Which of the following are similar to the ways you've served Christ in your family? [check all that apply]
• Taught your kids to see God's glory in nature
• Washed the dishes without being asked
• Played a board game with your kids
• Encouraged your wife to finish her master's degree
• Attended a child's open house at school
• Worked fewer hours to be with your family
• Set an example of a godly prayer life for your children
• Held a crying child
• Swung on the tire swing with your daughter
• Told your wife why you're still in love with her
• Told your son he's got what it takes
• Coached soccer
• Let you child correct you now and then
• Fixed the vacuum cleaner
• Taught your sons to ride a bike
• Listened patiently to a complaint of your wife
• Taped your child's artwork to your office wall
• Admitted to your kids that you were wrong
• Told your children how Christ entered your life
• Cleaned up vomit
• Taught your children to love books
• Been romantic without expecting sex
• Told your daughter she's smart/beautiful
• Set standards for your kids and stuck to them
• Dealt graciously with a busybody neighbor
• Peeled carrots
• Watched movies together
Pushover Theme of the Week: Strategic Struggle Monday, August 9, 2004
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Men of IntegrityJuly/August 2004PushoverTheme of the Week: Strategic StruggleMonday, August 974
Key Bible Verse: We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know … they help us learn to endure (Romans 5:3). Bonus Reading:Romans 5:4—5
When the weather doesn't suit us, we are inclined to say we wish we could make it rain or stop raining, that the wind would blow more or less, that it would turn cooler or warmer. And very few people go around asking for trouble. We certainly don't ask God to give us problems since life's so easy and we need a challenge. However, maybe we should.
Thomas Wylie wrote me about visiting Biosphere Two, the man-made habitat experiment, near Tucson, Arizona. During the tour the guide explained that an oversight of the designers was their failure to create wind within the structure. With no wind to blow them back and forth, the trees would grow to a certain height and then topple over from their own weight. Lack of wind resulted in the trees not having a deeply extended root system.
Wylie then stated that this made him realize that without the winds of adversity, we can't grow and become the people God designed us to be without toppling over. I agree. You can't raise champions on a feather bed. The percentage of people who overcome adversity to go to great heights is legendary. Adversity develops character.
—Zig Ziglar in Staying Up, Up, Up in a Down, Down WorldAdapted from Staying Up, Up, Up in a Down, Down World (Nelson, 2000) by permission.
My Response: A problem I need to stop evading and face squarely is …
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