Making Your Home a Haven Challenge Week 1

This month, I'm participating in Courtney's Fall Challenge over at Women Living Well: "Making Your Home A Haven." For week one we were to buy an extra large candle and light the candle everyday and when the candle catches your eye, say a prayer for peace in your home.
I really liked the idea of this challenge and it seemed pretty simple. Sometimes my house feels like total chaos and some peace sounds really good. I already had the perfect candle. The cutest yellow candle with a fall leaf base that a former teacher gave to me when she visited my home. The candle was so special, I had put it away and never used it. Well, the first thing I hear from my dear son is "That stinks." But every time I looked at the candle on Monday, I said a prayer for peace in our home. And the peace in our home was challenged yesterday. Not to mention the fact that the candle would not stay lit. I just gave up and used it as a reminder to pray, lit or not.

Today, I tried a different candle, one my Mom gave me, that smells like a strawberry rubarb pie (I'd only used it once). It smelled wonderful, but that candle did not stay lit either. I'm not going to stop though. I'm going to keep lighting the candle and keep praying whether the candle stays lit or not. Again, the peace in our home was challenged. I've worked for years on my temper and I was really thankful these past two days that I was able to deal with the challenges with patience, peacefulness, gentleness, and self control. I know that at other times in my life I would have responded in anger. Instead, I've been peaceful and able to use the scriptures for training, teaching and correcting (2 Timothy 3:16).

So, I've especially been thinking about the fruit of the spirit. When I was younger I don't think I realized that Galatians 5:22  referred to the fruit of the Holy Spirit within us, I'm pretty sure I was thinking the reference was to the human spirit. Wow, I know now that I couldn't get along and produce such awesome fruit without the Holy Spirit. That reminds me of a sermon I heard on the radio recently. The pastor was saying "The Christian walk is not difficult, the Christian life is not challenging...it's IMPOSSIBLE."; and the Christian walk is impossible without Christ living in us (Philippians 4:13).
Well, the rest of the week was pretty much the same.  I gave up on lighting the candle, and just used it as a visual reminder to pray for peace in our home.  The candle reminded me of a story my sister was reading me out of Christian book for young moms (I'd actually picked it up for her, but it had great info in it for moms at any stage of raising children).  The story was about how this mom was sad a frustrated that she didn't have time for her morning quiet time with God, she misses her time with Him.  As the story goes on, God talks to her and tells her that she may time have the hour or whatever she had uninterupted before, but she does have moments throughout the day.  So she began to use the quiet moments changing a diaper to thank God for the changes he'd made in her life, washing things for washing her clean of her sins.  She began to feel refueled in those small moments throughout the day.  That is kind of what the candle did for me, made me be more aware of the moments throughout the day that I can use to pray for my family.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of this challenge!
Galatians 5:22 "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, against such things there is no law."

Philippians 4:13 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

2 Timothy 3:16 "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness."
 
You can read about the other ladies who are participating in the challenge Women Living Well.  We're all linked up on the Week 1 post from Courtney, which is well worth a read!