Who do I want to become?

For those of you that don't know, my family and I attend Parkcrest Christian Church.  Over the past few weeks, the theme of the messages has been "How to become an obnoxious religious fanatic."  And while it has been a great series, our pastor Mike gave us a challenge during one of the sermons that has been itching at me.  He told us to take the time to write down 10 things we want to become over the next 5 years, then start moving in those directions.  So with that, I am going to list my ten things here, just as a reminder and as a source for accountability later down the road.  Here goes:

1. I want to be a pray-er.  I feel like I have grown alot in this area in the past couple of years, but I have so far to go.  This is about becoming more disciplined about when I pray (my daily prayer, because I am constantly giving shout-outs during the day).

2.  I want to get into the Bible more-- I listen to a couple of Bible studies, but I really need to be more disciplined about setting aside time each day to read through His word.

3.  I want to listen to my kids better.-- I feel like I spend as much time with them as they allow, but maybe I don't listen good enough to them.  This means not interrupting, repeating them to make sure I get it, etc.

4.  I want to listen to my wife better-- see above.

5.  I want to become better organized-- I feel sometimes like my life is nothing more than a trainwreck of activities and to-do lists.  I need to find a way to be better organized about how I go about it all.

6. I want to serve more-- We don't have the extra money we probably should due to financial mistakes we have made in the past, but I can serve with my time and my skills.  I love leading the high school small group, and they give me a ton of opportunities, but I need to find something I can commit to on my own.

7.  I want to judge less-- at the recommendation of a blog I read, I recently spent a month trying very hard not to judge others.  It was very hard, and now that I am aware of it I find myself doing it quite a bit.  I am trying to stop, so this just writes it down.

8.  I want to make sure the kids know I love them-- Somehow I don't think my teens are getting the message.  I don't know how to go about this, but that is something I want to accomplish.

9.  I want to read more and TV less-- this is going to be a hard one, but it kinda goes along with numbers 2 and 5.

10.  I want to make sure my wife knows how much I love her-- kinda like number 8 above, but with her.  She is my wife, and I choose to love her before all other people, and I will defend that love with my life.  But does she know that?  I am going to make sure she does...

That's it.  I'll update this as I can, and see how I do.



Thanks for listening--
Eric

First Attempt

Okay, so let me say that this is a little weird. If you have seen any of my facebook posts, you will notice that I tend to not talk much, and in real life I am pretty much the same.

And not that this blog is going to change any of that. I don't know if it will change anything. But I am going to commit to this just to see what happens.

My plan is twofold for this blog. On one hand, I want to use it as a place to write down my musings for books that I am reading. I try to read as much as possible (hard sometimes with 6 kids), and lately alot of the books that I have read tend to focus on Christianity, and what it means to truly follow Christ. The good news is that I have found most of them intensely interesting and useful in seeing how that should play out in my life. The bad news is that as I think and comment to myself, I have not been writing stuff down, so alot has already been lost. I hope this blog can reverse that trend. I am realizing how much I really don't know, but it is worse to realize that what I learned I have lost, too.

Second, I am planning on using the blog to just ramble, as the title says. I don't know what that means yet for frequency, etc, but there it is. I am sure it will be interesting, to say the least.

OK, that's it for now. Hopefully some good notes coming soon. Until next time!