Make the Best Use of Time

We spent last Wednesday with some great friends of ours, playing at their house most of the day.  It was this glorious day:  blue-skies, perfect temperature, just a little breezy.  One of those days where you feel the Presence of God all around you in the beauty of His creation and the soft wind blowing and in the sweet intimacy you feel when you spend time with others who are like-minded.  The children had so much fun playing together and it was just one of those days full of wonderful memories.  The next day, Thursday, we woke up and it was raining to beat the band.  The rain poured.  The yard was soggy, the water running in muddy rivers toward its destination.  I looked at the rain and thought of the day before and how gloriously brilliant the day had been.  Isn't this a picture of our lives?  The lesson hit me:  we must take our opportunities today because we don't know what tomorrow holds.  It may be beautiful weather today but tomorrow the rain will come.  This truth applies on so many levels.

In evangelism:  We must have hard Gospel conversations today because we don't know when there won't be a tomorrow, whether for us as the proclaimers or for those to whom we are called to proclaim the Gospel.  I needed to hear this truth.  Who is God calling me to witness to that I have been putting off or putting out of my mind?  Am I looking for opportunities to share the good news of the Gospel?  Am I more concerned about what others think about me and being perceived as awkward and uncomfortably bold in approaching others about Jesus, or am I more concerned about the condition of their souls?  Lord, help my heart to be softened as it should be and let me care less about what others think of me and more about what You are calling me to do.  Let me see the urgency in sharing the Gospel boldly.  I dreamed not too long ago that there was this ride, in the dream it was almost like an alpine coaster, but the ride took you into the depths of hell.  (Yes, I know this is a crazy dream.)  In my dream I was getting ready to get on the seat of the coaster, and someone was there telling me, this just allows you to see what hell is like and then at the end of the ride you return to the platform unscathed.  What if that ride was real?  How would that change our perspective on boldly living for Christ?  If we saw the eternal isolation, the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the scary, lonesome, awful place called hell, how would we live differently?

In our pursuit of personal holiness/sanctification: We must prepare today while the weather is good--like Joseph, we must store up knowledge, truth, and wisdom--for tomorrow when the weather is yet unknown.  We know we will face trial and tribulation; that is not an unknown, that is a promise.  Jesus says in John 16:33, "In this life you will have trouble.  But take heart, I have overcome the world." We know Who the Victor is, yet we must prepare to fight the battle, because the battle will come.  There will come a day when we will need all that we have stored up. We must spend our time on the things that matter, things that have eternal value, because one day we will wake up and look back over the years and realize how much time we have wasted on things that matter not.  I was personally convicted about this; what things do I waste my time on?  I am called as a Christian to walk worthy of the calling in Ephesians 4.  How do I walk worthy?  In Ephesians 5 Paul states, "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil."  How am I walking?  Am I seeking God in a spirit of brokenness, asking Him to convict me of my sin, even sin that I am unaware of, and as He convicts me, am I repenting of that and turning away from that behavior?  Am I praying faithfully?

Lord show me my sin and convict me of the behavior that separates me from You and Your righteousness.  Lord let me always remember Your holiness and perfection and be humbled as I line myself up next to You.  Lord I fail you daily:  I make idols of Your good gifts, I seek my own glory above Yours, I seek the approval of man, I chase after evil, I do not walk worthy of my calling, I miss opportunities to tell others of Your goodness, I am prideful and selfish.  Lord I'm sorry.  Please forgive me.  Help me to seek You above all else.  Lord I want to please You more than any other desire I have.  Teach me how to honor You in all I do.  I love You Lord. 

Homesick for God

Today I felt called to begin to write, to collect my thoughts and reflections.  These are the wanderings of my mind.

This past weekend we counseled some friends of ours who are on the brink of divorce.  The wife has been having an affair.  I reiterated the importance of casting aside the paramour, of cutting off all communication with the other man, in order that she might see more clearly and return to the husband of her youth.  She has lost all sight of what brought them together, of what she loved about him, blinded by the lustre of the illicit affair, blinded to the steady, true, gracious, forgiving and unearned love of her husband.  He has chosen to love her and forgive her despite her actions.  He has chosen to show her grace.  It struck me today as I was thinking about the situation that, much like Gomer and Hosea, we are like the wife, seeking glittering things and putting aside the love of our Savior.  We are taken in, are swept away with those things that give us temporary and momentary pleasure but have no eternal value. 

A couple of years ago, I was in a position of immature faith and struggled to maintain a regular quiet time or devotion time with God.  I spent much of my downtime watching secular entertainment and reading secular books.  Reality television was a particular vice of mine.  A good friend of mine recommended a book called Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers.  She said it was a book that every Christian should read.  The book stirred in me a desire for God that I had not known before.  I was struck by the way in which God loves me, Gomer, a prostitute, constantly choosing to commit adultery by putting other things in place of Him.  The book began in me a journey toward greater knowledge and intimacy of God, a journey which I am still on today.  I began to eliminate much of the secular entertainment from my life and began to replace that with faith-based, mostly fiction, books like Redeeming Love.  Although I was still not reading anything deeply theological, it was a start.  I had replaced the idol of secular television and reading with reading that at least acknowledged God and contemplated the things of God.  God worked through those books and began to develop in me a desire to know more about Him and a desire to become more Christ-like.  Eventually those fiction books gave way to non-fiction, and just a couple of years later, I now am reading books and listening to sermons that are pushing and growing me in innumerable ways.  All because of the one book.  We all have to start somewhere.

I realized today as I was thinking about my friend:  just like she has to remove the stumbling block to her marriage, we have to remove the idols in our lives in order to give God room to kindle desire for Him in us.  The Bible says that all good gifts come from our Father in heaven.  Any of those good gifts can become idols for us.  John Piper says: 

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.  It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world.  It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.  For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20).  The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts.  And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth.  For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.  From Hunger for God. 

We all have something in our lives which has become idolatry for us.  Is it our children who we allow to usurp the place of God in our lives?  Our spouse?  A job, a dream, a home, our ministry even…the list goes on and on.  All good gifts can become idols.  We must constantly ask God to reveal these idols to us so that we might be able to remove them and give God more room to infiltrate our lives.  I think of the image of the beach—you build a moat around your sand castle and you dig out the sand and the water fills the hole where the sand was.  Like that, God will fill the hole left when the idols are removed.  Are we willing to let him have that space?  Are we willing to give up anything and everything, if, as Piper says, “by any means, we might protect ourselves from the deadening effects of innocent delights and preserve the sweet longings of our homesickness for God?”  I want to be homesick for God.

Prayer:  Dear God, You are worthy of all of my focus and attention.  You are so good and gracious to me and I am so undeserving, so worthless.  I am like Gomer.  I constantly wander and allow good things, things you intended as good gifts, to become idols in my life.  Lord, help me to remove those idols in my life; I ask You to reveal those idols that I do not see.  It is as the song “Victor’s Crown” says, “Every high thing must come down/every stronghold shall be broken.”  Let me see those things that I have elevated above You in my life, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and help me to reorder my priorities, to make You my One True Love.  Make me homesick for you.  Forgive me when I mess up.  I love You.