Priorities that Make a Difference – Part 2
As I mentioned in Part 1, my heart in this series is to help all of us draw closer to the Lord. The question is this: How?The only way to grow closer to a person is to spend time with them. When I met my husband, Chris, it was through spending time together that I determined if I liked him and if I could trust him. The same is true when it comes to our relationship with God. It’s only if we spend time with Him that we’ll grow in our love for and trust in the Lord.[bctt tweet="It’s only if we spend time with the Lord that we’ll grow in our love for and trust in Him."]As we get started, let me begin by defining priority time:
A priority time is a daily, unhurried time to get to know the Lord through the Bible and prayer.
If you’re anything like me, the word unhurried jumps out and maybe even causes an eye roll. There’s hardly anything in my life that’s unhurried… what about you?!! Yet it’s not as hard as you might think.Unhurried is not the same as unending, so if you find yourself rushing through your time with God, let me encourage you in a very practical way. Get out a timer and set it. (I suggest you turn on the Do Not Disturb function on your phone, too.) However long you set it for, you know that time is just for you and the Lord. So, instead of keeping one eye open, worried you’ll be late for the next thing on your to do list, allow the timer to give you a sense of being able to focus on you, the Lord, and His Word. Everything else can wait.The 4 essential ingredients to a priority time are:
- Focused Thinking
- Personal Application
- Interactive Prayer
- Life Journaling
There are parts of our time with the Lord that will be unique to each person, but imagine your priority time like a pizza. You can make a pizza with a 1,000 different topping combinations, but if you leave out any of the essential pizza ingredients – like yeast – it will no longer be a pizza. So, let me encourage you: These 4 elements are absolutely essential. Without any one of these 4 elements, you’ll likely miss something God has for you.Let me explain…Focused Thinking is where you intentionally slow down and learn what God’s Word says. There’s always one truth even if there are many applications. We don’t get to pick what we want the passage to say. This step is observing and interpreting. If we don’t observe and interpret accurately and simply skip into personal application, we’ll run the risk of making God’s Word say what we want, not what it really says.[bctt tweet="God's Word: We don’t get to pick what we want the passage to say."]If we only spend our time on Focused Thinking, we can feel good about increasing our Bible knowledge, but we’ll be guilty of being hearers only and not doers of His Word. Personal Application is essential.If we’re just in His Word and we never move to prayer, we miss the conversation and a vital way in which God both encourages and disciplines. We also remove confession and repentance.Lastly, if we don’t write down what God’s saying, we’re almost bound to forget… both His faithfulness and His call to action.If you’ve neglected one of these areas, I encourage you to bring it back into your time with the Lord… and join me for Part 3 next week![bctt tweet="Don't allow yourself to forget what God's saying to you... Write it down!"]