“By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.”
»Elisabeth Elliot
We ought to pray that He would expose anything in my life which is not from Him, awakening our ears that we might live by your word.
Are we eager to know what the Father wanted Him to obey? When quantity isn’t important to you – we only need a few lines that we might be doers of the Word. Is there something in that word that you want to speak to me, that I can obey?
Is it bad is an exceedingly low bar. Is it best – what we do in our spare time? Are we gathering the fragments – we are listening to so many people. Can we listen to the Lord, so His voice isn’t shut out? Are we willing to use spare minutes not to take time off from the Lord but to use little minutes from the Lord? “Why don’t you call me?” He is asking. Are we consumed with the things of this world, are we able to control the times we are consumed?
Are our inward ears listening, our inward eyes watching?
Jesus had to learn how to fight distraction too.
A lofty thought, is one who really thinks he knows a lot about the world. Yet it is not in our similarity to the world that draws the world to us it is in our difference. I want to be different, I don’t want to be of this world.
“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape {endure} all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” »Luke 21:34-36
dis·si·pa·tion
disəˈpāSH(ə)n/
Definition: squandering of money, energy, or resources.
synonyms: squandering, frittering (away), waste, misspending…
The Lord delivers us, it is all from the Lord when we are delivered. If we are sincere He can deliver us from these things which we are obsessed with. Learn from this and apply it. Think about the discipline we take to look into the things we are obsessed with, do we take the Lord and knowing Him deeply, just as seriously; using our time wisely? Have you even once prayed that you would have the strength to endure.
Can you acquire patience or gentleness from studying the Bible? We have to live with Him and exercise, walking with the Lord.
"And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart." »Luke 2:51
We must continue in subjection, to obey – and the most time we must obey is in the most ordinary and trivial areas in our lives. It please the Father to crush Jesus. A body you prepared for me; His Father crushed Him – a daily crushing, as He lived with imperfect parents and siblings. He humbled Himself during a very ordinary life situation to bring about a brokenness in Jesus and an authority from which He could minister.
David learned to be a man after God’s own heart in the pasture. Most of us are living in the pasture – our work life, the place we are in right now. We might be tempted to despise the pasture. It is God’s appointed training ground to prepare you for ministry. We learn from this season in life. Are we faithful there? God’s equipping you for what will come. Don’t despise it. That is the place God has placed you to exercise, you’d learn how to fight; praise; serve. The fact that your years are hidden are the cause for rejoicing! He was patient to live where God had placed Him if God would have Him there. Jesus was totally surrendered to God’s will. We want to hurry up and get on to the next thing. We often long to run ahead and are discontent where God has placed us, we want to do something big rather than be hidden. How much resistance there is in wanting to be hidden is as much there is resistance in us to being prepared for what God has next. He will work in us what He has planted in us.
May we be willing to read His word to see what we can obey, to read the word in our free times to spend them getting to know Him more. It doesn't happen automatically but as we walk with Him. May we be pleased with a totally hidden life. We need an un-distracted devotion to Jesus.*
"For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,
“Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay;
but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.”
But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls." »Hebrews 10:34-39
*Jeremy Utley - Young Adults Conference 2018
