What happens when I take a short hiatus from writing? Mainly I miss the interaction I have with you!
A few people have wondered something along the lines of “where did Brian’s devotionals disappear to? Did I get dropped off the email list? Has he stopped writing?” And in the absence of the devotionals, several of you told me that you missed them. Thank you for encouraging me to get back to writing. The truth is that I simply got too busy and my writing had to be “dropped” for a time (it has been almost a month. ouch! that’s way too long).
The situation is that each morning I start my day off with my own Bible reading and prayer. When I get into a situation when I am in a time crunch, it would be quite easy to let my devotional time go, so that I could write something for my blog. Most of the time crunch has come during these last three weeks in the form of our cross-country drive to California and the activities I have been part of in-between the driving (2200 miles there and another 2200 miles back!). It is true that I could have kept up the blog, by letting some of my devotional time go, but I have made a commitment to God that my time with Him will remain a top priority. Not for His sake, but for mine. The more time I spend with Him, the healthier I find that I am – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
I hope you have made that same commitment to Him. That you will spend time with Him each day in Bible reading and prayer. That your commitment to time with Him will take precedent over the morning newspaper, Good Morning America, and Sportscenter. Or if you use the evening as time to connect with Him, that you won’t allow Duck Dynasty, Fox News, or catching up on all the Facebook status updates to become a higher priority than your daily fellowship with Him. If we are not careful… if we are not intentional in our time with him… then without even realizing it, our time is consumed with all the busyness of each day. To grow in Christ, we have to make a solid commitment to carve out time with Him. And Satan isn’t going to make it easy. The question is whether we will develop the discipline to be the disciples we told Him we would be when we started our journeys with Him. Let’s keep encouraging each other onto deeper discipleship and spiritual maturity!
Let’s go “further up and further in!”
(bonus points if you know where the last quote is from without looking it up!)
