No Time

“He hath made all things good in their time, and hath delivered the world to their consideration… And I have known that there was no better thing than to rejoice, and to do well in this life.”

[Ecclesiastes 3:11-12]

Foundation Myth #4

This myth is the masqueraded-version of, “I just don’t want to do it.” If you’ve got Kids, you’ve heard this one a time or two, at least. Just ask your Tween to make their bed or take-out the trash. The amount of energy that it takes for a Tween to move from “screen-time” to “real-time” isn’t great, but the effort to get them to move at times can be “so much fun”. If you ever think that you sound like an adult when you don’t (e.g. I don’t want to go to Church today), you might want to self-reflect on improving your effort. We’ve all said, at one point or another, things like, “I just don’t want to”….go to Church, read the Bible, listen to Scripture, watch a Christian movie, etc. Far too many live “cop-out” lives at points and, if we’re really being honest with at least ourselves, we know it.

The first step in moving from “cop-out” to “trying” is simply to dust ourself off and get-up and do something for someone else. When we are the center of our universe, we tend to just want to sit-still like the sun while everyone else revolves around us. This strategy might seem “brilliant” (pun-intended), but it’s stagnating our growth and our universes aren’t expanding.

The bottom line here is that everyone has time for God. God has to be first in all areas of our lives and when we make Him second (or worse), it gets really hard to be closer to Him and understand Him better. A simple game-changing step is to plan to read just a little bit of the Bible each day – even if it is just a couple of lines or a chapter or an entire Book in the Bible, the Word of God Transforms our lives (even when we don’t know or see it). Now, a lot my Friends will say that they “meant to”, but missed on that particular day. Or, they’ll say that they read every few days or only once per week. When we are dating someone we absolutely-adore, we typically want to spend every waking moment with them. And, we want to know everything about them. Over time, that passion can grow less (even as our love has deepened substantially). But, if we marry that person, we never really stop learning about them or spending as much time as possible with them. Our Marriages and Families require that kind of commitment from us. And, for those of us that are married, we are Blessed to continue working on our Marriages every day. So, why would the most important relationship in Eternity be anything less than that?

Finding time for God is pretty-simple and the Truth is that you cannot afford to wait any longer to either start spending time with God or to expand upon the current time that you are spending with Him. “Secret mission” types of movies are great – with the set-up of the plot, the suspense of the mission, the near-impossible odds against success, and the moment where against all odds, the heroes arrive victoriously (albeit not always glamorously) at their goal. For a moment, go back to when you were seven years-old (or thereabouts) and use your imagination. Back then, our imaginations could showcase to us all kinds of “secret mission” stuff and related scenarios.

Imagine for a moment that we once lived with God in Heaven. Imagine that we part of an Infinite Sea of Believers who lived with God. Now, imagine God came to us through St. Michael the Archangel who, having just come back bloody and sweaty from his battle with satan where He vanquished lucifer to earth (and, kicked his butt out of Heaven), addressed the “zillions+” of us who are currently here in the world in our “HNN Situation Room” (HNN – Heaven’s News Network). St. Michael lets us know the “situation” with satan and then shares with us a “new Mission” from the Lord. He brings a Message from God that is an offer to be “more” with Him Eternally in Heaven and anyone who accepts this “Mission” and successfully completes it will be Rewarded-wildly in Heaven for it. Knowing that God only speaks Truth, we, the “zillions+” are very eager to learn the “Mission” specifics.

The “Mission” it turns out is “pass/fail” with incredible odds (depending upon how you look at it, they were either “awesomely-good” or “catastrophically-bad”). St. Michael continues on to submit that God’s “Mission” offer is that He needs good Heavenly soldiers/agents to drop-into enemy territory while having their memories of God “completely-wiped-clean” to battle directly with satan and his demonic army in the hopes of finding our Way back Home to Him while bringing as many others as possible with us. St. Michael went on to share that not only would we have our memories of God and Heaven “erased”, but then that God also couldn’t guarantee where you would land and start your “Mission” from. At this point, there are a number of Folks in Heaven who walk away from the running announcement on HNN. Those that walk away were convinced that they were happy with Where they already were and didn’t want the “More” that God was offering to those successful on their “Missions”. They aren’t there when St. Michael goes on to say, “And, if you don’t make it Back, you will be tortured for Eternity in a lake of fire.” That announcement causes a secondary-aftershock-of-mass-Exodus from the HNN broadcast. And, that’s when we notice that our “zillions+” have now dwindled-down to roughly 7.7 billion (the rough population on earth).

The “Mission Team” of 7.7 billion is convinced that we all “Know God” too much to ever forget Him. We are also convinced, like St. Michael was, that we can defeat the evil forces that await our arrival on earth. Like the troops on the planes, boats, and carriers on D-Day, we amass the Greatest Heavenly Army the earth has ever seen, we say one last Prayer after kissing and hugging our Heavenly Colleagues that won’t be making the trip, and we brace for the “Mission”. Somewhere along the way to earth, our minds get “erased” and we are implanted into an earthly woman’s womb with specific aspects of the “Mission” that will be our responsibility to discover and accomplish over the course of time that God grants each of us to complete our individual parts of the overall “Mission”. We arrive as newborns screaming in a delivery room, bus depot, or elsewhere and off we’re sent to change the world.

That’s right. Fictional-story-intro or not, you were meant to change the world:

“Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations… For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of affliction, to give you an end and patience.” [Jeremias (Jeremiah) 1:5; 29:11]

That’s just a snap-shot of what God says about our “Missions”. We are to be like men and women “that set the city in an uproar” [Acts of Apostles 17:6]. And, you can’t do that from your couch or on your PC screen. We have to “engage” the world in order the “change” the world. True Faith drives servanthood. If we really Believe in Who God is, who we are in Him, and that we are Truly-meant to be “Citizens of Heaven” [Philippians 3:20], then, like a dormant volcano rocketing back to life, the explosion of our Service, like lava, will shoot into the sky for all to see without us ever having to even call any attention to it (you’d have to be deaf and/or blind not to hear and/or see it).

Conclusion

God doesn’t call us to “wait” and “simmer” while changing the world. He calls us to act and, as such, He even gave us a Book in the Bible (Acts) to remind us of such. God acts. Jesus acts. And, neither is ever late in their “Acting”. Time is not a luxury that we have; we’re all on a limited amount of time with God, our lives, our Families and Friends, etc. The time to act is now!