Sermons and their part in my life.

Yesterday we had a couple of great sermons.  Not that that is unusual at our church.  Our pastor shares the Word faithfully and usually it connects in some way or another to my life, or what I am studying. 

Because our annual meeting is coming up soon, our pastor usually goes over the leadership qualities necessary for deacons and elders to help us in selecting the offices necessary for the year. 

I have always felt that though I will not be an elder or deacon that these qualities are things that I should aspire to do.  A couple of things stood out to me yesterday. We were reading from I Timothy 3. 

The first thing was the words "with all dignity".  An elder should keep his children under control with all dignity.  Hmm. Those words are rather thought provoking to me.  I think there are two ways that I can keep my children under control that aren't with dignity - when I am ordering them around and a dictator, and when I'm yelling at them because I'm stressed out.  Neither of these ways sound very dignified to me. 

I need to be careful that I am dignified even in my training the children.  One thing that helps is to be consistent in dealing out discipline for disobedience.  Currently in this house, an effective form of discipline is to take away five minutes of computer time for each infraction.   This is generally dealing with forgetfulness, not blatant disobedience, but it works well for the older ones and for the younger ones as well.  Also it helps with attitude checks. 

The other thing that stood out to me was the need to manage our house well.  Obviously because we do a lot of construction the challenge may be a bit bigger for us, but we can be faithful to quit a bit early and clean up.  Also, I usually send the kids out to play while I get some housework or schoolwork accomplished, but I fail to go and make sure that the things are put away until it's dark and rather too late. 

I'm so thankful for a pastor that challenges me to walk the walk.  I don't think he was thinking specifically of me when he was speaking yesterday, but God was, and He is using it in my life.
Steph