Creating a Family Motto

In the last few years Paul and I have had an increasing desire to create a family motto - a catch phrase that sums up our vision and desires.

It took us three years to find something we liked and that we thought matched our goals.

While a guest speaker at church was covering the Sunday School lesson he pointed out this quote by Anthony Norris Groves;

"Labor hard 

Consume little

Give much.

And all to the Lord."

What a challenge! 

While most may not know of Anthony Norris Groves he was the brother in law to George Muller, whom I am sure more are familiar with. 

A. N. Groves launched the first Protestant mission to Arabic-speaking Muslims, and settled in Baghdad and eventually continued his mission work in India. A. N. Groves has been referred to as 'The Father of Faith Missions.'

Prior to his overseas mission work he worked as a dentist and him and his wife committed to giving a tenth of their income to the Lord. Over the course of time they committed to giving more and more of their money away and the Lord blessed his work. 

The significance of A. N. Groves lies in his desire to simplify the task of churches and missions by returning to the methods of Christ and his apostles described in the New Testament. As a missionary, his goal was to help indigenous converts form their own churches without dependence on foreign training, authorisation or finance.

I shared the quote with Paul that Sunday evening (he works most Sundays) and he agreed that it really did sum up our hearts desire and so we decided to adopt it for ourselves. 

When I won a contest hosted by Cute As a Fox for a printed tile I only had to think for a moment before deciding on having the quote printed on it. She did a terrific job and takes custom orders if anyone is interested in getting their own tile for their home. (Mine is in the above picture!)

So what about you - do you have a Family Motto? Did it take 3 years to come up with it?! Curious minds want to know!

*information on A. N. Groves was mostly taken from Wikipedia