Having A Vision For Your Family Impacts Your Future

If you prefer to read, here’s the podcast in blog post form! ⤵️

Coming Soon!

Highlights:

This episode will encourage you to Develop a Family Mission / Vision Statement.

Your choices, determine how you spend your life – the influence you bring into the life of your family.  

And your family’s impact on your community and the world.

If we want to be about the Kingdom business – than you and I can’t afford to be listening to all that noise — following what everyone else is doing.  

I’m here to encourage and exhort you to take time to think about what you want in life.  To pray about what God wants for your kids and for what you envision for their future.

Take a look at the direction you want to go, what you want life to look like in the future, and how you might get there.

We discuss:

• The seasons of life and the choices we have to make in them.
• Taking time to write out your hopes and desires for your family
• Wrap that up into a mission statement 
• How it can the affect your family’s future.  

I share the details of our family’s mission statement and tell you how it shaped our family.

Now it’s your turn!

Time to Think:

God wants us to think through the what and why and how of what we’re doing in life:

• Are we calculating the cost?
• Are we folding our hands to rest?
• Is our motive to glorify God?
• Are we resting by listening for His direction?

Take time to picture these aspects of life, your picture of what you want to see in the future, the best outcome you desire.

• You’ll want to begin with yourself.  Your values, health, spiritual growth.
• What you believe about God, His will for you, and how you feel called to serve.
• Then you’ll move onto marriage with both spouses answering these questions.  Your goal is to come up with a framework for life.  What do you picture your marriage looking like?  

The answers to these questions will help you choose more wisely the things you take on in order to get to the end you hope for.  

• How do you treat one another? 
• How do you choose to spend your time?  Together and apart?
• Do you vacation as a couple or only as a family?  Do you vacation at all?
• Do you stay busy in the evenings or relax a bit and talk?

So, it’s your turn!

• Take a few minutes to think about your life – where you’ve been and how you got here.
• What’s most important to you?
• Can you see what God was up to in the past?  
• And just as important – can you see where you’re headed? 
• Where God might want you to go? 
• What He may be calling you to shoot for?

Look hard at the whys behind your desires.  

• What kind of life do you want for you, your spouse, that child?
• What kind of life do picture when those kids are teenagers? 
• How will you go about making the kind of choices needed to get there?  

You might be tempted by what someone else is doing, but lean into what you feel called to — what you feel led to — what you feel God telling you is important. 

And as you read God’s Word — listen with your heart.  You’ll know what God’s telling you to do. 

And then you’ll be able to live above that noise — above what everyone else has to say.

Words to Remember:

• “How you spend your time – is how you spend your life.”  Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

Terry Covey @ Living Above the Noise:

• “You only have today!  How are you spending it?   How are your kids spending it? Are you using it to prepare for a better tomorrow – a better future?”

• “I believe with a mission or vision in mind – we’ll get much closer to our hopes and dreams than if we have nothing on our radar.”

• “Nothing in life comes without sacrifice and giving up some of the other things in life you might want.”

• “Life is like a giant air-breathing puzzle that we don’t have the box cover for!”

• “To maintain sanity, we have God’s word as our filter.  To take what we hear and our decisions on how to live, speak, and act – and sift it though what we know to be true.  But there’s the catch!  Do you know and believe it to be true? Because in order to say “no” or “yes” to God’s call and instructions, you’ll have to fully believe in order to hold your ground.”

• “Think of how your foundational vision affects your choices, and those choices and decisions affect your actions – the nuts and bolts of what you end up actually doing to live out that vision or mission.”

• “A good life will take sacrifice.  Nothing worth having takes any less.”

• “Other’s lives will look very different from our life.  We can borrow ideas from one another, but we don’t want to pine or covet another’s life.”

 

Bible Verses Cited:

“May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.” 2 Thessalonians 3:5

“For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.”  Luke 14: 28-31

“I passed by the field of the sluggard and by the vineyard of the man lacking sense. And behold, it was completely overgrown with thistles, its surface was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down. When I saw, I reflected upon it; I looked, and received instruction. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest,” then your poverty will come as a rober and your want like an armed man.” Proverbs 24: 30-34

“Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.”  Isaiah 43:7

“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all things for the glory of God.” 1 Cor. 10:31

“The mind of a person plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.” Proverbs 16:9 

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” Job 12:7-10

Resources:

On “Flying By the Seat of Your Pants”:

“When aircraft were introduced in the early 20th century, most of them had limited–if any–instruments. Pilots flew them based on feel. Because the seat is the primary contact point between man and machine, the term seat of your pants was coined, although in actuality it encompasses all the senses a pilot experience during a flight. 

For instance, when flying in the weather, you can no longer fly by seat of the pants, but instead must spend the extra time looking at you instruments. By not being able to see the horizon due to being in the clouds, it’s easy to get disoriented and start dive towards the ground even through your body feels like it’s flying straight-and-level.

Knowing when to trust your seat of the pants feeling versus when to focus on your instruments is one of the most important skills for a fighter pilot to master. It’s a perishable skill that needs to be constantly refined. However, when dialed in properly, it’s amazing how much data a pilot can ingest at once.”

Justin Lee is an active duty U.S. Air Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighter pilot. and wrote this in the National Interest magazine

 “The visual cues that are gone, nothing moves any more, or moves in directions inconsistent with the actual movement of the plane. Add that to sensations of movements by our inner ear and other sensory systems, and we’re all pretty much doomed without training. Classic test, close your eyes and let someone spin the chair you’re sitting in. Eventually you’ll get the feeling you’ve stopped (fluid in your ear has caught up with the rotation). Open your eyes and you’ll go dizzy due to the fact that your eyes are now telling you you’re still actually spinning

Most people think they’ll do just fine. Keep in mind, every fiber of your body is telling you you’re sitting upright, only that instrument isn’t. 

To add to what you are saying about this situation being a serious emergency studies have been done on private pilots in IMC. A pilot with no IFR training in IMC conditions survives less than 3 minutes on average.

The expression “flying by the seat of your pants” is used a lot and it’s just not true. One of my instructors wanted me to experience how undependable this is. He had me close my eyes and attempt to fly straight and level. After about 20 seconds, he told me to open my eyes. I was banked left about 20 degrees in a nose-down attitude. While I had my eyes closed, I was certain that I was rolling to the right and climbing. That was a sobering lesson.”

Info from “Threads” from the  https://aviation.stackexchange.com/

Download the Think – Pray – Plan – Do pdf here.

• Think about all you heard today.  The thoughts and questions and dreams and ideals you have.

• Pray about those to determine what’s most important and valuable.

• Make a Plan to implement those beliefs and values.  Write them on a white board or get them printed on a wall hanging.  The most important thing is to put them in front of you so you won’t forget them.  So you can implement them daily and discuss them over dinner or when you need to discipline a child.  Or make decisions with your husband.

• Do!  Live them out.  Make them your reality. And then watch as your family life transforms as you and your family gain the morale and confidence and trust in God’s plan for your family!