Families Again: Goal Setting Monday - Week 3. Why is it so hard to keep spiritual goals?

Well, I failed. Oh, not with my healthy living goals, but with my spiritual goals. There have been a few that I've half kept, but mostly I failed. Why is it so hard to keep spiritual goals? Is it my mind set? Is it Satan attacking? What is it? I don't understand. I've done well with my healthy living goals. Why can't I keep my spiritual goals? I don't think the goals were too hard. Let me go over them one by one.

Read the New Testament and 30 days. – Well, that's not going to happen. I suppose I could start again or just start where left off.

Have a devoted time of prayer every day. – Well I do pray every day but I can't say that I've had a devoted time of prayer everyday.

Continue reading through ." The Love Dare". – That is something I have done. And, even though it times it's been hard and even though I've often failed, I have tried to follow it.

Make daily contact with someone that comes to Good News Mission. – That's one of my half done ones. Some days I have some days I haven't.

Beginning in planning for summer ministries. – I guess this is another one that was half done. I have begun to pray about them but no planning has been done yet.

Well, a new week is upon us and as the saying goes, I can try try again. I really endeavor to be more consistent spiritually, please pray for me. Making and keeping spiritual goals, at least for me, is not easy.

As far as my healthy living goals go, I've kept those. Last week however we tried drinking smoothies. Today I started to make juices again for myself and I made smoothies for all of us. I'm still limiting myself to one cup of coffee a day, I haven't joined any sodas, and I've drunk lots of water. Although, I haven't drunk as much water as I should have. I've continued my healthy bread making, but haven't quite met my goal of exercising every day.

Well, now that I've talked about my successes and failures, it's time to move on to my new goals for this week-Family Goals. Family goals are kind of hard to pinpoint. After all, so many family goals are also spiritual goals. The two seem to bleed together sometimes. For example, one of my spiritual goals is reading through " The Love Dare". That could also be a family goal. One of the family goals that I'm going to write down could also be a spiritual goal. Oh well, I guess that is just going to be the nature of the beast. Let's get started –

Spend at least 15 min. a day doing something fun with each one of my boys separately. I'm always with my kids. I take them to shooting practice. I homeschool them. I take them to church. We are always together. But, how much individual quality time do I give to each one of them? This week, I'm going to try to stop to listen and play and just be with my children.

Spend at least 15 min. a day listening and talking to my wife. We've are ready made the habit of going out at least once a week by ourselves. Sometimes we actually go out more than once. When we do go out, we do talk about what's going on and I do try to listen to my wife's feelings. But what happens on the days we don't go out? Do I try to spend quality time with my wife? Do I listen to her? This week, I'm going to endeavor to spend at least 15 min. a day listening and talking – mostly listening – to her.

Attempt to start family devotions once again. This is kind of been a thorn in the flesh for me. I've tried many times before but failed. Some of it is just plain disciplining myself to do it. But some of it has to do with the challenges of having one autistic and very probably another autistic child. Another problem could very well be the age range of my children. But, really, none of those things is a good excuse. There have been many families that have autistic children have had successful devotional times. There have also been families that have children of all ages have successful devotional times together. Probably the biggest reason I have failed in this area is discipline. I can blame it on a lot of things – time, children's attention spans, etc. but that still is no excuse. It doesn't have to be very long. Just a short time of devotion and prayer. Even getting together and reading one verse and having a short prayer is better than nothing at all.

Pray for each member of my family every day. Oh, I do this every day, but this needs to go with my spiritual goal that talks about a concentrated prayer time every day. I need to make a list of specific prayer items for each member of my family and pray for them every day.

Begin to plan an actual vacation for my family. We have been talking about this for a long time. We do have what we call vacations, but they're not really vacations. They are usually one or two fun days that we tack on to the missions conference or something of the sort. This year, we'd like to take a real family vacation. One that isn't shared with something else. I don't know where we'll go or how we'll do it, but I want to plan a family vacation for this year.

Well, after my failures from last week, I think those five goals had better be all for now. As I said before, some of my spiritual goals and even some of my healthy living goals also have to do with my family. How did you do this past week? Leave a comment and let me know. Don't forget, I'm also taking part in a meme called " Goal Planning Monday.". Click here if you would like to participate or to just check it out. Happy goal setting!