In the early morning when I wake up, get my
cup of coffee, and have my quiet time with You is my favorite time of the day.
Late at night, when I make my rounds,
shutting everything down for the night, lying on my bed waiting for sleep to
come is my favorite time of the night.
Beginning and ending each of my days with
You brings delight to my heart, peace to my mind, and refreshment to my soul.
You are with me throughout the day, but I
have to be a bit more intentional about recognizing and responding to Your
Presence.
The many affairs of life tend to crowd in,
requiring and demanding my attention.
But my mornings and days end spent with You
are a natural rhythm and ritual for me.
The older I get the longer my morning
extends and the earlier I end my day…
More time with You.
It always
mystifies me when people tell me they have a difficult time finding time for a
spiritual discipline of a Quiet Time. To
me that is like telling me they don’t have time to breathe. I used to go into high gear and explain the
necessity of this time, and strongly encourage them to at least make a
commitment of five minutes a day. But I
have come to see the futility of that and don’t do it anymore. Now I just feel sad because I see their loss
and God’s loss as well.
It’s difficult to
make people drink if they aren’t thirsty…so now I simply pray that they will at
some point become thirsty and drink from the fountain of living water. I can’t make people love God and want to be
in his Presence. That is an inside response
that only can be discovered by each individual for themselves. What I can do is point them to the One who
fulfills all thirst when they ask for a drink.
(I Peter 3:15)
I am called to
live my life right, before God, and before the world. When I do that God will be honored. Right living requires a rightly formed
conscience and obedience to the example and teachings of Jesus. That will result in being salt and light to
the world. In my repentance and my times
of refreshment while being in God’s Presence, and in my ability to know and
share the reason for the love and hope I have inside, then others will
recognize that I have been with Jesus and then respond as the woman at the well
in John 4:12-15, “Give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty.” Then I can point them to the fountain of
living water that becomes “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
It is God who
wishes to draw all people to himself. He
desires us to be reflections of his love to meet that end. Unfortunately many times we are stumbling blocks
and builders of barriers as we act in our own power and arrogance. It is this
that the Christian Church itself needs to repent of before calling others to
repent of their ways.
God has nothing
but love for all people and it grieves him when people reject that love, “not
wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter
5:9). Those who love God and follow
Jesus need to stay out of their way; we need to help as reflectors, not hinder
as repulsers.
We need to follow
and obey Jesus as he calls each of us to follow and obey. Our lives are our witness and our words and
actions are to be salt and light, to create a thirst and to show the Way.
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