More Is Caught Than Taught

When my son was two, my mother-in-law was visiting us from out of state. She was carrying a grocery sack into my kitchen when the bag broke and canned food spilled out all over the floor, hitting her foot, and crashing with a bang. In her shock and surprise she wailed… “oh shi….” Now, I’m assuming seeing my slow motion… face and voice saying…. “NO…….” she added 9, 10 to it. It came out, “oh shi... 8, 9 10." 

My mother in law was pretty pleased with herself. A sign of relief came over me, until my son, a few minutes later rammed his dump truck into the wall and hollered "oh…. shi, 9 10."

That was my first experience as a mom realizing the truth that more is caught than taught.

More recent in my life, my daughter stands in front of her closet, for minutes and minutes, way longer than it should take to pick out cloths to wear for the day. It’s not uncommon to have her come down in one outfit, sit and have breakfast, then go back to her room and change, and come down in something else. It's only when I'm in the car waiting to take her to school, when she finally comes out she’s in her third outfit so far that morning.

My husband looked at me recently and said, “You know she gets that from you.” Ouch.

More is caught than taught.

But here’s the good news. Knowing this, we can model good things for our children. We can be the number one influencer in their life for healthy lifestyles, practices, disciplines. 

We don’t have to sit them down and teach them everything there is to know. We could never! That would be a never-ended mission, with no moments to spare. 

Rather, we can simply live it, and they will catch on. 

Followers of Jesus typically learn and pursue twelve disciplines of spiritual living. 

The word discipline can be an off-putting word. Sometimes we think it involves punishment or correction. But actually, the word is Latin and it’s in true form means: giving an instruction to a disciple.

When we study and practice spiritual disciplines, we are becoming more like disciples, and we are allowing God to move in our lives, to make us more like Him, and to give Him the freedom to accomplish His works through us.

Here's the disciplines: Meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, celebration.

Because more is caught than taught, we have a responsibilities as moms (also known as generation shapers) to model these to our kids.

Learning, studying and practicing these disciplines is a lifelong practice and there is always more to learn. 

Here's a few practical ways you can begin practicing these disciplines. 

Download the Infinitum App. This app follows Jesus' model and calls us to live a life of passion, purpose, depth and discipline. Begin practicing the daily prayers each day. 

Institute quiet time. There's no right or wrong way to do this.

One thing I found, when my children were little is that I needed to have a plan in place for my quiet time if the kids woke up. Typically they did because they woke up SO EARLY! A cup of cheerios and some juice would distract them for a few minutes in the morning.

Having a children’s storybook bible at the table. Sometimes I’d have my tea and a blanket, and my bible in my hand. And my kids would want to have the same things. So I’d serve a little juice in a tea cup, and have them get their blanket. Honestly, sometimes I never opened my bible. It wasn’t gonna happen, but, when it comes to more is caught than taught, my kids saw me, with a regular rhythm having quiet time.

Practice solitude. This is one many people today struggle with. Our world is so loud, and different voices are vying for competition in our brains. The world it seems is addicted to noise. Solitude is silencing all the noise and voices, emptying our brains of it all and filling it up with God.

Practicing this can be tricky, but you can do it. Try it when you are in your car, waiting in the school pick up line, or even in bed in the morning before you get up. My husband tries this for 5-10 minutes each day when we gets home from work. He actually changes into gym shorts, and heads outside and lays on our trampoline or just walks around. Just long enough to decompress his mind and get a little sun.

Try sitting still and emptying your mind for a few minutes each day. If it's hard, just start with 30 seconds, and work your way up to 5 minutes. I find that having a notebook near by to jot down all those to-do's that pop up in my mind. I write it down, and then force it out of my mind. 

The Inner Room App is a great prayer resource. It was created by 24/7 Prayer, which is a movement of 24/7 prayer rooms all over the world. If you’ve been to one of these before it’s pretty incredible! PS: there is a book called Red Moon Rising about the origins of the 24/7 prayer movement that I highly recommend!

This app allows you to enter the people, groups or topics you want to pray over. You can upload a picture of the person or groups, and then you write the prayer requests down. The app will send you reminders to pray. It tracks your prayer times. It also reads your prayer requests to you, and then play music underneath, so you can do this while you drive. It’s amazing.

Let’s talk about study. studying the word of God isn’t rocket science. There are very simple practices you can use to journal and study God’s word. My favorite is WIMAY’s. It’s reading a chapter or a section of scripture and then journaling your response to this question: What Intrigues Me About You (Jesus)?

John 15 and John 17 are two passages I recommend starting with.

Celebration. A posture of celebration is seeing and acknowledging the ways God’s love shows up in our lives and the lives of others each and every day.

One way my family celebrates this is at the dinner table each night. (Think about this... Your child will have approximately 19,000 meals, mostly with you before they hit 18 and leave home.) We value this time together and are committed to making the most of it.

We start the meal with a prayer. We hold hands, and then at the end, we cheer, “We are family” which is a tribute to my grandma’s late husband Frank. He started that with us when he joined our family, and now that he’s gone, we still do this to honor him and each other.

Then, while we eat, we Toastmaster each other.

Each of us gets a turn to stand up and talk about something for one minute. Sometimes it’s something they want to share about, or other times we ask a question and they have to answer it. Either way, they have to speak for 1 min, no longer, no less, and they have to stay away from phrases like ahh and and and uh. This time is usually quiet eventful.

Then, we ask "where did God show up today?" We all come to the table with stories of God showing up. Sometimes the kids are excited about this and ready to share, other times they have to sit there and do some deep thinking. Some days, they admit they didn’t see him at all. But more often than not, this is our chance to celebrate God each and every day.

I pray that these ideas help you as you begin working on living out spiritual disciplines. 

And as you work to impact other's in your life, remember, more is caught than taught. 

Let’s be diligent to make sure those around us are catching a lifestyle focused on Jesus, prioritizing time with Him, a life filled with worship and celebration.