Make Time for God

You don't build a house in a day. It takes one brick at a time. I have many long term goals that i want to achieve, but daily tasks and present distractions seem to prevent me from gaining closer to my goals. I want to grow in my relationship with God. I want to grow in my relationships with others. I want to grow in God's Word. I want to grow in prayer and in many other spiritual disciplines.I want to grow in knowledge and in counseling/ministry skills. I want to grow in righteousness, holiness and purity. I want to grow in my love for other people. I have all these areas that need sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit. We need to partner with the Holy Spirit, because God doesn't just magically do all our spiritual transformation for us. We also can't attempt to grow spiritually by solely depending on our own strength. We need to practice spiritual disciplines that allow the Holy Spirit to work and grow in us towards spiritual maturity.

God disciplines us for our growth. Yes we can train and discipline ourselves to grow in many areas. But when it comes to spiritual formation we need the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit transforms our beliefs, desires, will, emotions, imagination, etc. so that we can become more like Christ. I want to invest my life into knowing God and sharing Him with others. I feel like i haven't been growing lately. I make excuses and turn to other things to try and satisfy. Perhaps this struggle of trying to be with God and resisting temptations of idleness are part of the sanctification process. What has my heart been concerned with lately? Where has it been? Turn to God, put your trust in Him. Deliver me from my wickedness and idleness Lord. Destroy the things that hinder me and draw me closer to you.
 
God can communicate to us in a variety of ways. How is God trying to get your attention? When do you hear God? When do you feel God's presence? There are also a variety of ways to worship God. We not only need the intellectual knowledge of who God is, but we also need the experiential knowledge of who He is. God as an emotionally charged being is always pursuing after us relentlessly. No matter how disobedient we've been lately or no matter how far we've ran, God still welcomes us graciously.

Making time for a daily devotional with God makes a tremendous difference. If we don't practice any spiritual disciplines and are inconsistent we probably aren't relying on God enough. We replenish our bodies with food every few hours, but we don't replenish our souls as often. We need patience, reverence, and the desire to receive from Him. Now days everything is go, go, go. I get impatient just waiting for a 1 minute hulu commercial. I get impatient jus waiting for an iphone app to load. I get impatient waiting for food in a fast food drive through. The problem is that we have a short attention span and have lost the spiritual discipline of waiting on God. Yes we can abide with God and talk to Him anywhere at anytime. But there's something to being intentional with giving God your full attention. There just always seems to be so much running through my mind. I need peace, solitude and tranquility.

We get so easily burnt out, exhausted, stressed out, worried, and anxious because we don't greatly value making time to receive from God. If you really wanted to seek Him more, you would already be doing so. If you really wanted to watch a movie or television show, you would make time in your busy schedule to watch it. God cannot just be one aspect of our lives. Growing in our relationship with God and growing in the fruits of the spirit need to be our greatest desire. Everything else will flow from our walk with God.

We are in dire need of patience. We need to slow ourselves down in order to block out all the noise in our life. How can we say, "Oh yeah, God is first and most important" when our lives don't? Honestly, shouldn't spending time with God, worshiping, serving and being in fellowship be our greatest desire? Isn't God supposed to be our greatest joy? Then why don't we simply make ourselves available to Him? Slow down, stop, enjoy and savor the riches of God's love. What is the Holy Spirit doing in your life? How is God challenging or disciplining you? In what area is God calling you to grow in? K stop reading my blog and get off the internet. Make time for God.