5 Ways How The Preacher’s Wife Stays Faithful During The Week
Have you ever felt like your faith seems to be a little…lacking during the week? Maybe where you feel like you are the most Spiritual only on Sunday’s when you are at the Church building with fellow believers? As a Preacher’s wife, I will admit to having this feeling more times that I can even count. I often find myself feeling the most faithful when I am around my fellow believers. So today, I wanted to share with you five of my most used things that I do to deepen my own relationship with God during the weekdays. If this sound like something that will benefit your walk with God outside of the Church building, then continue reading.
I Start Each Day With A Prayer Of Praise!
After learning more about God over the past 6-7 years, I have found myself realizing that most of my prayers were only during hard moments or when I wanted to “ask” for things. So one of my personal goals over the past three years has been to say at least one prayer of praise (not asking for a single thing) per day about things about my relationship with God that I am thankful for. This is a great focus for my brain to give me the kickstart that I need to remain in His presence as I go throughout the day . I always stay more steadfast on the days that I make this a priority. On the days that I let myself slip back into prayers focused on only myself, then I wind up realizing that my actions and attitude also reflect more on myself and our busyness in the day to day living rather than on the Spiritual. Our goals as Christians are to deeply love God over everything that the world has to offer, and to then to love others above ourselves. The more we seek after ourselves and the things that make us happy or keep us distracted then the less we love God and love others. So praying for my relationship with God has become the BIGGEST boost for taking my faith from just a “Sunday morning worship” one, to one that is infused into the weekdays also.
I Make A List Of Spiritual Things That I Want To Accomplish During The Day/Week.
As you become an adult you realize how many lists you have to make. With grocery shopping each week I usually write out two lists: One, my meal plans for the week. Two, the ingredients that I need for those, along with anything else we need. The first list for me is just coming up with ideas, then the second list is the things that I need to actually accomplish that list. Our faith should have this same element of thought. Are we thinking through all of the ways and things that we need to accomplish to grow in our relationships with God and with others throughout the week? We must make plans for those each week, and hopefully each day. Have you planned and made time for daily Bible and Prayer time with God? Have you planned and made time for serving someone else? This could be calling or texting someone else. Thinking through all of the sick people or prayer lists for your congregation, are there ways that you can help TODAY. What are all the things that you can do to shine God’s light this week? By making my list, and writing down plans for it, I have noticed that I do WAY more for God on those weeks than I would have otherwise. For me, if it’s not on the front of my brain then I will probably forget about it, and sadly that seeps into my faith from time to time. If I am not making plans or giving myself reminders, then I can easily forget to do anything at all. I let my “good intentions” fall by the wayside just because I let myself get distracted. That is why a focused list had helped me grow SO much in my relationship with God throughout the week days.
I Get Into God’s Word Each Day.
For this point, I don’t just mean to listen to a Bible passage on your phone halfheartedly as you cook dinner or just skimming over your daily reading plan each day to mark it off quickly, I mean actually READING the passage and asking yourself about it. Asking of the passage what you learn about God’s Character, because we are to always be learning about our Creator so we can love Him MORE! We also need to ask ourselves of the passage what we learn about mankind. What we learn about mankind is what we need to ask of ourselves if we also struggle with. If we aren’t reflecting on ourselves and how this passage should change our lives after studying it, then we aren’t reading the passage SLOW enough. Every single time I sit down and read the Bible in that way, I leave feeling like I have a list of things that I learned about mankind that I can work on for improving my own self. And I also feel like I have learned even more about God and fallen more in love with Him because of it. That is why this is a BIG practice in my day. The more days that I find myself going without studying, the deeper I dive into my own self. And when we seek after only ourselves that is when WE become our OWN biggest problem!
I Listen To Church Hymns Instead Of Other Music.
This one for me is one of the best changes that I have done in the past two years. I have just simply stopped listening to radio or popular music, and replaced it with Church Hymns. I have made myself a playlist on YouTube of all of my favorite acapella Church Hymns. You wouldn’t think this one would make much of a difference. But I have noticed the more I listen to it throughout the day, the more my brain refocuses on God. I have come to realize that all popular music has one thing in common — SELF! And as I have mentioned many times already, self, is the problem preventing a deeper relationship with God. When I turn on my playlist, all of my stresses and worries seem to melt away and my confidence in God’s promises increase. That alone makes this one important enough that it is something that I continue to do. With just a simple music switch, my brain can be thinking more about God and that is the whole point. Keeping myself thinking about Him all throughout the week, is the goal!
I Work On Memorizing Bible Verses For Things I Need To Know.
For me the busyness of life hits just as often as it does for any other person. For me my faith started to really deepen and gain confidence when I started memorizing Scripture. If you are like me, then I can probably hear you thinking in your head, how you can memorize as easily as I can. But I will be honest with you and tell you that I thought the same thing until my husband and I started writing Scripture songs while we were attending Bear Valley Bible Institute. We would often get assigned Scripture to memorize, but I struggled with it. So we started writing Scripture songs for me to easily memorize them. I started being able to memorize multiple Bible verses each day. And since starting to memorize them, I have found them becoming even more useful when becoming a parent. When my kids are going through a hard moment, I can now sing them the Bible verse to get us through the hard moments. I have also been able to quote several Bible verses to others when out grocery shopping while having a conversation with non-believers. My confidence in my understanding of the Bible has improved SO much since starting to write God’s Words on my heart, and that is why this has become a big part of my weekdays. The more God’s Words are in my brain, the more it becomes my first thoughts during the trials of life. If the Scriptures weren’t already in my brain then it wouldn’t be my first thought when the trials start. If you want to check out a few of our Scripture memory song for yourself click HERE.
Conclusion:
So, my friends, I hope these five ideas give you some ideas for your own walk with God. Remember that God wants us to be ever growing, not continually planted in our ways. We must be working on growing ourselves, and also growing the Kingdom. So I challenge you to work on taking your Sunday faith and adding it into your weekdays also! Keep strong, and keep diving into God’s unfiltered Word!
About the Author: My name is Katie, and I’m a Church of Christ Preacher’s wife in Kentucky. I am also a proud homeschool mom to two brilliant boys. I love to craft, and make and bind my own notebooks. I also make a weekly podcast show called “Just Bible No Fluff",” where I skip all of fluffy extras and hop right into a short yet impactful exegetical study of the scripture. My mission and vision in life is this: “To empower women Spiritually by enhancing their skills in deep Bible study, equipping them to effectively teach the Gospel to others, and guiding them in cultivating Spiritual growth beyond the Church building.”