Time for God

Hey guys! It’s Christmas Eve 2012, and the world hasn’t ended yet it seems, so joy! I can’t believe it’s almost 2013. The clock is spinning as fast as a fan these days

So today I want to share my experience from a few days back, how God taught me a new lesson. If you’ve ever experienced being taught by God, you’d know he’s just the best teacher ever. So here goes..

As you know, it’s Christmas break, so I have lots of time to do stuff I wouldn’t be able to do during term. One thing I’ve been doing a lot recently, as a guy, is, of course, playing games. In particular there’s one online game that I’ve been really into these past few days. But the game itself isn’t important to this story, so let’s just call it game X.

So one day the servers of this online game went down for routine maintenance. The maintenance was scheduled from 3-7 pm, so for a few hours I was without my favorite holidaytime activity (I wish I could say my favorite holidaytime activity was studying, or reading the Bible, or something else productive, I wish I could).

The question then was: what was I to do while waiting? Now I could’ve just played another game, or watch TV, or move on to some other form of unproductive entertainment, but somehow I ended up browsing and listening to worship songs on iTunes and YouTube. If any of my readers know me well, you’d know I’m a musical person. I love music in general, I love worship music, and I love worshiping God with music.

So there I was having a good time listening, and then I came across this video of Kari Jobe teaching about worship. Something nagged at me for me to watch it. So even though it was over 30 minutes, I watched it.

If you have time, and you love worshiping God, I encourage you to watch that video also. But one thing she mentioned that really struck me was how important it was for a Christian to (routinely) have a PRIVATE time of worship, a time of encountering God, to press in and learn more about Him.

Then I think to the lives of Christ’s followers nowadays, and my life in particular. How much of our daily 24 hours are we giving to him? How much of our weekly 168? How much of our monthly 720? How much time are we dedicating to the “pursuit” of God? I am on holiday right now, and most of my time is spent doing unproductive things. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have fun during the holidays, but the truth is if we are to grow as Christ’s followers, if we are to know Him more and be transformed to be more like Him, then we need to spend time with Him. We need to have private times of worship, we need to meditate on His Word, and we need to do it routinely, not just “whenever we feel like it”

If you are already doing your devotions (saat teduh) daily, that’s good, but I encourage you to do more than that. At least, if your devotions consist of just simply reading the Word, reading the devotional book, then a short prayer, then I think we can do a little bit more, mmhmm? Take time to meditate on the Word, to prayerfully seek His will, and ask God to reveal Himself to you, to meet with you.

The world as we know it hasn’t ended, but if you look at the state of the world today, sometimes maybe you wish it had, because the world today is full of wars, tragedies, heinous crimes, and hate, people not caring for each other. This generation needs leaders in Christ, who will stand up for what they believe in, who will go against the flow of today’s corrupt and decaying world, and win this generation back for God.

But those leaders first need to be shaped and molded to be Christlike. and how’s that gonna happen if they, we, don’t give time for God?

So that’s my lesson, and I hope you can learn from it too! Maybe this holiday season, instead of seeing how many games we can finish, how many books we can read, how many seasons of a TV series we can watch, or even how much we can study; let us see how much we can grow in God.

God bless guys. Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

-ka