Rewarding Hard Work

I have been teaching four of my younger siblings for two years now. I will admit that teaching my siblings is harder than teaching someone else's child. The natural tendency to get impatient often arises when I'm teaching them.

After two years of teaching them I finally figured out how to get them to practice regularly. You would think that I would have already discovered that, but alas I had not.

I told them that starting in June we would begin a rewards system. Each of them will get their own calendar for the month. They have to practice ten minutes a day, four days a week. At the end of the month they bring me their calendar and if it meets the requirements that I set, then they get a prize.

Each child I explained that to, their eyes lit up when I got to the end of my explanation.

I remember when my older sister's best friend, Elizabeth was teaching me. She did something similar, and it made me want to practice even more because I knew I was going to get a prize for it.

When lessons were over and I was fixing dinner I got to thinking about my whole rewards system. I realized that God does the same thing with us in His own way.

(Don't you just love it when you have an epiphany?)

In Psalm 37:3-5 it says, "Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord: and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass."

In every one of those verses there is a reward for doing something for the Lord. Trust in the Lord, and do good and you shall be fed. Delight in Him and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way unto Him, trust in Him, and He shall make your desires happen!

There are many other references in Scripture that illustrate this. God made us and He knows how we work. He offers rewards to His children when they obey Him.

He rewards us with eternal life if we will only repent of our sins and ask Him into our hearts.

This principle of rewarding works for personal goals as well. I find that when I have a daunting task, such as cleaning my disaster of a room, I don't have the motivation to do so. But if I set a reward for myself when the job is finished I have a lot more energy. Usually.

Maybe there is something that you need to get done that isn't happening because of a lack of motivation? Try setting a good reward at the end of the task.

God uses it so it has to work. :)