Can I be honest with you about something? My morning time has been awful lately. My quiet time with the Lord has felt more like God and I are just in a texting relationship rather than me being close to Him.
The part that is the most disappointing about this particular desert I find myself in:
I did it to myself. I over-scheduled my life and didn’t give myself enough time to dwell in the presence of the Lord.
I got so busy, that I forfeited intimacy for productivity.
And the ironic part of the previous statement is that it is false productivity, because if my relationship with the Lord isn’t thriving, then I’m not really thriving. And if I am not thriving my productivity suffers.
A.W. Tozer says it well, “If a man wants to be used by God, he cannot spend all of his time with people.”
How can I let God use me, how can I be Spirit-led if I am not willing to give time back to God?
The words of the Psalmist resonate:
Psalm 27:4
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
The word that jumps out to me in this verse is the word “dwell.” Dwell means to “live in.” And I love the idea, that when I spend time with the Lord I “live in” or “dwell” in His presence. And in turn, He dwells in me. All of this is made possible by the time I am willing to surrender to the relationship I have with Him.
Romans 8:9 says it like this:
You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.
When I read these verses I see the bigger picture God has for my life, and I think of the vision He has for all of us:
We dwell with the Lord, and He dwells with us.
When we live into that vision we become the most productive co-laborers of the Kingdom. When we give ourselves to the Lord and let the relationship with Jesus grow the relationship is cemented by the very thing that once caused it to feel fragmented in the first place: Time.
When we fail to give the time we are separated, but when we are brave enough to carve out an intentional relationship with God amazing things will happen.
This week, as you examine your own calendar, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate what time we are giving to the Lord versus the time we are giving to others in the name of false productivity.