4 Tips for Being a God-Glorifying Sibling

This week I was published on the Reb for the second time!

I wrote an article with four tips for being a God-glorifying sibling.

Being a sibling is hard. I would know. I have nine unique little brothers and sisters that I’m called to love all the time. Sometimes it drives me bonkers!

It can be hard to treat our siblings right, especially when we’re teenagers and our emotions are extra sensitive. As a brother or a sister, we know we should love our siblings regardless of how we are feeling, but how should we go about this? How can we glorify God in the way we interact with our siblings?

Read the rest here!

https://www.therebelution.com/blog/2019/08/4-tips-for-being-a-god-glorifying-sibling/

Praying for Siblings ~ 3 Things to Remember in Your Prayers

When it comes to praying for people, siblings are very easy to overlook. It’s a simple thing to remember to pray for ourselves and for those starving in Africa before we go to bed. But somehow, the people across the room or down the hallway are easier to forget. We know their spiritual needs better than most people, yet we neglect to pray for them. 

There are many ways we can be a good brother or sister, but one of the best ways — perhaps the biggest way — is to pray for them. 

Why?

Our siblings have souls. We might forget that when they are relentlessly interrupting us or are carelessly making messes, but nevertheless it is true. Their spiritual lives are what matter the most when you look at eternity.

Of course, we can’t change their souls. Although we do have an influence on them, we do not have any direct control over our siblings. But God does.

That is why we need to pray for them!

Praying for our siblings can help us to have the right perspective. When we pray for them, we remember what really matters. Not their faults, not the grudges we may have against them, not even the silly choice they made yesterday. What matters is their eternity.

Here are three things anybody with siblings should remember in their prayers:

#1: Pray for their faith.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. - Romans 10:1 (ESV)

It is of the highest importance that we pray for the salvation of our unsaved siblings. If you aren’t already praying for this, it is time to start. And even if you have prayed for this hundreds of times, and they still haven’t come to faith, keep praying.

Even if they are growing up in a Christian home, your siblings still need prayer for their faith. I would even say that they need prayer especially if they are growing up in a Christian home. When your parents are Christian, it is easy for your siblings to assume that makes them a Christian as well. With all the times they’ve heard the gospel preached at church, they may block it out effortlessly. A Christian household can be the most difficult place to discover the truth about your sibling’s heart. And as frustrating as they may be, it is scary to think where some of our siblings may be heading if God doesn’t intervene. 

If you have a sibling who has come to faith, praise God! Living next to these fellow believers, you have the opportunity to see the work God is doing in them firsthand. You also get to see the work that is left to be done. Be patient. Make use of that knowledge by praying that their faith would increase and remain steadfast for all of their lives. Pray that God would continue to work in them. Pray that they would be an encouragement to others.

#2: Pray for God’s forgiveness.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. - 1 John 1:9 (ESV)

The second thing we should include in our prayers is to ask for God's forgiveness if we have sinned against our brother or sister. This happens far more often than we like to admit. Many of my daily sins are against my siblings, and often I don't even notice. But sins never go unnoticed in God's eyes. I can pray that He would remind me of the sins I’ve forgotten and when He does, I need to repent of them. 

Remembering our sins, and the sacrifice Jesus made for us, promotes humility. The more we acknowledge how imperfect we are, the more we are amazed by the great love and mercy God showed us. The more aware we are of our imperfections, the more we love the God who first loved us. Asking God for forgiveness keeps our hearts in check.

And if you ask for your sibling's forgiveness too, that is a truly loving and God-glorifying thing! When you ask for your sibling's forgiveness, it shows that you remember the unkind word you spoke or the action that you did against them and that you know it was wrong. It also shows you care for them and that you’re eager to follow Christ's instruction. This is also an opportunity for you to set an example for them and to show them how to repent of their own sins. 

Regarding our siblings’ sins against us, we sometimes feel like Peter.

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” - Matthew 18:21 (ESV)

And then we see Jesus’ response in the next verse:

Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

(If you are having trouble forgiving someone, I highly recommend reading the rest of Jesus’ response, one of my favorites, the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant: Matthew 18:23-35.)

If we want to reflect God’s mercy, we’ll need to forgive our siblings a lot. After all, how can we leave our siblings unforgiven in the light of God's forgiveness to us? Remembering God's mercy to us can help us to show mercy to our siblings, whether they repent or not.

#3: Pray for humility and patience for tomorrow

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. - James 1:5-6 (ESV)

No sibling is perfect — ourselves included. We must pray for humility and patience for one another, because none of us can show humility nor patience on our own. The fruit we need to bear with siblings in love comes from God, and God alone -- more specifically, they come from the Holy Spirit.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—have you ever thought of applying these to the way you treat your siblings?

These virtues are so important to show our siblings if we want to shine the light of Christ in their lives. It isn't enough to pray for God to save your siblings. It is not enough to ask for forgiveness from them and to forgive their wrongs against you. We must also show them what Christ is like. If they only see the sinful side of a Jesus-follower, why would they want to take the same path and follow Jesus as well? Your unsaved siblings need to see the change Jesus has sparked in you.

But in order to take on these attributes, we must ask God for them. God tells us in His word that He wants to do all these things in us, so why don’t you ask Him to?

***

There are multiple ways to remember siblings in our prayers, and many rabbit trails that come off those, but the most important thing to remember is to pray for your siblings! 

It can be as simple as saying, "Father, please take care of my siblings and help me point them to you in the way I live." Don’t keep your siblings’ lives and your faith life separate. Bearing with siblings is hard, and we can't do it ourselves. But with His help, it is possible!

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 4 - Bathing the littles

(See the introduction and other posts first if you haven’t!)

Like with House Bingo, if you do it right, jobs being uneven can be an advantage. But with simpler things, if people all want the same job, there will be a lot of quarreling. Sometimes it seems like taking the hardest job is all you can do. But it is not.

You can divide work well.

Twice a week (or more) the time comes when all four little ones who don’t bathe themselves need a bath. The other six bigger kids need to bathe them. Sometimes the bathroom can get really full and noisy. And wet. People all want to bathe the easiest to bathe kid (the biggest of the littles) and get out of the rest.

I spotted the problem and decided we needed an assembly line. I made a list of the jobs:

• finding clothing for afterwards
• getting kids into the bath and washing their hair
• bathing their bodies and getting them out
• drying them off plus odd jobs
• lotioning them
• clothing them

I added “odd jobs” to the drying job to even it up a bit, but everyone still wanted it. How would I decide to whom to give it? How could I do it in a way people wouldn’t argue? And how to make sure the younger big kids don’t get overly difficult jobs?

I distributed the jobs from youngest to oldest (to the big kids). Nobody argued because I was the oldest and the younger ones should get simpler jobs. Well, a few kids still wanted the drying job but I told them they were too big for it.

And this strategy can be applied to plenty of other things!

Like making breakfast burritos. Nobody wants to make the bacon. Everyone wants to cook the tortillas. I take the bacon-making to get rid of that quarrel. Then I tell them if they cook the tortillas, they also have to put together the breakfast burritos, serve them and clean up. That leaves one person who still wants to make them and the others are content with other jobs.

Now it is time to think about how you can encourage your family to cooperate and avoid social loafing. Let me know if this helps!

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 3 - The Shovel & Dark Vader of the Kitchen

See the introduction and other posts if you haven’t!)

People need motivation. And if you are one of those people who offer your kids/siblings candy (or money) every time they do something, no offense, but eventually you’ll run out of candy and your kids/siblings’ll have cavities.

My solution is to instead offer them power. Sugar-free.

When all the kids go outside to battle the weeds, they tend to get lazy. Fast. The sun beating down. The lack of prospect of victory against everlasting weeds. You get the idea.

I noticed this problem and another as well. I saw that it was very inefficient for everyone to have to get up regularly to put their weeds in the green waste. So I appointed someone (the first to come outside for weeding) to carry a shovel around and collect people’s weeds for them. A very easy job. Consequently, everyone wanted it.

So the shovel got passed to someone new every five minutes. But not just anyone. The person who — in the shovel carrier’s opinion — weeded the hardest or the most. Now, not only were they weeding to get the easy job, but also for the power of choosing the next person.

This solution:

- encourages people to come outside for weeding fast, because the first to come out got the first turn with the shovel

- added a helpful position where somebody collects what has been weeded

- compelled people to weed more

The kids wanted the shovel both:

- to have an easy job

- and for the power to choose the next shovel person

I use the same strategy when we clean the kitchen and pick up after dinner.

If a few siblings choose to join something called the “Darth Vader system,” they will take turns being “Darth Vader” each evening. “Darth Vader” gets to choose who in the “Darth Vader system” gets what job.

People join the system for the power of being Vader every once and a while and then put themselves subject to the other Vaders’ authority. Since Darth Vader’s job is to make sure the people of the system work efficiently, this strategy works pretty well.

The Darth Vader is in charge of dividing the work, and, especially with complicated tasks, “divide and conquer” is a big deal. More on dividing work next time.

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 2 - House Bingo

(See the introduction and first post if you haven’t!)

Competition is social loafing’s worst enemy. Social loafing is when everyone tries to the least possible, while competition is when everyone tries to do the most. If everyone keeps a competitive spirit, I can guarantee you won’t have social loafing.

So make it competitive.

Instead of the normal house-cleaning checklist, one day I made a chart. Columns for jobs — picking up, sweeping, mopping, etc. — and rows for rooms — living room, kitchen, hallway, etc.

Once I had came up with many rows and columns, I had many unique boxes. “Mop kitchen,” “Sweep hallway,” “Pick up in living room.” Each box you sign is a point, and each completed row or column you help with is three points.

The ingenuity of this was that not all tasks were equal. This created a race to do the easy things. Even the most slothful kids wanted to get the easy tasks, so they finished each one quickly to go to the next one. Thus, they weren’t slothful anymore!

When I saw which few bigger tasks people shied away from, I wrote a generous amount of points the doer of this chore would get. And hence, workers raced for the hard jobs!

At the same time they raced to complete rows of chores (e.g. sweeping every room) and with all the racing, everything got done! It was super competitive and efficient, and everyone was proud of the checked boxes at the end. Even the younger kids worked hard to get more points than each other. It was beautiful.

Applying competition to weeding also produces much efficiency, as you will see in an example next time.

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 1 - The Checklist

(See the introduction first if you haven’t!)

If you can say, “Let’s clean the house,” and your siblings will drop what they are doing, pick jobs, and just start working as hard as they can at cleaning that house, with absolutely no quarrels or fusses, then you have a pretty perfect family. You might not even need to read all this!

But normal families need a plan. They need to strategize in order to get those imperfect workers to clean that house. This is the most important way to prevent social loafing. Planning the task is the foundation of the art of warding social loafing.

So plan it out.

For example, whenever we need to scrub our house from top to bottom, typically I get the whiteboard. The whiteboard can be a weapon. Use it wisely. 

I need to know exactly what we have to do, and how we’re going to do it. These are important fundamentals in any plan.

So I make a checklist. And whenever a sib gets a job done, and I look and see it did get done, I let them check the box and sign it off. If you do this, just be careful not to overuse the checklist or it will lose its charm.

But once I took it a step further and made cleaning the house into a bingo game. More on that next time.

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Introduction - What is Social Loafing?

There was a time when I didn’t have many siblings. I was very little back then and don’t remember much of it, but that’s why I have parents to quote my younger self. :) According to my parents, I wanted to have more siblings back then because I would have people to help me clean up my stuffed animals and things. More siblings make it make chores easier, right?

Boy, was I wrong! Not only do they add on to the mess, but more times than not, they don’t do their part! From my experience, when it comes to siblings, typically many hands do not make light work.

This is because of a gruesome phenomenon called “social loafing.” Here is how it works:

Imagine there’s a big project with a lot of workers. Say ten people. If everything goes right the job should be done in a tenth the time it takes one person.

Then one of the worker sees the other nine workers around him and thinks to himself, “Even if I put in the minimum effort the job still will be done quickly. There are all these other people working so I don’t need to.”

But what if instead of one working taking this approach, all of them did? Everything would go super slowly. Instead of taking a tenth the time it takes one person, they may take double! Instead of being quicker than one person doing it himself, they are slower!

This is a problem my family faces on a regular basis. The good news is it can be prevented. I am making you a blogging series with a few things you can do to ward social loafing in your family. 

Next time you’ll get the first of my four tips.

1. Plan it out ~ the Checklist
2. Make it competitive ~ House Bingo
3. Give people power ~ The Shovel & Dark Vader of the Kitchen
4. Divide work well ~ Bathing the littles

6 Ways Having Tons of Sibs is a Blessing

For my first post it seems fitting for me to write about this as I have learned earlier this month that I have a tenth younger sibling on the way. I have decided to write a list of reasons I am grateful for siblings. This is one topic in which I can safely say I have much experience (that is, “siblings,” not “gratefulness”).

Siblings do a really good job at hiding that they are truly blessings. They are all coated in flaws that you, as their sibling, have the hardest time seeing through. You’ve got them too, but it is always hard to see oneself without a mirror. Pride will fog things up. Be prepared. We have to remember that we can’t put ourselves above our siblings though pride will try to make things look different. We are not the judge.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

- James: 4:11-12

It may take some effort, but it is important to love our siblings anyway and see them not for their flaws, but the blessings they really are.

Blessing #1: They give you a constant challenge for you to grow your patience and become more Christ-like in your own household.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

- 1 John 3:16-18

When I search my soul, I very often find God convicting me of sin in how I treat my siblings. I see my impatience and have to work at it constantly. It’s hard. But I can’t even imagine how much less patience and unconditional love I would have in my heart if it wasn’t tested.

Because of the siblings God places in our lives, we get opportunities (very challenging ones) everyday to respond in the way that Jesus would. With sacrificial love. And then God’s love will abide in us, in deed and truth.

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

- John 4:20-21

How much more does this mean that God wants us to love those we see everyday?

#2: They give you close understanding of different types of people.

One thing I’ve learned in my years as a big sister is that siblings come in different shapes and sizes. They are different ages. They have different personalities.

Because of this fact, I understand a lot of things about a lot of people who aren’t my siblings a lot better. For example, I can relate with kids of different ages. I nearly always have a sibling who is a baby, so I can talk about babies with moms. I nearly always have a sibling who is a toddler, so I have an idea about how to deal with fussy toddlers. Pre-teens are now predictable. I understand what kids of a lot of age ranges are like on the surface because I can compare them with a sibling.

Siblings also give me a good understanding of personality differences. Actually, I am somewhat of a personality type nerd (I’m an INFJ — the rarest type). Since I know several of my siblings' personality types, I can transfer my knowledge about them to other people. Having a lot of siblings makes this practice more reliable. For instance, I don’t judge extroverts because I have a few very different extroverts in my family. But I do know what similarities they share.

My variety of siblings have blessed me with an understanding of people. This blessing is subtle, but so good to have.

#3: They give you experience with children.

This is a very practical blessing and has come in handy quite a bit for me. When people see the how many siblings-worth of experience I’ve had, they know I can be trusted with theirs.

Living with and caring for many siblings has prepared me for ministry in volunteering at our church’s nursery and assisting in Sunday School. I’m blessed that God has given me siblings and experience that can be used to His glory.

Plus, if you babysit, it’s a nice fact to have on your imaginary business card.

#4: They give you good moments, which outweigh the bad moments even when it doesn’t look like it.

I have a sibling who has extreme bad moments, but when the good moments come they wipe away every memory of the bad. With the memory of the right moment, even that sibling is easy to forgive. Often that is the key: to remember the good in your siblings.

The good moments outweigh the bad when you consider their worth, so just forgive and forget the bad moments. Even when they don’t say sorry. It’s hard. But ultimately they are worth it. They are blessings.

#5: They bring the conveniently local blessings of their talents into your life.

Often there are siblings, even younger ones, who will surpass you in certain areas. It may be simple. Perhaps your little brother, if you’re honest with yourself, may have a better sense of humor. Maybe you’re not artistic, but your sister is. And a photographer in the family is always useful.

My siblings’ voices have come in handy for me recently. I was making a little video and I had a script but I needed some people to read it. (Of course I was too shy to record my own voice.) I was not only blessed by the voices that were old enough to not mess up so much and be more professional, but also by the younger ones. Because honestly, they added something to the video I couldn’t replicate on my own. When they tried to say big words (which I had given them on purpose) they added a unique touch.

What would I have done without them? I would have needed to do it myself, or pay someone, or find a robot voice online or do something else so much more inconvenient. And the video just wouldn’t be the same.

I’m sure you’ve had instances where your siblings' talents and personalities have come in handy. You’ve just got to remember.

#6: (This may seem like thinking of siblings as objects at a store, but I’ll put it here anyway.) They give you a choice when you make decisions.

When you have a lot of siblings, you can pick and choose according to the task you want one to perform. I know it sounds weird, but think about it. You choose one person over another all the time.

By way of illustration, you know how each of your parents respond to questions differently? Like when you ask what the limits on desserts at a potluck are, you know who will more likely respond, “A wise amount,” and who will set a number. This gives you a choice. Then you get to pick the parent for the situation.

A more common example is when you have a specific topic on your mind you want to talk to someone about. Who do you talk to about such-and-such? A close friend your age? Your mother? Your father? A toddler? The boy at church who is fascinated with spiders? You must choose according to the task you want them perform. Depending on what you want to talk about and why, this situation could result in very different choices.

So having a lot of siblings gives a variety of choices. One sibling may be just right for a board game, another for nail-painting, and another for talking about a theory concerning the time continuum that you came up with. Choice is a blessing.

So next time you feel like God should have made you an only child, remember God put your siblings in your life for a purpose. So many purposes, really. All in all, siblings are blessings. We just have to keep on loving them.

Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

- 1 John 2:10