Practice Makes Permanent

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes Permanent.” – Eric Thomas

Practice is like Riding a Bike

We all remember Allen Iverson’s infamous practice speech. He had a lot of personal things that he was dealing with in his life at the time and the speech was his response to a question from a reporter. Have you ever thought about how that can apply to our marriage? What does it look like to practice in your marriage? 

Too many times we can have an attitude about our marriage that mirrors Iverson’s attitude from the video. We may think that the everyday aspects aren’t important. As long as we try to do good during the “games” then we’ll be successful. The ‘games” being the special days that we tend to pay attention to; birthdays, anniversaries and the occasional holiday. 

At the beginning of this year me and my wife set out to do something special for each other each month. This was all in an effort to practice our marriage. I’ll admit that we did good for the first couple of months. Then the spring/summer came and I missed a month. Thinking that I would try to make up for the next month and that never happened. Have I gotten back to it, no but I’m going to. 

This is the point of practice. We don’t start with excellence. You don’t have a great marriage right from the start. Any hall of famer in any sport didn’t start out that way. There is a level of practice that is required to be great. The same applies to our marriages. We don’t start out as great husbands and wives. We may be good but there is always another level to go to. We can strive to be better.

1. Practice is hard

There’s no denying it. Practice is not easy and it can seem hard. When it comes to practicing in your marriage, means setting yourself up for success. 

Practice is all about building habits and routines that will benefit you when times are hard. 

Find areas that you haven’t practiced in and begin.

2. Stop pursuing perfection

What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t pursue growth. What I am saying is that we need to look at our idea of perfection. We should lose that. 

Instead of pursuing perfection, aim for growth. Try to grow into the best person you can be. Through your growth you will become better, and your marriage will get better. 

3. What should be permanent 

What are the aspects, characteristics, and qualities that you want to be permanent in yourself? What are the things that you want to be permanent in your marriage?

The things that are permanent are the foundations to who we are. We want to make sure that we’re setting up a strong foundation for ourselves and our marriages. 

Discussion Question: 

What are you practicing in your life?

How 3 insights will change the way you look at your small dreams

Dream small

Don’t bother like you’ve gotta do it all

Just let Jesus use you where you are

One day at a time

Live well

Loving God and others as yourself

Find little ways where only you can help

With His great love

A tiny rock can make a giant fall

Dream small

All Dreams Matter

I like to talk a lot about getting back to the place where we dream again. We should all dream a little more and then take it a step further and chase those dreams. We want to dream of the future and what could be. Our dreams tend to consistent of vacations that we want to take, cars we want to drive and homes that we want to own.

I recently attended a benefit dinner where Josh Wilson was the musical guest. Those are his lyrics at the beginning of this post. It was a pleasure and he performed one of his songs called Dream Small. It was this song that had my mind thinking about the small dreams in our lives that we can let drift away.

I listed the big dreams that we tend to have and if you polled most people what you find is that the big dreams tend to fall into the same categories.

Your small dreams are what separates you. It is in those small dreams that you find your uniqueness.small dreams that you find your uniqueness. You will find yourself in the small dreams. What does a small dream look like?

1. Small Dreams are from the heart.

We can find ourselves in a space and time where we know the big things that are out in front of us. However our aspirations can seem so far away. They start in our hearts but because they are so far away we can lose sight of them. Small dreams are the issues from your heart that you hold on to.

2. Small Dreams aren’t always tied to money.

The dreams that are in your heart aren’t always tied to money. Our small dreams can be things like losing weight, or eating healthier. What’s in your heart to do? To be a better person, do you want to read more? How about learning a new skill or hobby. It’s what’s in your heart to do.

3. Small Dreams don’t need to be classified as Small Dreams.

We should stop classifying our dreams as small or big. That inherent classifying makes us value the big dreams over the small dreams. We have to just think of them as dreams. What are our dreams? We want to focus on our dreams being from our heart.

Discussion Question:

What are your dreams?

Faith and Love

“Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints,” – Ephesians‬ ‭1:15‬ ‭KJV‬‬

What are you planting?

Your Life Speaks

This scripture from the Bible has stood out to me because of something that Paul says. While writing this letter to the church at Ephesus, he says that their faith  and their love are what he heard about. I’ve been thinking about this the last couple of days and I wonder if the same could be said of us. 

Your life speaks...what is it saying? #youspeakvolumes #livelife Click To Tweet

Does our faith speak? Does our love speak? They should speak to those around us. Our lives should be filled with faith and love. Everyone wants to make an impact, but how does real impact happen? 

Paul said that their faith and their love is what impacted him. The same should be said of our faith and love. One area that our faith and love can be seen is in our marriages

 

Faith in Your Marriage

 

Faith in your marriage can look like persevering  through hard times. It’s not always that you have to be on the brink of divorce for you to have faith in your marriage. Faith can look like praying for your marriage in the morning. It can also look like having peace in your day to day. Faith in your marriage can look like believing for a consistent date night. The point is that having faith in and for your marriage is more than waiting until your about to file for divorce. 

 

Love In Your Marriage

 

How does love in your marriage look? Do you picture it as your favorite rom-com movie? Or does it look like a relationship that you saw as a child?

 

Love in your marriage is two parts; how you give love and how you receive love. You need to know both. Does love look like handwritten letters or exotic vacations or even sitting on the couch watching your favorite show. 

 

So what does love look like for your marriage and what do you do to maintain it? Love has to continue to grow and develop. It’s a living part of your marriage and has to be treated as such. There are some practical things you can you like praying together, date nights, vacations together and communication are a way to get started. 

 

Building the faith and love in your marriage is what will speak to those around us.  Like Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesians ,their faith and love are what spoke to Paul. Your faith and love will also speak. 

 

Discussion Question:

What do you want your faith and love to say?