Moms are busy people. Period.
Whether you’re a mom of one, two, or many – you are busy.
Whether you are a stay-at-home mom, or a mom who goes off to work every day – you are busy.
Whether you homeschool your kids, or your kids go to public school – you are busy.
Being busy is just part of the territory when your other name is Mom. Although being busy is expected when you are a mom, the busyness of your life can easily cause the relationship with your Heavenly Parent to slip down your priority list. This is never our intention, but when you put it off one day because you have a house full of sick kids, and then put it off the next day because you are just too tired, and then the next day because you have to get caught up with schoolwork and housework, and then the next day…….. You get the idea – it’s a slippery slope and we need to recognize that we are sliding down it before we hit the bottom.
So how do we fit in time with our Lord amongst the busyness of motherhood? How do we nurture our relationship with our Heavenly Father – a relationship we need to foster in order to be the mom He intends for us to be? How do we make Him our priority? You make the time, you find the time, and you do it! I know, easier said then done. Your time with the Lord doesn’t have to be some elaborate, well-planned, lengthy appointment in order to glean from and benefit from your time with Him.
Can you carve out 10-minutes a day for your Lord? Maybe when you first get up in the morning, or right before bed, or maybe when the little ones are napping – it doesn’t even have to be at the same time everyday, just whenever you can find ten, free minutes. I know we all can manage that.
So, what should I do with those ten minutes? I’m glad you asked.
May I suggest using Katie Hornor’s newest book, Putting on the Spirit: Ten-Minute Devotions for Busy Moms? Katie has written a new devotional ebook with busy moms in mind. It is a month-long study on the Fruit of the Spirit as it relates to motherhood. Each day, for 28 days, you will focus on one specific fruit – love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, or self-control. Most of the fruits you will focus on for three days in a row, except kindness is for two days, self-control is for two days, faithfulness is for five days, and the last day is a recap of all the fruits and how they tie into one another.
Each day’s devotion seriously only takes about ten minutes. During those ten minutes, Katie will encourage you and help you to take off your “Super Mom” cape and put on the Spirit in its place. These devotions will help you get the Daily Bread you need to draw your strength and guidance from the Lord.
The devotions vary from day to day – some days you may read relevant scripture passages, think on, and pray about them; some days you may write out a specified verse, either directly out of your Bible or in your own words; and other days you may answer questions related to the fruit of that day and/or certain scriptures. This is just a sampling of what you will get in each devotion, but every one of them will challenge you to stop relying on your own “super powers” and to rely fully on Him to be Spirit-filled.
Putting on the Spirit: Ten-Minute Devotions for Busy Moms is an ideal devotional and means of connecting with the Lord for any mom. I love that the devotions are the perfect length, not too short, and of course, not too long. I can fit in those ten minutes anywhere I can, but what has worked the best for me is right after all the kids have gone to bed and the house is nice and quiet (well, ideally).
I like how each fruit is spread out over several days and each devotion, as I said before, is just the right length, giving me the perfect amount of ‘Bread’ to chew on and focus on throughout my day (or the following day if I read at night). When I was reading about love, I was really focused on just putting on the spirit of love and focused on ways to show love toward my family, when the fruit was kindness, I was able to zero in on expressing kindness to my family, and so on. And it wasn’t just for a day, it allowed you to key in on that one fruit for several days. The last devotional ties them all together and discusses the importance of wearing all the fruits at once, not just this one one day and that one the next, but ALL of them at once. Talk about challenging.
You will need a Bible study notebook to use during your devotional time, or you can download and print the companion workbook, which is FREE, at Katie’s website.
So busy mom, are you ready to get your copy of Putting on the Spirit: Ten-Minute Devotions for Busy Moms and start making Him a priority? Well, I have great news! Today (12/10), you can get your copy for FREE! And then for the rest of the week (12/11 – 12/13) it will be available for 99 cents. After that, it will be available at the regular price of $4.99.
The book is also available in Spanish and can be purchased all week (12/9 – 12/13) for 99 cents on Kindle. There is also a free printable Spanish companion workbook and a Spanish printed version available.
