Here it is, very late at night (my alarm will be going off in just over three hours), and everyone in the house is sleeping (Max included) except me. Why? Not for any reason except that I was hungry and needed to unwind a bit before sleep found me after a night out with friends. So what did I spend this valuable time doing? Praying? Reading my Bible? Contemplating God's goodness to me this day?
Nope. I spent it on facebook.
So it is that I find myself discouraged, as it comes high time to turn out the lights. How is it that I can go about my day so completely ignorant to the fact that God is guiding my every step and sustaining my every breath? And more importantly, He is sovereign over the general patterns of my life, large and small- the ones that lead me to prosperity and joy and the ones that send me scuttling back to Him with my tail between my legs. And yet I live as though He does not exist, day in and day out. I think about what I want for my daughter, and too often salvation finds it's self too far down on the list. This reflects my total misunderstanding of the spiritual realm, placing it on a level with make-believe worlds that we may or may not one day find to be real.
I don't want to live like it's not real anymore.
Dr. Taccit always says that if we really believed what we believed was really real, it would change the way we lived. This is the heart of the issue. I know that God exists and that He is good and that He loves me, but some part of me is able to dismiss these vital truths as though they were secondary to the realities of flesh and blood, time and money which rule this world of dust. Why is that? Not enough time spent in the Word, not enough time spent in prayer, and a failure to engage in public worship must be among the answers.
Oh God, grant me the grace to change.
Help me to cling to You above all else, to know your presence at all times, and to seek to know You better with each passing day. Help me to remember that mediocre Christianity is not true Christianity- that You want all of me, not some unused part that can be spared for devotions each morning and church on Sunday. Guide me to those events in life that would cause me to need You more, and give me the strength to resist those unnecessary distractions that make this world seem so all-consuming!
And most of all, direct my gaze to the Cross.
How strange to think that there was a time in this world when Christ dwelt among us, and a place in this world where his feet have walked. A hill where heavy drops of his blood fell to the ground. A place where sin was once and for all given a retribution, and the veil of the temple was torn in two so that we might enter that most holy of holies. That's what this really all comes down to- because His blood was shed, the blood of the goats and sacrificial lambs no longer have to be. And if we have been given such glorious entrance into God's very presence, without the shelter of a veil in-between, then there is only one question remaining.
Why don't we drink from the endless droughts of this glorious privilege every day, every hour, and every minute that we live?
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