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
