chapel, sit down, and pray and read through Scripture. Then she would walk back to her room. She remembered the Lord, even if sometimes walking back to her room, she got confused.

So what she had made a habit for was still there for her." My stepmother-in-law, I mentioned already, she had a habit of gratefulness, and she has totally lost her mind. She just doesn't remember most of her entire life, but she is always grateful.

And she will tell you, "I know I've had a good life even though I can't remember it." So she is so gracious. That's a habit she made. Hudson Taylor, he made a habit of trusting God, and even when he was just facing extreme circumstances, it was there for him. And it comes out in this quote I really like from him, "When I cannot read." We've all been there. It's like your brain is so fried you can't even read. "When I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust." Make it a habit.

If we learn to trust, then we will also learn how to enter into rest. Rest and activity are both really equally important to God. I like the line in the song that says, "Blessed Trinity, in whom alone all things created, move or rest."

I'm just going to give an example of why I feel like it's so important to learn to rest.

I probably about a year ago, maybe two now, I'm not sure, had what I would consider a very close to burnout time. The needs in my home were extreme. I had two old people living there: my mother-in-law, my stepmother-in-law, and all the children and everything. And my brain was just starting to tip.

And one particular day, I had organized a homeschool event, and there was just all sorts of ladies and their children all in my home. And I was sitting at the table, and I was trying to be gracious. I was trying to ask relevant questions and be engaged, and my brain was just like done.

And it really scared me. I just wanted to run and hide and cry because I thought I was losing my mind. So I realized that my brain needed rest, and everybody left the homeschool event. And I knew I needed to rest my brain, but I just didn't know how. And so I would suggest that you all learn how to rest your brain. It'll be different for each person. I tried reading like Hudson Taylor. It didn't work. I tried praying. I tried listening to the Bible. I even tried listening to basic classical music. It was all too intellectually stimulating. I had to, I finally stumbled across Dan Musselman. Isabel later told me that Dan Musselman, who just does like piano music, no words, he prays for the people who are listening to his music.

And I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know who Dan Musselman was. But my brain just started to be renewed as I just sat there and stared out the window. So at that time, the Lord directed me to a book. It's called "Zeal Without Burnout: Seven Keys to a Lifelong Ministry of Sustainable Sacrifice" by Christopher Ash.

And I learned three things from that book. There's a difference between burning out for Jesus and living sacrificially for the Lord. The latter is sustainable. We can live sacrificially for the Lord on a long-term basis, but burning out for Jesus is not sustainable.

And burnout looks heroic, but it's very counterproductive. And when you burn out, everybody that was doing everything around you is going to stop what they were doing so that they can prop you up. It's not at all productive.

So it might look like, "Oh, what a hero you are," but it's really not going to help. And it's probably fueled by your carnality and your pride. So learn to rest and learn to say no. And the other point that he made in that book is, "I'm dust. I was made from dust, and I'm going to return to dust. And even though right now I have health and a mind that works, I am still dust, very vulnerable, very close to disintegration at any moment. And I need to just be reminded of that sometimes.

And I need a Sabbath rest." Sorry for things I learned. And so I started taking a Sabbath rest. That may not be Sundays. For most of you moms, it's not Sundays. That's not very relaxing, especially if you happen to be like the pastor's wife or whatever.

So find other ways to have a Sabbath rest. That might be nap time when your children go down. Make yourself not do the laundry. Take a Sabbath rest, you know? Or maybe what I started doing was during that particular season, I said to my family, "One night a week, right after supper, I'm not helping with any cleanup. I'm not putting you all to bed. I'm not getting up with grandma during the night. I'm going to sleep in the cabin. Goodbye." And I did that for a few months, and it helped.

But yeah, so we need to be willing to do those things for the sake of everybody around us who are looking to us. The other thing, I'll just throw this in here, is that I think sometimes we need to be okay with sitting before God in stunned silence. I got that thought from Ezra where he rented his garment, he plucked out his hair, he sat down astonied, the King James says.

And sometimes I've felt like this. And sometimes we think that's a sign of defeat or it's a sign of psychosis. But I think it might be exactly where God wants us sometimes. I think of the Queen of Sheba. She was in the presence of Solomon, and yeah, she had no more spirit in her. That's sometimes where God wants us to be, just unable to rally. And that's okay. So we need to learn to rest.

We also need to learn to cultivate the secret place. Psalm 91:1 says, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." So what does that mean, the secret place? I think of it as being intimate with God.

We need to know God, but we also need to be known by God. And that can be scary. You know, maybe there's someone in this room who just that word, to know, the King James uses it to talk of intimate relationships with a husband and wife. You know, it's the same word here.

But the Bible says that we're a daughter of the King, we're a child of God, we're a joint heir with Christ, a sister of the Lord, a bride of Christ. These are really intimate family relationships that he's talking about. So when we're spending time with God, we need to be okay with cultivating that kind of an intimate relationship. And I don't mean anything weird here.

I just mean that we need to be, God needs to be the first place we run. Don't run to your girlfriends. Don't run to your children. Don't run to your husband. Don't, you know, when you're facing something, get in the habit of running to God. Let him be your bestie, the first one you go to with with your intimate concerns and cares.

I think if we cultivate that secret place, if we learn how to run there, then we can withstand the betrayals and the shortcomings of other people. Jesus did this. You know, he longed for the companionship of men when he was here on earth. And that's why when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he invited Peter and James and John to be with him in his hour of agony. But they let him down. They fell asleep. He was alone with God, and we will be too.

And similarly, when we are, when things are going well, we want to share that with other people. But Jesus was our example in that too. It says, when men were approving of Jesus and, you know, saying, "Hosanna," he did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men and needed not that any should testify of man. So the only way that we'll be able to follow Jesus's example and not be swayed by people's betrayal or their praise is to be intimate with God and to cultivate that secret place.

So we also need to prepare to be a living sacrifice. Dying is an event, like I mentioned earlier, but living as a sacrifice takes discipline, and it's a daily thing. It needs to be maintained over time. It takes kind of a different kind of grace than just dying once.

First Peter 4:12 says, "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you." Trials are not strange. They're actually commonplace. And we need to just be okay with that. And that takes time in the spiritual disciplines.

We often feel like suffering is a test of God's faithfulness, and we kind of, you know, "Lord, where are you when I need you?" But suffering and trials, they're a test of our faithfulness. They're a test of our character.

Yeah, so we need to learn to be okay with that. And I realize that I know I am a very pampered Christian compared to so many who have walked through so much. So being a living sacrifice is just sometimes being really honest about how little it takes to make me irritable, how very little it takes to ruin my day. Or, you know, yeah, if I feel like it's not taking much to ruin my day, it probably means that I need to be spending more time with the Lord and recommitting myself to being a living sacrifice.

So practicing the spiritual disciplines gives us an opportunity to exercise our willpower. Good soil is a soil that possesses sufficient intelligence to recognize a wise choice. That's important, but also sufficient willpower to accomplish it. And if we're not exercising willpower in our daily lives, it's not going to be there for us when we really need it.

Must is a really, it's actually an easier taskmaster than should. And this is what I mean. If you must do something, if your child falls down and is hurt, you run to them because you must. You drop everything and you go. If your church has certain standards, and if you didn't do them, you would be excommunicated, then that's a must, and you're going to make it a priority, right? But there's lots of things that fall into the should category. And I think the spiritual disciplines are that. Nobody's going to enforce or even know if you spent any time this morning reading your Bible. So it's a should.

And it's easy to put it on the back burner because it's a should. It's not a must. So what you need to do is rally your will and see the shoulds of life as an opportunity to exercise that willpower muscle.

There's a lot of examples in the Psalms of this. Psalm 77, I'm not going to turn there right now, but look at it later if you want to. It's a really good example of the power of the will in a renewed spirit. If you look at verses one through nine, I think it's David, is the writer of that Psalm. He's rehearsing the trouble, the confusion, the despair.

But then he switches, and in verses 10 through 12, he starts exercising his will. And he says, "I will remember. I will remember. I will remember." And then he goes on to say, "I will meditate. I will talk of your doings." He just starts exercising his will. And then the rest of the Psalm just kind of ends on a much happier note with him being more positive. Also, the thought, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God." That's repeated a couple of times in different places in the Psalms. It's like the renewed spirit talking to the soul and saying, "Come on, you can do it," exercising the will.

Lastly, for this section, practicing the spiritual disciplines will help us to create a legacy. I don't know if you can see that. It's kind of small. If we did the best we could with what we had, that fact will gradually become more and more apparent to our children as they become parents. But if we consistently made soft decisions and selfish choices, that too will become increasingly obvious to our children as they view their past through the lens of adulthood.

What is your legacy going to be? Are they going to look back and say, "Well, mom, she meant well, but she made a lot of soft decisions?" They're going to see it once they're adults. What's your legacy going to be? What are you going to inspire them to do? I think the goal is to live without regret.

As I look back over the last 30 plus years, I do see that there was higher ground. There were things that I could have done and I didn't do. And there's things that I did that I could have done a lot better. But I think I can honestly say that I was walking in all the light that I had, and that there was never a time when God prompted me to do something, and I said, "No."

I think we can all have that kind of a testimony that when we get to the end of our child-raising years or whatever we have in front of us, that we can have no regrets and know that given what we had in the moment, we didn't turn our backs on God, and we did all that we could. And yeah, I think when we give God all that we've got, he multiplies our efforts. And I think when we do our very best, he comes along and he perfects it.

And that has definitely been my testimony.

Okay, we're going to switch gears and talk about some of the possible hindrances or pitfalls, things that can draw us away from being spiritually disciplined. So the first one is ignorance. I think as women, we tend to feel limited by what we were taught or how we were raised.

But I think God wants to give us everything that we need. He's not limited by what we were or weren't taught. As a matter of fact, Jeremiah 33 says, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee." We're all familiar with that part of the verse. And then it goes on to say, "And show the great and mighty things which thou knowest not."

So when we call on him, he's not going to tell us what we already know or what the good things we were raised in. He's going to tell us the things we don't know. And so that doesn't need to be an excuse.