Have any of you heeded my advice from the service yesterday and taken upon yourself some sort of Lenten observance? I have been learning a lot from my journey the hours this Lent - chief among them being that making intentional time to be with God really puts a cram in your plans! I'm used to scheduling my prayer and devotional time around life - making sure that it happened for sure but penciling it in at times when it didn't conflict with the many other (important) things that I have going on daily. What I've come to understand over the last number of days is that this too is a form of idolatry that I've been blindly engaging in.
I've had some real problems getting my prayer times in at the committed to times because of life interrupting my discipline. Some of them I think most of us would easily forgive - Saturday night Jo and I had to take Harry to emergency during what would have been my Vespers prayer time - and some excuses are less convincing - last night I stayed up to watch a movie with my wife and in-laws and totally forgot about prayers until the movie had finished. It seems to be Vespers (evening) prayers that give me the most trouble and I know that the logical solution would be to just schedule them for when I go to bed to avoid all these conflicts, but that would eliminate one of the important parts of the discipline. Moreover I would once again be back to giving God my leftovers rather than prime time.
One of the things that I believe God is trying to teach me through this season is to put him first - to not allow the other demands of life to be more important than him. By setting aside (and sticking to) an intentional schedule of prayer and not allowing other things to unseat them I make a declaration through my deeds with the psalmist who says:
You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you. (Psalm 63:1-5 TNIV)
I want to want God more than anything else and this discipline is helping to form in me the habits that will deepen my relationship with Christ to make it happen. I've been at work this morning going through my calendar finding ways to massage my schedule around my prayer times rather than fitting my prayer times into my schedule. We will see how this goes, but I'm praying now that it would go well!
For accountability here is the schedule I'm pledging to keep:
6:30am - morning prayer, time in the word, and devotions
1:00pm - midday prayer
8:30pm - vespers prayer
Happy lenting.
No comments:
Post a Comment