A Stitch in Time

How badly do you really need God?  If the day passed and you hadn't prayed or read your Bible or sought the Lord in any  way, would it be troublesome to you?  Would you be aware of the power of the Holy Spirit slipping from you; are you distracted enough to be content with a day outside of God?  You can do all sorts of "God things" and never have any conscious sense that the Lord is there with you.  We are so entranced by the machinations of day-to-day living and yet do we have the sense to want more of God than we possess at the moment?  Have we grown sensible and realistic and hardly in any way supernatural?  The commonplace Bible reading that is habitual is of greater use to God than all the outstanding accomplishments of the most skilled trader on Wall Street.  You will gain more out of five minutes alone with God in a quiet moment than all the frantic activity you have planned for your day.  As you engage God, God engages you.  He enters your planning, your decision making and your reactions.  You can work without God and many, many do!  But what good is that?  A pause to readmit the Lord Jesus into your specific moment will work a miracle in your moving forward.  The Lord will show you things as you branch out into the tasks you have, show you your heart, show you the hearts of others, give you wisdom about how you go about even the simplest and most trivial of chores you face.  The Lord will hone your attention, stir up your passion for the proper things, grant you courage and peace as you encounter obstacles.  What may seem like chance encounters will be divine appointments as you stir  around your devotion to Christ.  It is unlikely everything will be easy simply because you give God your time; it may in fact be more challenging.  But you will have the assurance that what comes to you today will be for your good and your life will spill out into the lives of others who need your hands and feet and head and mouth to be completely given over to the crucified life of Christ embedded in you.  Others may not be able to tell how much of your Lord is coming out of you at any given moment but you will know and the more of Him you see in your actions, the greater your joy will be in what work you have today.

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."  John 4:10 NIV