On Thanksgiving Day, we shared a meal and an afternoon with my son and his wife and my granddaughter, Bella. Sometime after the big meal was over, my husband took Bella back to our master bedroom to watch some of her favorite cartoon shows while I cleaned the kitchen. Later, I went back to check on the two of them and she was stretched out on the bed with a pillow behind her head and her eyes fixed on the television set.
I curled up beside her and tried to talk to her, but her attention was totally captivated by the action on the screen. No matter what I said or did to engage her, she did not respond. Her eyes and her mind were on her favorite entertainment. I would have enjoyed having a moment to cuddle with her or to have what passes for a conversation with an almost two-year-old, but she wasn't having it.
This morning our pastor talked about "radical Christianity". He said that someone who is radical for Jesus will not trade anything for what they have in God while a nominal Christian will allow many other sins and distractions interfere with that relationship. If we are serious about our relationship with God and the calling that is on our lives, we must be willing to put Him before anything else. The obvious things that we should lay aside are things that most people recognize as sin, but sometimes there are seemingly innocent pastimes that He may call us to put down in order to know and serve Him better.
Just like Bella can block me out if her cartoons are on, we can easily be captivated by hobbies and interests which are not immoral, yet they can interfere with God's best plans for our lives. How many times have we missed an opportunity to really communicate with a God who would enjoy having that moment to pour into us and talk with us, but we weren't having it?
I certainly do not even pretend that I have dealt with this completely in my own life. Most of the time, God isn't even asking me to put something totally out of my life. He just wants me to have a balance - to limit my time spent on certain things - in order to invest time in my relationship with Him. Seeing the situation from God's point of view when I tried to spend time with Bella made me realize the importance of spending time engaged with Him.
The apostle Paul addressed it this way, "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify."
1 Corinthians 10:23
Even successful worldly people know how to prioritize and use their time to achieve their goals. How much more should we, with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, order our lives to become all that God has purposed for us?
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