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021: Godly parents create orderly homes

INTRO AUDIO:

There are times in our painting journey where we just feel like our household is a place of chaos. And a lot of times that is something we’ve kind of self-inflicted because we haven’t built in the order and structure that will enable us to manage everything. Well, that’s what we want to talk about on this episode of God-Fearing kids and the parents who raised them. Hello friends, We are glad to be back with you. My name is Carey Green.

MINDI:

And I am Mindi Green.

CAREY:

And we want to talk to you today about the power and importance of having an orderly home and that being a godly parent essentially requires that you have an orderly home. And we’re going to get into the reasons why we say that in a moment. But let’s all think for a moment about the things we experience when we’re in a context where things are out of order. Say you go to a restaurant where they’re not real orderly in the kitchen. You may wait a long, long time for your food. You, you may get very irritated because you’re getting hungry and there’s no food on the table. Say you’re not orderly in how you keep up the maintenance on your vehicle. Well, in time that’s going to lead to costly repairs because you didn’t do oil changes when you should. You didn’t rotate your tires when you should, and things got worn out because they weren’t taken care of. And all that goes back to the issue of order. And we could just go on and on and on. There are things like this in life all the time when it comes to parenting organization and structure. You might think of it as a schedule even are foundational elements to godly parenting. It’s what enables you to get where you want to go on your parenting journey. Let’s look at some verses here. First off, Mindi, would you read Ephesians five verse number one to us,

MINDI:

Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.

CAREY:

Okay, so as believers in Christ, we are to imitate God. And we’re going to talk about this in just a moment, but God is very orderly. We’re, we’re going to just magnify that in a moment. First Corinthians 1433. Now let me set up the context for this. The apostle Paul is teaching this Corinthian church how they should do things in their public gatherings when they gather together as a church. And he says in that context, God is not a God of confusion but of peace. Okay? There’s the opposite of confusion being structure order a sequence to which things happen. And he’s saying God is not that way. God is a God of peace. He wants us to live lives of peace. And order brings that about. Mindi, how about Proverbs 24, 27?

MINDI:

Prepare your work outside. Get everything ready for yourself in the field. And after that, build your house.

CAREY:

Okay? Do you notice Solomon is giving advice based on an order of operations, so to speak. He’s saying you should get your food going first. You should make sure you have something that’s going to sustain you long term in the works before you worry about building a house. There’s wisdom to order. And then finally, Proverbs six, six through eight, Solomon says, Go to the T, you sled consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. The point he’s making there is that God has wired creation with an orderliness. If you’ve ever watched ants in one of those law ant farms, you see they have certain ants that do this and certain ants that do that. And then the queen that has the eggs and all that stuff. And there’s this inherent order in the system of how God has made tiny things like ants to work.

CAREY:

Don’t you think it’s even more so for more important things like human beings to operate according to order? God himself is orderly. Look at the universe, look at the solar system, look at the water cycle of how things evaporate and come back down in rain and it just goes over and over. Look at the seasons. God is orderly. He has produced things to operate according to order. And when things operate according to an order they thrive. They really do. I mean, that’s where flourishing comes from and its orderliness in our lives that empowers right action.

MINDI:

Wow. I am, I’m convinced

CAREY:

<laugh>,

MINDI:

I need to have an orderly life. I need to have a routine. And of course the Lord has led us in that from our early days. And so I want to encourage, we want to encourage you parents individually and as parents, running your home with your children, you absolutely have to have order, you have to have routine, you have to have schedule of some sort. There’s just no way about it. No way around it. If you want to be healthy in any way, shape or form, you have to have some sort of a schedule, a routine about your life. And if you don’t like that, then maybe you can pause this and just ask the Lord to help you to be ready to accept it. Because there is no other way to live. I mean, it’s just the way it

CAREY:

Is. Yeah. I mean, I hear people often say, Well, I’m not an organized person, I’m just not naturally an organized person. Well, I understand certain personalities are more vent toward an orderly way of thinking and ordering their life than other people. That’s totally true. But in the same way, certain people are vent more toward honesty than others. Does that mean we don’t all have to be honest? I mean, it’s the same thing,

MINDI:

Right? Yeah.

CAREY:

We have to live responsibly in the areas of weakness that we have to learn how to be what God wants us to be.

MINDI:

Right? And there’s all different levels. I mean, a person can schedule every hour of their, their day. Another person can just schedule morning, afternoon, evening, or another person can just write a list and check off the list as they go throughout the day. I mean, there’s all different ways of having order in your

CAREY:

Life. Yeah. And the needs of your situation is usually what dictates how defined that needs to be. So let’s talk about this, man. You had an illustration, you were telling me earlier today about going down the path of life and the road conditions being similar to the idea of order. Why don’t you just describe that for us?

MINDI:

So just imagining our life being a path that we walked down order would help to lay a healthy foundation, a strong foundation, which would be, let’s, let’s say we, we lay concrete down that path. So as we walk down that path, we’re not going to get stuck in the mud. We’re not going to trip and fall over a branch. We’re going to be able to walk smoothly on that path, living our life out as we intend, as God intends for us to, let’s say we don’t lay that foundation of schedule, routine order, and we just go down the path and the path has holes in it, mud holes, it has big, huge rocks, it has little ditches. And so here we’re trying to fulfill good intentions in a, in our life, let’s say, um, running our home well, but we fall in the ditch because we haven’t laid that strong foundation of order or we get bogged down by the, the mud that came because of the rain. And for example, rain’s going to come in life. But if you have the strong foundation of order slash a solid concrete path, you’re not going to get bogged down in the mud. So that’s just a simple, silly kind of illustration. That disorder is going to bog you down, it’s going to trip you up, it’s going to stall you out.

CAREY:

Yeah. And all those problems in your illustration, the mud, the tree branch, the rocks, the ditch, those are all representative of things that happen in life. A health crisis, a job loss, a water heater that breaks. I mean, you could just go on and on and on with the things that come into our lives any given day that can derail us. And if our home is already disordered, already disorganized, those things are going to derail us for weeks, months, who knows how long. But if we live an orderly life to begin with, we can manage those things much better. And our, and our home is much more peaceful. Now let’s talk for a moment about the consequences of not having a schedule or a routine. We saw one in the Bible verse earlier where the apostle Paul said, God is not a God of confusion but of peace. You see, orderliness brings peace. So things like anxiety and stress are mitigated to a large degree. When your home is in order, you can come home from a busy day at, at the office dad’s and you can realize my home’s going to be orderly. My home’s going to be a place of rest, a place of peace. But what if you walk through the door and there’s piles of laundry everywhere and your kids are running around screaming and there’s no order. I mean, the piece is gone. There’s no opportunity for peace.

MINDI:

That’s a huge thing for us as wives, to be able to keep in mind that our husbands need to have a sense of order and routine in the home, in the family, for them to be able to function well. I mean, God has made men to have a more single track mind. And so when things are kind of chaotic, it’s hard for a man to feel peace. It’s also not easy for a woman to feel peace in that. But we as women could take multiple things going on all at once. Um, we could take that on more easily and not be stressed about it. So it’s important that we, we seek to have routine and order in our home so that we can love and consider those within the home, our spouse, our children,

CAREY:

Which includes the children. I was going to say, because the children are going to benefit from an orderly home, just like the husband would, just like the mom would, the environment that they grow up in is going to shape them if it’s always cluttered, if it’s always dirty, if it’s always kind of a chaotic thing. Who knows what that’s building in their little psyche are, is there an underlying sense of tension that they feel all the time? Is there a sense of not being at ease that they feel all the time? You just, you just don’t really know. But we do know that orderliness brings peace. And so that’s what we want to provide for our kids. Uh, if you don’t have a scheduler routine, you’re also going to be ruled by your emotions. Not just yours, but those of the people in your family. I mean, think of how outbursts and temper tantrums and things like that could cause reactions in the moment. But if you live an orderly life, if you’re parenting in an orderly way, you have a plan for dealing with those things. And part of that’s your daily routine of quiet time. Part of that’s your daily alone time. Part of that is we don’t allow our kids to throw tantrums and this is how we’re going to deal with it. You know that orderliness helps you to manage emotion much better.

MINDI:

We don’t realize how much disorder in our life causes us to have emotions that are controlling us in the wrong way. If we want to be a godly person and know God and know his word, if we don’t put on our Daytimer when to read his word and when to pray and seek him, when is that going to ever happen? I mean, practically speaking, that’s kind of silly. Don’t say you’re a Christ follower if you don’t take time to follow him in the day. That’s right. You can’t float through your life in any area. Don’t say that you want to be a good parent when you don’t take time to think and pray about how to be a good parent. I mean, this can just spread out into so many ways. You come home, you’re stressed because the house is dirty. Why? Because you haven’t scheduled one to clean it. I mean, you might clean it once a month, you might clean it once a week, it doesn’t matter. But have you scheduled, having an orderly life can spread into so many things. You know how the scripture talks about we need to be hospitable towards one another. Maybe that’s one reason why you don’t want to have people to over for dinner because your house is always messy. Maybe it’s always messy because you don’t have a good routine. I mean so many things are affected in our life.

CAREY:

That’s so true. So true. And Minnie mentioned Daytimer there. That might be kind of a dated term. It basically means your schedule, the thing you’re keeping your list of to-dos on and that sort of thing. Uh, Daytimer was a brand back in the day when we, uh, learned these kinds of principles. Another thing, if you don’t have a schedule or a routine, you’re going to be ruled by what’s urgent. We’ve heard this phrase, the tyranny of the urgent. Many times what’s urgent seems most important when it really isn’t. And so things come into your home in the form of a crisis demanding your attention. But if you’ve ordered your life already and you know what your priorities are, you can more easily say, Well, I understand how that feels like a crisis, but it’s not the most important thing right now. Most important thing right now is for me to get dinner finished or for me to get the baby changed or whatever. And you can push the crisis aside. There’s just so many ways that this could spin out in your life.

MINDI:

And a practical way to, to see how orders very helpful is financially. If you make X amount of money every month, it’s very logical to put that amount on the top of the page and then subtract all of your expenses and then you’ll know how much you have left for savings or spending or things like that. It would be ridiculous for you to not have in your mind listed on the computer or however you might do your budget and not have any idea really how much money you have to spend. But you just spend by what your emotions say. I feel like I want to go out to eat tonight. I feel like I want to buy this. I feel this. I feel that you don’t have it in your mind what you’re free to spend. So that’s a, that’s a real practical and easy way to see if I don’t order my money, if I don’t have a follow a budget, then I’m going to be in trouble.

MINDI:

Same kind of thing. If I don’t have a quote unquote a budget of my daily routine, I’m going to be in trouble. Because after a week of not even having time with the Lord, I am probably going to be yelling at my kids, yelling at my husband, just living out of selfishness. And obviously it shouldn’t be that way if I am a Christ follower, If I am wanting to love my family. Well, routine and order will help you to be like Christ. Plain and simple. Yeah. And it will bring blessing and peace to your home and joy to your soul.

CAREY:

Yeah. And we even see this in ways in the life of Jesus. The times when he went off by himself alone to pray. Those are moments of planning, moments of getting his soul in the right place, getting his mind in the right place. That’s order, that’s a type of order. And in your household it’s going to be unique. Your house is going to look different than ours. The way you keep house, the way you organize your family routine, all it’s going to look totally different, but it needs to serve the needs of your family. And no order is disorder and it’s going to cause some form of chaos in your home eventually.

MINDI:

So we would encourage you as parents to prayerfully assess where your needs are in this area. How orderly are you? What kinds of things need to be put in place as far as organizing them and scheduling them on your daily, weekly routine. And together make decisions on things. Plan out things that you know your family needs that you know you need. Plan out days off, plan out dates with your spouse, plan dates with your children. Plan family nights. Plan quiet times. Decide when dinner’s going to be. So your kids that are playing with their friends, no one to come home. There’s so much that needs to be ordered. And so you need to prayerfully ask the Lord, help us to do this. Don’t be stressed about it, but trust the lord’s going to help you. It’s not overwhelming if you are depending on him to guide you through it.

CAREY:

Yeah. And one simple way to assess this is to look at the regular cadence of your life and pick out the hotspots. Where are the places you consistently have issues as a family or within your household? And you’re likely going to find some disorder behind that. You’re going to find, you haven’t planned this, you haven’t thought through how you’re going to deal with situations like this. You haven’t arranged consistent communication between you and your spouse. I mean, there’s something that’s at the root of that that is likely disorder and it’s, it’s leading to that problem always being a hotspot.

MINDI:

And an example that just came to my mind about that is this has to do with marriage but that very much affects your children. Many times the husband and wife struggle in their relationship and aren’t as close as they should be because they haven’t planned regular communication times. That’s huge in strengthening a marriage. And that’s huge in bringing the husband and wife together in unity. So really it’s a simple, when’s it going to be on the calendar? Is it a little bit every day or is it three days a week or every Saturday? What’s it going to be? And when you do that, then you’re going to have peace in your relationship as a married couple. And what’s that going to do? That’s going to bring peace in your home and you’re going to have peaceful, joyful children as a result.

CAREY:

That’s right. So prayerfully consider your state of orderliness and what are the next few steps the Lord would have you take. Discuss this with your spouse. Pray through it together. Figure out a plan you can do to take the next step in ordering your home for the sake of building an environment where your parenting and your training of your kids can be more effective. Would you pray for us?

MINDI:

Yes. Dear Lord, thank you for being our example in this and being orderly and not a God of confusion. But you have shown us your order in your world and in our lives. And I ask Father that you will help us as parents, as individuals to have a scheduled orderly life and that we will consider others in, in making those decisions. And I pray, Lord, that you will help the parents that are listening today, that you will help them to find more peace and joy in their lives. Because they’re learning how to get the important things in their life in order, in the order you want them to put them in. I ask that you will bless them in this and that you’ll encourage them in this in Jesus name. Amen.

CAREY:

Amen.