Do you ever feel pressured to do things that we know are not God's best for you? It seems that we are constantly facing people who are trying to get us involved in activities or commitments that we just don't feel good about, yet we have a hard time saying ‘no’ to them. 

I think as a homeschooling family, we can feel even more pressure because every time we meet a new homeschooling family, it seems that we begin to compare ourselves to them. Next, we are thinking of things that we need to implement in our homeschool so that we can be more like these other families. When we compare ourselves to others, we can quickly begin to feel stressed and become burned out. No wonder the Bible tells us that we aren't wise when we compare ourselves with others!

We must be careful to guard our hearts, not allowing them to be swayed emotionally, taking us across a boundary line that God has put into place in our lives. We need to guard our boundaries!

Even Jesus felt the need to guard His boundaries. In Matthew 13:36, we see that Jesus left the crowd and went into the house. Notice that the crowd didn't leave, but Jesus did. There were times that He knew He needed to pull away.

In Matthew 14:22, Jesus made the disciples get in the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side, then He dismisses the crowd so He could pray. It had been a mentally exhausting day because his cousin had just been beheaded. Jesus knew that He needed to come apart or He would end up ‘coming apart.’ He needed to find that place of solitude to pray through His grief over the vicious death of His beloved cousin. He needed God to refill Him with some fresh oil so that He would have something to offer those who sought Him. Sometimes we need to dismiss the crowds in our own life. We need to send the children to their room, turn off the phone, turn off the TV, the computer, and get alone with God. Sometimes we may even need to cancel school for the day so that we can refuel ourselves spiritually. By doing this, we are still teaching the children valuable lessons. They learn that it's very important to spend time with the Lord. What better lesson can we teach them?

In Luke 4:42-44, Jesus is praying and the crowds come after Him once again. They were pressuring Him to stay there with them. Jesus had His priorities in order, and He knew that if He stayed there, He would be crossing a boundary line. He told the people that He was to be preaching the good news to other towns. He wasn't persuaded to stay, no matter how much they pressured Him to do so.

It's the same with us – we will be pressured to sign our children up for activities because ‘everybody else is doing it.’ We will be pressured to get involved in more church activities than what is feasible for us. Keep in mind that when you overstep the boundaries and get involved in too many activities or you take on too many charity cases, you may end up not being able to do a good job of taking care of your husband and your children. And guess what? If YOU don't do it, no one else will! Why?  Because God has called YOU to do it!  

Even commercials bombard us, pressuring us to spend more money. If we don't have the money, it's no problem, just call the 800 number for a quick and easy loan! We must guard our boundaries! One of the best ways we can guard those boundaries is by simply guarding our hearts for it is the wellspring of life. (Proverbs 4:23) If we don't guard our hearts, that wellspring of life will run dry very quickly. We will have crossed a boundary line that leads us to a very dry and parched land.

© 2005, Stacy R. Miller, printed with permission  
Joyfully serving Him,
Stacy Miller
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Proverbs 31 devotionals