We are at the end of another year, and looking with hope into the future. I take times like these to reflect and ask if I need a New Year resolution to make a course correction in my life.
Scripture tells me that God's goal for my life is to glorify Him (1 Cor. 10:31). The real question is if I am moving in that direction or not.
I sometimes ask myself, "Lord, do I know you like I could?" In addition to work and family, I serve on committees, keep up with the latest techie gadgets (I am a guy after all) and have a full social calendar. Basically, I'm busy. Everyone around me seems to approve of it too. They say, "Keeping busy?" I say "yep." They smile. I get a lot of posi-tive feedback from others when I describe how busy I am. Maybe you experience it too.
Truth is that devotion gets rationed when there are so many priorities. It has to be, in order to fit with everything else that simply must get done. Balancing a career, family, church, hobbies and friends doesn't leave much time to do any one thing well. Acts and the Epistles portray a life in the middle of His will as overflowing with evangelistic passion expressing the fruit of the spirit. How can life be full of anything when so many things have to get done? But, I am convicted more and more that God doesn't care about full schedules. God wants me to know Him, and have my work be about His business and not my own. God's work is about people.
We at LCC are a faith community that wants to be about God's business: loving God, loving each other and bringing others into the community of faith. The real challenge is having the availability to move to Him in His work. That's hard to do with a full schedule. God wants us to know Him first. He wants to tell us he loves us, and how we can join Him in His work. How can I make a difference for God when I am too caught up with my business to pray and read His word? Listening to God through prayer and His Word opens our eyes to see where He is and to come alongside Him there.
Rushing to serve without reflection in God's will may be serving others, and God might get some glory out of it, but the heart isn't serving God, it is serving me. If I am not bursting at the seams to tell the person next to me how God has worked in me today, then I'm probably distracted with the wrong things. Probably the best change is to make room for God. Something on the list has to go. If I make time to be still, then the time will be there to know that He is Lord.
I think I found my New Year resolution.
