Making More Time for God

"Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness." Ephesians 5:11 The Message (MSG)

by Alexandra Copeland 

Someone said to me that she wished she was a child again, because she believed that children were better able to hear the voice of God. So I asked her, “When did you stop being a child in God’s eyes?” I understood what she meant. She was no doubt referring to the purity and freshness of our experience with God when we first came to the faith. Everything feels new, and we are enamored because we’ve discovered what it means to be touched supernaturally. As we proceed to settle into the reality of spirituality, sometimes the routines of life cloud the freshness we once experienced, and we start to feel as though we are not hearing God’s voice or experiencing Him as clearly or supernaturally as we once did.

This can be a very frustrating reality, because there is nothing that compares to being able to hear God’s directives and to recognize His guidance. It gives us confidence. It assures us that we are moving in the right direction. We know that God has a plan for us, and if we walk in His plan blessings and abundance will meet us. When we don’t walk in His plan for our lives, we are met with chaos and confusion. Things just don’t work out, and we know in our hearts that something isn’t quite right.

 

Getting to Know God Better
God wanted a family. This is a very simple statement, but it is so incredibly rich that none of us can really know the depth of it. We cannot fathom how much God desires that as many people as possible become a part of His family. So it cannot be lost on us how important it is for us to get to know God better and better as we progress through the faith; because increasing our knowledge about God enriches our relationship with Him. Some of us may not take the time to really zone in with God, but in order to live through Christ, our relationship with Heavenly Father has to be center stage every moment of every day. 

 

Some of us were born under circumstances that may not have been optimal. Maybe we had a rough childhood, and we never felt valued or validated by our parents. This is such a challenging way to grow up, because it robs people of so much. Parents should teach their children to love God, and to listen for His voice in all things. They should also teach their kids to love themselves. When this doesn’t happen, children can grow into adults that are sometimes very sad. They feel an emptiness that can sometimes spill over into their relationships with God once they make Christ the head of their lives.

Either we forget or we’ve never learned how intimacy is developed, but it must be cultivated through spending quality time with the object of your affection. After we are birthed into a new spiritual reality, time management becomes even more of a responsibility because we must invest time to learn about God through Christ, so that He can then nurture us in all the ways that we need to grow and mature spiritually.  

God has predestined each of us, and He has a plan for our lives. This plan includes learning about Him, because learning about Him is the way that you and I reach our true potential in Christ and begin to experience a life of peace and abundance. All of us can stand to learn more about what it takes to develop intimacy with God, and if we will pray earnestly and spend more time in His Word, Heavenly Father will help us to get to know Him better as we seek to grow in our relationship with Him.  

God Optimizes our Time
You may have a very busy schedule. Even though we live in a world with every time-saving technology and gadget there is, we seem to be busier than ever and never have enough time to do all that we believe is required of us. Ephesians 5:11-17 The Message (MSG) tells us, “11-16 Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ. Wake up from your sleep, climb out of your coffins; Christ will show you the light! So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times! 17 Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.”

We spend a whole lot of time on things that have absolutely nothing to do with the thing that Heavenly Father has called and purposed us to do. Quiet meditation on Christ helps us to come center with what is truly important in life, because as Christians, our responsibility is to make doubly sure we understand what God wants from us and then respond to it.

A wise bit of counsel from Jesus Christ is to count the costs. Sometimes it is necessary to take stock and rally the courage to release obligations and activities that are consuming our time with very little benefit in return. It is an absolute requirement to free up some of our time for quiet reflection, meditation, and study. This will forever and always ensure that we are maximizing our time appropriately.

Matthew 6:33 tells us to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness first. Often we will seek our own righteousness first. We allow the opinion of others to matter too much, and we seek their approval, praise, and companionship while putting attentiveness to matters of the Spirit on the back burner. This is a recipe for burn-out. We will lose time, stamina, and momentum very quickly this way. God’s business must be first, because He is the glue. He holds the earth in space, and He holds our lives together piece by piece. He will optimize our time. He’ll take care of all the details as we take care of those things He has called us to.

Getting to know God through His Word, and being attentive to spending quality time with Him helps us to develop spiritually; therefore, it helps us to grow in our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The ultimate goal is for us to walk out the things that we’ve learned under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that indwells us. Then in every way we are more and more like Christ. It’s not enough to love and learn the Word, we have to witness its power as God works through us to impact others in the most loving way. We can face the highs and lows of life, and continually experience a freshness and newness in our walks if we make more time for God. This is always going to be the solution to successfully managing our time, because this is truly the only way to get the most out of our lives.■

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Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.