Lessons from the Grocery Cart

It seems like I have known most of my married life that I should be planning out meals. However, for the most part I have not. Like so many, I would go to the grocery store and just fill the buggy with what I thought we would need or like. As a result, I would often find myself in the kitchen scrambling to decide what I could fix for dinner and then possibly making a quick run to the store. Assuming I did a good job of cooking most of the meals through a week, it would not be uncommon to make three or four trips to the store. Unfortunately, often it would end with "let's just get something out." I knew this was blowing our budget and our waistlines but felt powerless to change anything (admission: just didn't want to). Isn't that the case with most things we don't think we have time to do?

Now let me start by saying, I never on my own became motivated to change. I simply didn't want to. But one day when we were at Lifeway Christian Store there was a book on sale that caught our attention. It was this book: Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half. As I read the book, it inspired me. I already had Family Feasts for $75 a Week which is a wonderful book with lots of good cheap recipes.

So I set out on a mission and started planning our meals two weeks at a time (I would like to do four weeks but not there yet). I have to say it is amazing. The rewards have far outweighed anything I could imagine. Here are some benefits we have discovered:

1) We almost never eat out and don't even miss it. Thus helping our budget tremendously.
2) Our grocery bill has been slashed. I buy what is on my list and items that are on a huge sale that I am positive we will use. I spend less in a grocery trip than I did without planning the meals and have everything I need to actually make the meals.
3) We have exponentially more time together as a family.
4) We tend to stay home more in general since this is where our food will be and there is less reason to "go out anyway."
5) I am sooo much less stressed. Dinner no longer hangs over my head. It is so much more a treat to cook when there is a plan.

While all of these are amazing, number three is the greatest. I had no idea how much time we were wasting or what it would do to our family to get that time back. Last week we sat down as a family to play a game  4 or 5 times. I couldn't believe as much as we had going on that we found time to do that.

So I am thinking there is definitely a family lesson in this but what about a Bible lesson. Yep, there is. Hebrews 12:11 says, "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." So you know where this is going. . .apply that same lesson to quiet time!!! I already know that self-discipline brings peaceful fruit. God showed me a real life example but what about the fruit of righteousness? Now I can just be stubborn which obviously I am good at. How about you? Are you good at stubborn? If you are like me then let's choose to be stubbornly self disciplined. I think if we step in the right direction then God will show us the rewards.  As I think about the meal planning example, I really think we will want more and more time with Him once we see the rewards.

"The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied" Proverbs 13:4

The supplies of my pantry will not even compare to what the Lord Jesus Christ has for me.  What joy even this brings!