special feature by Pastor’s wife, Diane Scallon
For those of you who have smartphones, please take a moment to check the battery status of your phone. In the battery section, it will give you a percentage of what app is used the most. Where is your Bible app in comparison to Facebook? Where is your Bible app in comparison to Instagram? How about Snapchat? Whatsapp?
Knowing that many of you do read your actual physical Bibles, the same application still applies. How much time of the day do we spend reading or thinking about God’s word, and how much time do we spend thinking about unprofitable things?
It is so easy for us to get “busy” with the mundane things… the frivolous things… the unimportant things. Many would say, “I am so busy! I don’t have time to [fill in the blank].” We spend countless hours scrolling through social media, comparing ourselves to others, wondering about what does not matter, worrying about tomorrow, etc. We are all guilty of this.
I want to encourage all of us to take a moment, pause, and self-examine. How are we spending our time?
God says to give to Him from the first of the best. This doesn’t just apply to giving, as most would think. It must also be applied to our time! How are we using our time to glorify God? Are we making excuses, justifying our poor usage of the hours God has given us in a day, or saying that we will deal with it later?
In a world where there are so many people, apps, connections, work, demands etc. to keep up with, we ought to be fighting aggressively to spend time with God! God wants “alone time” with us, not only “corporate time.”
He knows every part of us, yet He delights greatly in our coming to Him in praise, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication and confession. The moment we realize the importance of spending time with our Jesus, is the moment our lives will start molding into His image.
Even though our relationship with God is unlike any relationship here on earth, there are certainly a lot of similarities. The more time you spend with someone, the deeper you cultivate that relationship. My favorite relationship example that the Bible depicts for us is a father and child relationship. Having children exposes you to a new type of love, and it is just a small glimpse into how great the love that our Father in heaven has for us. I love our boys so deeply, and I can’t even fathom how much more God loves us, as His children, but He does.
As we consider the importance of how we use our time, it is vital that we understand the significance of spending personal time with God, but also the significance of spending corporate time together as a body of Christ. Neither should be neglected. Our reliance on Jesus is much like the vine and branches. The branch is directly connected to the vine, much like us to Christ, and when we are His, we share in a community. There is such a beauty to being part of the family of Jesus.
The sooner we realize that our life is NOT about us, but about God, the sooner we will be able to start cultivating a deeper vertical relationship with God, and deeper horizontal relationships with people around us.
A simple, yet powerful outcome of spending quality time with God is JOY! Remember the song: In your presence there is fullness of joy? Psalm 16:11 shows us the promise that is fullness of joy. The devil is out there to destroy that joy, and this should be a reminder to us to desperately cling to Jesus, with all we have, fighting insistently to make Jesus a priority.
How can we prune our use of time, so that we can have a deep meaningful relationship with God and those around us?