Your Life Is Your Time..... Dr. Charles Stanley

 Your Life Is Your Time

Dr. Charles Stanley

Ephesians 5:14-17

Our lives are governed by time. That's why we're surrounded by clocks and calendars that dictate our activities. As the minutes tick by, we wonder where the day went. When responsibilities and pressures mount, we complain, "I just don't have time to get it all done!" But the reality is that God has given us enough time to do exactly what He's planned for our lives. Perhaps the bigger issue is whether we are using our time to do our will or the Lord's.

Time is a gift from God, and He has allotted each of us a measure in which to live and accomplish His purposes. We have only two options—to spend it temporally on our own interests or invest it eternally. Since time can never be retrieved or reversed, it's critical that we make the most of every opportunity the Lord provides.

The key to investing in eternity is following God's plan for your life, not just filling your days with activities. Jesus was allocated just thirty-three years of life on earth, but only the last three were spent in fulfilling His Messianic ministry. To us that seems like a waste of time. Yet Christ accomplished everything His Father gave Him to do. That's why on the cross He could say, "It is finished" (John 19:30).

Scripture compares earthly life to "a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14), but eternal life never ends. It's foolish to spend your life on a vapor when you can reap everlasting benefits by following God's will for your time here. Each day is an opportunity to choose.

The Longing of God to Meet with You..... Craig Denison

 

The Longing of God to Meet with You

Craig Denison

Weekly Overview:

This life is marked by a single choice: who or what will we center our lives around? This choice takes each of us down a path of decisions that shape who we are, what we feel, who or what we value, and what we will have accomplished at the end of our days. To center our lives around ourselves or the things of this world leads only to destruction. But, to center our lives around meeting with God fills each moment with the glorious abundance of God’s love, provision, and transcendent peace. May your life be marked by union with your Creator as we explore what it means to center our lives around meeting with God this week.

Scripture:“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” Psalm 139:17-18

Devotional:           

I used to view my time spent in secret with my heavenly Father as something for which I needed to drum up desire. I pictured God waiting for me in a room, ready to bless me for sure, but I felt the weight of choosing him was all on my shoulders. The truth of God’s heart is far from my previous misconceptions.

We serve a God who constantly, sweetly, and powerfully pursues us. Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” God is knocking on the door of your heart right now. With every gentle fall breeze that moves sweetly across your face, with every beautiful sunrise, with every breathtaking star in the sky, God is declaring his love for you.

God pursues us in any and every way he can. The greatest desire of his heart is for communion with his people. So it’s in knowing and receiving his overwhelming affections for us that our hearts will be stirred to meet with him. It’s in taking time to notice his constant pursuit of us that we will naturally begin to center our lives around meeting with our heavenly Father.

You see, the reason we should center our lives around meeting with God is because at the center of his heart is a deep, insatiable longing to meet with us. The Creator of the universe deeply longs to continually, consistently meet with you. God, who is Almighty, all-knowing, filled with grace, and is the fulfillment of perfect love, longs to be known by you. We are created to be drawn by the desire of our Creator. We are made to be known and to know our heavenly Father. We are created to walk with him every moment of every day. It’s not that we “should” center our lives around meeting with God, it’s that we were created to and must.

Song of Solomon 7:10 says, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” May you grow in the awareness of God’s desire for you today. May you come to know yourself as “my beloved’s.” May your life be marked by the natural response to your Creator’s unending pursuit of you. And may you center your life around meeting with God, not out of obligation, but because he so desperately longs to meet with you.

Guided Prayer:

1. Meditate on God’s desire to meet with you.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20

“You did not choose me, but I chose you.” John 15:16

2. What does it mean for your life that your loving Creator continually pursues you? What would it be like to live a life marked by responding to God’s love in every moment?

3. Take time to meet with God. Ask him how he feels about you. Ask him to reveal his desire for you. Respond to his affections with your own. Tell him honestly how you feel.

“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” Song of Solomon 7:10

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” Psalm 139:17-18

All you have is today. Centering your life around meeting with God is all about the choices you make today. The way you choose to live right now will impact your days to come. Don’t worry about your track record. Don’t concern yourself with the idea of meeting with Jesus every day for the rest of your life. Simply choose to enjoy him today. “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34).

Extended Reading: Psalm 139

Don’t Get Caught in the Worrying Trap..... By Jennifer Waddle

 Don’t Get Caught in the Worrying Trap

By Jennifer Waddle

BIBLE VERSE OF THE DAY: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Peace, contentment, and overwhelming joy are the real attributes of an abundant life in Christ. But sadly, the cares of this world often overshadow those beautiful sentiments.

Interestingly, right before Jesus spoke about having life abundant, He reminded His followers about the thief that comes in to steal, kill, and destroy. He didn’t share that to burst their bubble or discourage them. He said it to alert them to a very real and present temptation.

Worry is one way the enemy robs us of enjoying the fruitful life Jesus spoke of. If Satan can get us to focus on the stresses around us, instead of focusing on the Holy Spirit within us, he has succeeded in stealing our abundance in Christ.

Worry distracts us from God's truths.
The father of lies wants nothing more than to distract us from the Word of God. From the very beginning, when he challenged Eve with the question, “Did God really say,” Satan has been on a mission to divert our attention from the truth.

Often, when we are caught up in the cycle of worried thinking, we are too distracted to open our Bibles. Yet, that’s when we need God’s truths the most. 

My suggestion is to print out several key Bible passages to have on hand during times of worry. Post them in prominent places and read them often. The enemy doesn’t stand a chance in the light of God’s truths!

Worry is a false comforter.
People who deal with persistent worry have become severely dependent on the anxious emotions they feel. Sadly, it’s almost like a drug that is unwanted but hard to give up.

Worry becomes a go-to source of comfort. Some of us even start to feel empty or lost if we aren’t continually worried about something.

This may indicate it’s time to seek some help. Making an appointment with a trusted physician or meeting with a Christian counselor might be the best course of action for chronic anxiety.

The truth is, worry is by no means a comforter or friend. It is a tool from the enemy to mask the true comfort we receive from the Holy Spirit.

Fill 'er Up..... by John UpChurch

 Fill 'er Up

by John UpChurch

“Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.” -  Colossians 1:24-26

Right after I got married, I gave up computer software updates and PC troubleshooting for something a bit more… down to earth, you could say. I needed work in my new hometown, and since employers weren’t tracking me down and forcing jobs on me, I gravitated toward the only available option: construction. With a booming housing market at the time, finding enough to do wasn’t a problem.

But finding motivation was a problem. Going from a specialized, higher-paying job in computers, where I mostly sat at my desk all day, to cleaning up cinder blocks, wrestling with insulation, and scrubbing windows—that was quite the humbling thing. Honestly, I’d never had to do any real manual labor in my life before that (yes, I was coddled). The heat and pain and bloodied hands were all new to me.

The first few weeks, after a particularly arduous day of gophering around the jobsites, I’d come home and crash on the living room floor. My muscles weren’t used to the beating they took, and they made sure I knew about it.

Slowly, however, with all the wood slinging and nail pounding and putty slapping, things changed. The nights of carpet collapses became less frequent, and my hands didn’t split open nearly as often (unless you count the numerous times I stabbed myself with a chisel). In fact, I came to enjoy the process of seeing something come together, seeing a house take shape.

My spiritual growth has come in a similar fashion—just without the splinters. At first, the failures dragged me down and beat me up. The rejections when I tried to share my newfound faith stung. The transformation cut deep. But as I grew and as God worked in me, something changed. The pain still stings and the transformation still cuts (that never stops), yet I began to see the pain as an important part of the overall process. Christ is building something in me—and in His Church.

As humans, we all suffer. But as Christians, we fill up on suffering. Sounds bad, but the point is that instead of us letting the suffering go to waste, God uses it for the good of other believers (and our own). He takes the pain and makes it passion, passion that spills out as love for our brothers and sisters.

Intersecting Faith & Life: We each serve as a breathing example of the gospel played out in real life. Our pain and restoration make us a family like nothing else can.

Further Reading

1 Corinthians 12
Ephesians 3

A Prayer to Choose Life..... By Tiffany Thibault

 A Prayer to Choose Life

By Tiffany Thibault

“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life…” Deuteronomy 30:19-20

We have a choice to make every single day. Life or death, blessings or curses. We get to choose.

Two drastically different options for us to decide what we want for our lives.  Of course, no one wants death and curses! We all want to live, to thrive, to be happy. We all want blessings and a fulfilling life. The world is full of blogs, books and podcasts that tell us how to be the best, how to live the best and how to achieve the best. But this Bible verse tells us something different.

Our Bible verse tells us what true living looks like. It is a fulfilled life that doesn't revolve around ME. The blessed life doesn’t focus on me and my wants and needs, but it does require every single part of me to be able to live that fulfilling life that the Lord is promising. It is a determined heart that makes the decision to choose life and blessings. It is a committed heart that loves the Lord, making Him your God. It is conditioned ears to hear His voice, and it is strong hands and mind to hold fast to Him.

A happy life means making the Lord your life, all of your life. Every single part of it. Every thought, every action, every relationship, every habit, every attitude, every decision. Every single part of it needs to reflect the truth that the Lord is your life.

This Bible verse offers a promise to us. If we are determined to choose life, to give the Lord every part of our life, then He will not only give us life, but He will also give our children life. He will bless them because of the choice we make about who is the Lord of our life - ME or GOD.

Today, think about your actions, your situations. Who is in charge? Can you turn some of your burdens over to the Lord? Can you trust Him a bit more for your concerns? Open the Bible, dig in deep, pray through the verses as you read. He will meet you there. He will bless you. He will guide you and He will strengthen you.

As you continue this daily habit, you will begin to love Him more, you will begin to hear His voice, your faith will grow stronger, and your life will become happier. You will begin to see problems solved. You will see relationships healed. You will begin to have hope and you will become excited about the future that God has for you. Today choose life by choosing to walk every day with God.

Dear Lord, 

Thank you for giving me the choice. Today Lord, I choose life. I choose to follow you always. Help me to know you more as I read the Bible. Increase my faith and trust in you in all my hard situations. Help me to hear your voice guiding me and correcting me as I spend time in prayer and in the Bible.

Help me to make the right choices when it is so hard to do. Help me to hold fast to You when I am tired and weak. Today Lord, I choose life by choosing to make you my life. 

In Jesus' Name, 

Amen.