Write out a plan of your typical day. Find a spot where you can meet with God for about 30 minutes.
Read Exodus 12:14
It’s so easy to forget about God. With life running at such a hectic pace, God often just dissolves into the background. We don’t intentionally plan to forget about God but it just happens. He just dissolves. There’s the kids, the spouse, the shopping, the workload, the sports and on and on it goes. I often think that full time ministry is a recipe for forgetting God. We have all the above plus more concerns and worries that can often drive us away from God.
How often we look back longingly to the good old days when life was simpler. But let me share with you a typical day in the life of a Christian woman in my grandmother’s era. She would get up around 4:30am and spend an hour or two in prayer. Then she’d make breakfast for the entire family - 5-8 children plus a husband on average, not the average 2.3 kids of today. Breakfast was a cooked meal. Cardboard food in a box hadn’t been invented yet! Clean up was the mother’s duty. Then the house had to be cleaned from top to bottom. The shopping had to be done and the garden kept. Most things that we take for granted in the kitchen and think that they came from the supermarket aisle (bread, cakes etc) had to be baked. After all this, the children arrived home and washing, ironing etc had to be done. When “Father” came home dinner was on the table and ‘Mother’ diligently cleaned up. Before bed she had had an hour or two with God and had already taught the kids from the Word of God and sung several hymns with the family.
Christian ministers were equally busy but never complained. They spent hours in prayer early and late in the day. They visited the congregation regularly, travelled hours to preach in various villages and often wrote 2 or more sermons during the week as well as engaging in many civic duties throughout the town.
Truth be told, not many of us would really long for the good old days if we could experience just one day in their life.
Yet it seems that even in their business they had right and good priorities. They didn’t work 24/7.They didn't worship money and riches. They had no need for that have-it-all lifestyle. They made God a priority. They spent time with God. They spent time with God’s people. They kept and protected the Sabbath and they valued relationship. What they valued and prioritised is encapsulated in one single verse, Exodus 12:14.
Our problem today is not being overly busy. Our problem is not the great amount of stress in our lives. Our problem is not that we have so much to do in so little time. Our problem is that we fail to prioritise. We fail to put God as our number one priority. We fail to appoint time in our diaries with God. We fail to protect the idea of the Sabbath and we plan more and more and more into our week with out concern for God, for His Word and for relationship.
Perhaps if we put God first and refused to compromise on our time with Him then everything else would fall into place.
Prayer:
As you engage in adoration, confession and thanksgiving focus on your busy lifestyle and ask God for wisdom, insight and the courage to make changes.
How will you be praying today???
Adoration:
Confession:
Thanks:
Supplication:
¨ Pray that God would be showing you and 20 other people in your congregation (pray for them by name) the beauty of resting in God and the necessity of prioritising time with Him.
¨ Pray for Shiloh Church ministries that God would be raising up workers and resources for them to continue feeding and caring for orphans, caring for widows, training up and skilling widows in sewing, supporting people with rick-shaws and so on.
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