Satisfying a Deep Longing

“I don’t know if we’re going to make it,” said the man sitting across from me in my office. “I want us to stay together, but...” his voice trailed off.

He and his wife had been married for ten years. They had a young son in the second grade, and another child on the way. He was working on his masters degree, coaching at the local high school, and working his full-time job which often required overtime. His wife was working full-time as a homemaker and working a part-time job, and involved in their son’s school, and she was a little more than a month away from delivering their second child.

Staring into the void between us he said, “We’re both just so busy. We’re both so tired.”

This conversation never took place, but it could have! The situation I described is fictitious and yet it describes too many.

Any given day, when I ask people “how are you?”, most of the time I will hear one of two responses. 1) Busy or 2) Tired. This is their casual response. It’s more honest than the “Fine. How’re you?” people would often say as they continued walking by without any intent on listening to your answer. I had a friend in college when people would ask greet him with “Hi, how are you?” He’d answer with, “I’m dying of cancer, and you?” to which most people said, “Oh, I’m fine too,” then they’d stop and look at him, and he’d start to laugh.

Relationships take time. We know this, but then we don’t live like we do.

John C. Maxwell an expert in leadership shared that we have time for what we make time for. He goes on to share that it is not about time management, because time continues to move whether we think we are managing it or not. Each one of us has 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours in a day, seven days to a week, and 52 weeks in a year. It really is about planning how you will use that time.

Relationships mean paying attention. Paying attention to your friend. Paying attention to your spouse. Paying attention to your child. Paying attention to your parent. And yes, Paying attention to GOD!!!

I recently ran across an article from the magazine Christianity Today back in 2011. It was titled: Hardworking Sloths: How our busyness can disguise spiritual laziness, by Carolyn Arends.

As the article opens she quotes Eugene Peterson:

Christianity Today, 2011, Volume 55, Numbers 1–12 Hardworking Sloths: How Our Busyness Can Disguise Spiritual Laziness (Carolyn Arends)

Sloth is most often evidenced in busyness … in frantic running around, trying to be everything to everyone, and then having no time to listen or pray, no time to become the person who is doing these things.

I have yet to meet a Christian who said they didn’t want to grow in their faith. Yet I’ve met many a professing Christian who proclaim faith in God without spending any time with God. They profess the Bible to be God’s Word, but they never read it. They profess belief in the power of prayer but they never take the time to practice prayer. They profess the important role churches play in our communities without being involved in churches and what they’re doing in communities.

Arends continues:

Christianity Today, 2011, Volume 55, Numbers 1–12 Hardworking Sloths: How Our Busyness Can Disguise Spiritual Laziness (Carolyn Arends)

Part of the problem is that spiritual receptivity requires unglamorous practices like prayer, time in Scripture, and attentiveness to what God is doing in the people around me.

Spending time in God’s Word, talking with God in prayer, and being attentive to what god is doing int he people around us, takes discipline.

Hebrews 12:11 ESV

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Playing is different than competing. Competitors prepare for the game, meet, or match. They spend time in the weight room; they spend time practicing basic skills over and over, and over, and over, and over. Going through the same motion until it becomes habit.

The Apostle Paul writes to the Roman Church:

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We all want something new, we want something that is wow, we want a new revelation of God in our lives. And yet...

and yet...

It always seem to come from the same source, it is from God’s word that we get those spiritual insights…actually too often it is from people who have spend the time in God’s Word that we get our spiritual insights.

How often do we hear people proposing that we get back to basics. This is basic!

Practicing the spiritual disciplines of spending time in God’s Word, and spending time praying, listening to our hearts, listening for God’s heart.

These disciplines are much like scales for the music student. They are simple. They are basic. They are tedious.

But they prepare us.

Arends says in her article:

Christianity Today, 2011, Volume 55, Numbers 1–12 Hardworking Sloths: How Our Busyness Can Disguise Spiritual Laziness (Carolyn Arends)

But part of being responsible is being response-able: centering our lives in such a way that we can respond to the world around us with the mind of Christ. Such response-ability is impossible if our obligations crowd out any opportunity to get to know him better.

We need to be disciplined in our faith, and I want to encourage you in that.

1 Corinthians 9:24–27 ESV

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

I want to encourage you to get into a regular form of Bible Reading and regular time in prayer.

There are all kinds of plans out there, on the internet and I have software to create just about any reading plan you might want - just let me know.

Here are some ideas off the top of my head:

For Bible reading:

Read a chapter of proverbs each day. Whatever day of the month it is, read that chapter.

Read the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

For Prayer:

Commit to a regular time of prayer. whatever time works best for you, just make it a regular time.

Spend time silently listening for what God might be saying to you. - this is hard, but I know you can do it.

Use the Lord’s prayer - either section by section as a spring board, or simply pray the Lord’s prayer over and over.

Whatever you choose to do, remember God has invited you into that time together.

It’s easy for us to be busy. I believe that it was Martin Luther who said, “I have so much to accomplish today I don’t have time not to pray.”

It’s easy for us to feel guilty - don’t. It takes practice, it takes time, it takes discipline. You can do it.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”