Spiritual Spring Cleaning

 Allen:  Starting off the first of the year our pastor Gary Oliver takes the whole month of January & picks a subject or topic for us to fast on.  It can be anything from our diet to our habits. Each individual’s fast can be different, but we need to apply this to something that could help us and at the same time bring us closer to God!   The way I explained this to my kids was in a sense we are crucifying our flesh when we do this. Lots of our spiritual problems come from our flesh. Our flesh can be strong in certain areas and keep us from being prosperous.

Clay: It seems like in today’s world we are living at a faster pace.  Between kid’s activities, TV, music and even the way we eat, it just seems to be almost too much!  In my walk I get a sense or feeling in each of those areas when I become unbalanced.  I think God intended us to walk in a balance and when we get unbalanced in different areas we tend to walk farther away from God!  It just sneaks up on us. 

Allen:  For my family we have trouble going to bed early at night which makes it hard to get up early the next day.  In turn we don’t get up early enough so we are hitting the floor running and not always starting out our day spending time with the Lord!  So my family and I talked about it and we decided to go to bed early and get up early!  We get up around 6:00am and spend at least an hour in the morning with God.  We also decided to do a little early spring cleaning and rid our house of anything that might be unpleasing to God.  You would be surprised what creeps into your house like movies and magazines that can be disruptive to our spiritual lives!  It is little things like this that we don’t think about that can interfere with our relationship with God!  Whether we realize it or not the enemy works at us in small ways!  All it takes is one movie or one magazine for little things like our language or even thoughts to start creeping into our lives.

Clay: Allen has brought up a great point that I think we all do around the first of the year. You hear people talk about New Year’s resolutions and wanting to make changes to better their lives.  For example with me personally, the older I have gotten I have become more aware of the food that I eat.  (Like so many other people that make New Year’s resolutions!)  So it is nice to start over and to kind of say I’m going to watch what I eat or the way I spend my time. Our walk with God is no different, we should come to a place where we do an inventory check and take a look at what we are doing and what is around us to improve our spiritual life!

Allen:  We can take this same principle and apply it to our roping.  Have you ever wondered what does make a champion?  If everybody was successful, then everybody would be alike.  But sometimes you have to come apart and separate yourself from everybody else.  Take for instance when you practice, maybe there is someone or something that is distracting you and keeping you from accomplishing your goals.  My practice program is very important to me!  I have to do a kind of cleansing so to speak on my practice program.  I have to reevaluate things and ask myself “Am I letting my practice sessions get lukewarm where I’m just practicing to maintain or am I truly practicing to get better?”  After I evaluate the situation it could be that I have not spent enough time getting the right practice horses or I have let my practice cattle slide.  A big one for me is getting around people that rope better and challenge me to where I feel convicted!  For me it is really good to feel convicted.  When I’m around Patrick Smith, Clay, Rich Skelton or Kory Koontz it is just like going to church!  I sit there and watch those guys and there position, swing, delivery and everything about what they do is just so awesome!  It convicts me and I go home and realize I have let my swing go or I have let my position slide or I’m not roping steers fast enough.

Clay:  Allen brought up a good point by applying this to your roping.  You can and should apply this principle to every part of your life, roping is just one aspect.  Balancing our lives wouldn’t be so hard if we all put God in every little aspect in our lives. But we don’t do that so we have to stop and reevaluate where we are going and why we are going there. The key to living that balanced life is having faith.  He will only work in our lives where we allow Him to enter.  I think now days we spend too much time being entertained than entertaining ourselves.  Have you ever thought about the time we spend watching television?  What would that time be like if we spent it reading a book or having some quality time with our wife or children?  Today’s lifestyle is just so fast paced that we have become lazy and dependant on today’s modern conveniences.  I think it is a must for us to step back every so often and reevaluate our lives to see what could be holding us back.  In order to have a good relationship with God and our families we have to live a balanced life. And they only way to do that is to step back and take a hard look at what we are doing with our lives.  God wants us to be healthy, happy and productive.  It just takes sacrifice, hard work and diligence. 

Allen: Those guys keep you sharp!  But it is easy to not associate with people who are better because it is human nature to not want to be convicted or challenged.  I really want to encourage people to step out there and take a look at your situation.  If you want to be a better husband then pick out a couple friends that you think are really good husbands or you may want to be a better Dad then pick a few people out that are good fathers and let them challenge you!  You will learn from what they are doing and you will want to improve yourself.  It will make you want to take those things out of your life that are holding you back so you can succeed in that particular area.  I realize that it is early in the year and people make New Year resolutions but they are only as good as the commitment you make or even the thought you put into it.  Sometimes the most common sense things in our lives we fail to do can affect us spiritually. So I challenge you to do a little early spring cleaning!