from our weekly update newsletter

What’s the first thing that slips from your list of to-do things when you get busy?

And be honest.

How far would it be from the truth if I dared to guess that God was the one of the first things that slip from our mind? I only guess that because it often happens to me.

We get slammed with homework, assignments, meetings, deadlines, social requirements… and we get overwhelmed.

So, we decide that we need to sleep in a bit, and we don’t go to church.

We’re so tired from all the things we do, so God won’t mind if we skip today.

We deserve a break from all the hard work we did, God would want us to take the day off. Besides, we’ll make it up with my devotional time.

But from experience, we never make up with our devotional time. Because, in fact, devotional time with God is the first thing to go for me. When things get busy, the first thing that goes is the time I spent with God. Instead of reading Scripture for meditation and to spend time with God, scripture reading becomes purely for studying and preparing. Meeting with people takes up my time with meeting up with God. My prayer life becomes nearly non-existent.

On a recent travel, due to circumstances out of my control, I had to sleep in a smoking hotel room. I thought I could do it. But I woke up in the middle of the night, barely able to breath. My throat was sore. I was coughing. Everything smelled of smoke. I took a shower, but even the water smelled of smoke! I felt sluggish due to the lack of sleep and the inhaling of stale smoke. The following day, I just couldn’t operate. I had a headache that followed me all day long. I drowned myself in caffeine to function, but that only made things worse. My body was just not operating the way it should.

My soul and spirit feels like that when I neglect the important time with God.

Life just seems… heavier, like I’m carrying the weight of the universe on my tiny (yet, somewhat broad) shoulders. I get easily agitated. The world seems to exist to annoy me. Things get more difficult to handle. The crazy thing? Sometimes we blame God! We wonder where God is. We wonder “How can God let all these things happen?” I saw a church sign that said “If God feels distant, who moved?”

As Bill Hybels said, “If you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy.”

Spending time with God is what we are created to do. It is what our soul longs for. We need to take that time seriously. No matter how busy we are, we’d still go on our social engagements with friends, no? Communication is one of the most important aspects of our relationships. We do all sorts of things to communicate with our loved ones. Facebook, twitter, emails, texts, phone calls and we communicate often.

How often do you communicate with God?

Spend time with God. Be still and know God. That’s a challenge. Because when you do that, you’ll see the world change. Because you’ll see what God sees. You’ll have an intimate connection with God. You’ll feel stronger. And why not? You got the Creator of the Universe dwelling and flowing from your heart.

And don’t under estimate the power of corporate worship on Sunday.

It’s nice to be surrounded by like-minded people and be reminded of our mission and no that we are not alone in our faith and in our calling.

God wants nothing more than your heart. And you and I should work on giving him all of our hearts, and not just a bit here and there.