Make ready your heart, Make ready your home, Make ready the people of God

A few years ago a worship leader's wife shared that motto with me and it has been percolating in my head ever since. I think I knew immediately that I was a bit out of order, but we were doing all the things we thought we were supposed to be doing and so maybe I just wasn't going to have the luxury of time to "make ready my heart." Very well meaning, I think I often let my service to my church and my students take priority over my husband and kids who were being dragged along in the wake.  I had the order wrong.

Then 20 months ago things drastically changed.  It started when Chris was gone to preteen camp with the oldest two kids and I had the distinct feeling like God was telling me maybe we should make a switch to homeschooling our kids. Chris's reaction was "whatever you do- don't make a decision until I get home." With him gone, all I knew was to lean in to God's voice; I read my Bible and prayed like crazy. In the midst of that, I read a verse in Isaiah 2 that said "He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths." I immediately knew that this verse was important. A few days later I was reading in Micah 4 and read the same verse quoted in Isaiah! I got chills. I felt like God was telling me he had spent 30+ years teaching me and training me and now was time to take a big step of faith. We did take that step and since then God has continued taking us down a path we would not have planned for ourselves but that he has been equipping us for all along as he has "shown us his ways."  I think this step had to be taken for me to be even remotely ready to take this giant leap of faith now. This was the first stage in making ready my heart.

Make ready your home...

I also shifted my focus back to discipling and training my kids. Spending most hours of the day with them I quickly saw some things we needed to work on. First, I set to knit their hearts to ours. I think in our hectic life our oldest two were starting to pull away a little too soon.  I know this is normal and expected but there was some more training and building up that needed to take place first. I needed to make sure we had their heart. Making ready your home, like making ready your heart, is a continual process but at least my desire is to keep things in the proper order.

Make ready the people of God...

I just don't think the pastor has the only obligation to make ready the people of God. I think as we live in community with each other and point each other toward Christ, as we disciple and teach the next generations, and as we live out our faith before others we are making ready the people of God.  This is a major aspect of this new path he is leading us down.

So where's this path going anyway?

When Chris first mentioned what he felt like God was leading us to do, my first response, surprisingly, wasn't "no." However, I'm not much of an adventurer and knowing this is a hard road my response was, "Let's wait and make sure there's not some other path God is wanting to take us down." And we did. We prayed and waited and took baby steps until we were both confident that "He had shown us His ways so that we may walk down this path."

This is certainly not something either of us aspired to do. We don't feel we can do it better than anyone else. We don't have all the answers to parenting, marriage or ministry. What we are confident in, though, is that He who called us is faithful and that He is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine... for His glory.

 And what a thrill to be asked to walk this path!                                                    
                                                                                                                                 ---Tori