Be Strong and Work Hard

This week the sermon at church was on Haggai and the rebuilding of the temple. The people were discouraged from a lack of progress and here’s what God tells them, ” …’Be Strong all you people of the Land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” Haggai 2:4.

As I was sitting there with my kids, I was reminded of how many times in raising and teaching them I had to “be strong, work hard and trust God’s with us”. I was reminded of how many times I had to sit with them while they were struggling with math or spelling or just not feeling smart enough and tell them that our job is merely to, “Be strong, work hard and trust that God is with you.”

It’s not rocket science, it doesn’t take special skills, He just requires us to be strong and take the next step. We don’t have to stress about high school when our kids are in elementary school, we just do the next thing. Worrying about things that are to come do not help us. We just need to do the next thing. Like the Israelites who just needed to put the next brick on the wall and not get frozen by how big the job was, we need to focus on the job at hand. That might be introducing letters or teaching multiplication or training our kids in first time obedience. Walls, temples, (children) get built by being diligent and doing the next thing.

I needed that reminder. Even though it’s the last year of homeschooling for me, I need to keep focused and work hard. That’s how I managed all these past years. I got up, I got ready and I did school. I stayed focused and diligent and just did the next thing and God created a wonderful testimony in the lives of my kids.