It’s still conference season!
Over the last two days I was able to attend a “Family Teams” workshop and it was incredible. If you’ve never heard about Family Teams, they believe “that the way we do family in the West is mostly a failed experiment, and the scriptures are calling us back to a bigger and better design.” They are on a mission to restore the Biblical definition of “family”.
Over the past two days I have learned so much, found so much hope for what could be, and been convicted deep down to my bones.
Have you ever attended a conference, workshop, or even just a talk where the entire time you felt convicted about the things you were doing and how you were doing them, but at the same time felt incredibly encouraged that things could change and that you (along with God) had the power to change them? That’s really how I feel about what went down over the past couple of days.
From the very beginning I could feel God kind of pressing in on some things in my heart and life that I needed to change. Over the course of the conference He also allowed me to see tools that we could use together to fix things and gave me hope through the Family Teams team that things could actually change for the better … for me, and for my family.
In talking about families, it’s really easy to get stuck on families with small children. They have the most opportunity to grow their family into what they want it to be. For those of us with older children (or children that are already grown), it can feel like we’re too late to the party. It can seem that we’ve run out of time to make a difference in our family. I guess, better luck to the next generation, right?
Wrong.
That is a lie from the enemy and blatently not true. I almost fell for it. From the very beginning as the team was talking about “littles” and creating traditions for your family there was a whisper in the back of my mind that kept saying “See … it’s too late for you. You’re family can’t change.”
Side note: if you ever hear that or something like it, that isn’t God telling you that. That’s your enemy and you can fight back against that crap.
But I really almost believed it. I almost checked out right then. Thank God I didn’t. I would have missed so much and been so much worse off.
Here’s the truth and the gist of what I wanted to share with you today. There are two things:
First, I want you to know that it’s never too late. It doesn’t matter if your single, just married, have “littles”, older kids, or your kids have all grown up and gone. If you have a vision for anything (your family, your life, your career, whatever), you still have time to make it happen. If you’re not dead, God’s not done.
Second, if you want to see things change in your life, invite God in. Things probably won’t change over night. You might fall back into old habits. Change always and inevitably takes time. It’s not the quick changes that make the biggest difference anyway. It’s slow, intentional change. It’s one step at a time, worked out consistently over time that leads to the biggest change.
If there are places in your life that you want to change, they can change. Invite God in, follow His plan for your thing, and take small steps. Don’t rush it. Fail forward. You’ll be amazed where you end up.