Chicken and broccoli

CLANK, CLINK, CLANK-CLANK. Looking up to the noise overhead, I spy the aphid heaving its little shell body into the light fixtures above. Pausing a moment, I realize, that's what I've been like the last 10 weeks. Clanking, banging around like (as my mother used to say) a chicken with my head cut off.

"Love more and more, and aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one." 1 Thessalonians 5:10b-12

And while we haven't ceased to have food to eat and the house isn't in shambles, it's likely a pace that's not beneficial to all in my family and thinking about Paul's decision in 1 Corinthians 8:13, the lady bug gives me a new understanding or application.

"Therefore, if my busyness causes my family's relationship with Jesus to falter, I will never run around crazy, if it makes my family fall away from Jesus." (my application of 1 Corinthians 8:13)

Reading on in Corinthians,

"For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them." 1 Corinthians 9:19 

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God…not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved." 1 Corinthians 10:31,33b

I feel called to lay aside some of my own preferences so that I might serve for God's glory. Loving a plan of action, I make my list of tangible ways to love and serve those within the walls of my home. This is the creative part that comes easily for me…but the day to day rubber meets the road application is definitely tougher! However, if I don't apply God's Word to my life, it would have been better to not even had read God's Word or listened to His conviction.

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." James 1:22-25

Not applying God's Word and personal convictions in my life is like looking in the mirror, seeing I have a chunk of broccoli stuck in my teeth and walking away without doing anything about it. And who wants to be that person? No, I will remove the broccoli; I will take the steps to love and serve my family.
When God convicts your heart about something, do you respond? Will you take the principle and put it into action? Or will you walk around with broccoli stuck in your teeth?