Saturday, September 23, 2023

Who would you like to spend a day with?

Think about the things we do everyday—go to work, spend time with our family, eat, or maybe watch TV. Whether it’s helping others or getting rest, we find value in all of these things. But do we see value in spending time with our Creator? God created us to spend time with Him. By doing so, we are honouring Him, helping others, and getting spiritual rest and peace.

Do we ever just spend time with God because of who He is, not for what He can do for us? Have we spent time with Him to tell Him how much we appreciate Him, and to thank Him for all that He has done for us - not just to give Him a whole list of everything we need to be happy?  It is easy to be busy all the time with an endless to-do list instead of stopping to spend time alone with God.  Whatever we are doing—or not doing—the truth is, at this moment, each one of us is as close to God as we choose to be.

In the Gospel of Luke there was a woman named Martha who made a choice. She kept herself so busy while Jesus was visiting her and her sister.  Her sister, Mary,  seated herself at the Lord's feet and was listening to His teaching, but Martha, overly occupied and too busy, was distracted with much serving. She came up to Jesus and said, “Lord, is it nothing to You that my sister has left me to serve alone?”

Martha was distracted from Jesus by work! Do you and I ever find ourselves saying, “I do all the work around here. Everybody else is always having a good time while I just work, work, work, work!” Martha may have thought the same thing, because she pleaded with Jesus for Mary to help her, but the Lord replied to her by saying, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; there is need of only ONE thing and Mary has chosen  the better part..."

So what is really important?  Work is definitely important, but it was not the most important thing for Martha to be doing at that particular time. Learning what to do and when to do it is a very key issue because when we do the right thing at the wrong time it becomes the wrong thing to do. This was not the time for Martha to be working because Jesus was passing by and had stopped in her house. There was an opportunity for her to spend time with Him that she might not ever get again. What Martha needed was to make a better choice; she needed to make a wiser choice, and that choice was to spend time with Jesus.

We need to begin to discern the better choices in our lives, and we need to make those choices.  Time is the number one thing we need to choose to invest for intimacy in our relationship with God. God loves us so much and He wants to have a personal, intimate relationship with us.

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing
He bled and died to take away my sin

Those words certainly show He is worth spending time with today? If we want to have a closer walk with Him, we will need to make some changes and some of them will be challenging.  To make more time with God a priority, we may have to say "no" to some people that do not want to hear "no," and we may have to cut off some things that really are not of any use in our lives anymore. But the reward of growing closer to God will always be greater than the difficulties we experience to get there. We need to make  a determined decision today to get as close to God as we can be. 