Spiritual Renewal Conference this past week was a great time of fellowship, encouragement, and challenge for my walk with Christ. I enjoyed spending the first four evenings of the week focusing on gathering with our church to walk through the book of Philippians. However, setting aside four evenings in a row also messed up my “Rhythm.” My normal schedule didn’t work this week (though to be completely honest, I am not a heavily scheduled person at all). Even with my loose schedule, I had to push certain things off until later in the week or give up on them completely. Throughout the week many of the teens I spoke to echoed that their schedules would be changing rapidly as well. School will be starting soon, vacations and travel are lightening up and many of us are preparing to settle into a new schedule, or rhythm, for life. Knowing that my rhythm is changing and using Spiritual Renewal Conference as a launchpad, I want to be intentional about making time and space for eternal and important matters, rather than just drifting into a new schedule and letting things that hold no eternal value take up my time on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Establishing (or re-establishing) daily spiritual disciplines. When I have a consistent schedule, my daily spiritual disciplines flourish. Then, random stuff happens. My life gets disrupted, I stay up too late, have to wake up too early, a need arises from my friends, family, school, or job, or a great opportunity comes my way. None of these things are bad, but they rock my schedule. I start operating based on what needs to get done rather than crafting my ideal schedule with ample time for God. My daily disciplines get shoved aside. Because everything else in life seems to carry some form of pressure, my disciplines get shoved aside. Here are a few adjustments that I have to make to my beliefs:
Time with God isn’t an ideal bonus to a great day, it's a necessity. This is something that I have heard said, and I believe. But somewhere in the back of my mind, there is this whisper “Time with God is good, but I don’t need it. After all, God has already saved me.” This whisper makes an incredibly wrong assumption. Just because God has saved us, does not mean that we don’t need Him anymore. Because we have recognized Christ’s mercy, love, and power, we recognize how much we need Him to do anything of value at all. We are fully dependent on Christ in everything we do. If we want to think the right way, we need Christ. If we want to feel the right way, we need Christ. If we want to act the right way we need Christ. When we don’t rely on Christ, we have cheap imitations of the right thoughts, feelings, and actions. Our salvation points to a greater need for God each day, not a lesser need.
Our relationship with God is not something that we fit into our schedule, it is the thing that defines our schedule. If we can not glorify God in whatever we are doing, then we shouldn’t be doing it (Col 3:17). Now how does that play out? If I am at my job, am I living and communicating the gospel message to coworkers or others? If I am at school am I respecting my teachers, and showing grace to my fellow students? If I am spending time with friends or family am I encouraging them? Am I discipling and being discipled? Am I an active witness for Christ? With my free time and rest time am I being refreshed by God through His Word, prayer, and His people, or do I chase distraction or my desires to the point that God is not present or welcome in my free time? When we are simply trying to make God a part of our schedule, God gets cut out when our schedule gets rocked, but when all parts of our schedule are fully devoted to God, even when our schedule is rocked, the focus does not change.
As you prepare for the next week on the heels of the welcome and encouraging interruption from Spiritual Emphasis Week, where in your schedule can you make time for God? Where in your schedule can you lift God high as you interact with the world?
Serving Together
Brother Tyler