[1] Wow, April is already here! Where is the year going? It is so beautiful around where we live because all the flowers are starting to bloom. The trees throughout our condo community have just been bare sticks and branches up till last week and now they are covered with these beautiful white blossoms.

This weekend I felt sad as I looked back on this week and saw four out of seven days I was not disciplined in my quiet time with the Lord. It is frustrating to see the hours of the day ticking by and not be doing what I should in sitting down to read and talk with the Lord. When we allow ourselves to “get busy” we allow ourselves to make excuses don’t we? I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir because most people I know who don’t make daily time with the Lord a priority know that they suffer for it, as I saw in my life this week.

The first day that I don’t spend time still before the Lord to read and pray I feel sad and keep trying to make it “fit in” somewhere (when I really should be making everything else fit in around that time–shame on me…). The second day I was undisciplined. I hit the snooze button four times and then as I saw my bad attitude I was frustrated and fought for the time, but obviously not hard enough. That was a bad day. The third day I was still making excuses for being “so busy.” That day I felt a tiny bit justified that I really didn’t have time, even though as my good friend so accurately says of people, “We do what we really want to do.” My heart was not in the right place and I had lost my focus.

There are so many things that I can get caught up in, in this world rather than being caught up in Him. Many times I don’t consider the gravity of life without God. The last two weekends Bobby has taught the Gospel from 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and Acts 2:37-41 and this has been a huge wakeup call for me about the horrible reality experiencing physical death apart from Christ and also the deep seriousness of life apart from Christ. Someone who has been redeemed should never act like they aren’t. We shouldn’t say that we don’t have time each day to spend quietly with God to study, pray and meditate on His Word.

People place so much importance on getting all there is out of life and then they fear death. But really we should be fearing meeting God after death if we are not right with Him through Christ. Each person dies and goes before the judgment seat of Christ to be either welcomed in to heaven or cast from God’s presence forever. I decided today that I need to daily ask myself: How am I living today that brings glory to God’s name and proclaims the gospel? How are my hours, my hands and feet, energy, will, mind, and desires being surrendered for His use during my stay on earth? Is it for my own gain, pursuit of happiness and about pleasing others? We only have one opportunity in this life, one stay on this earth. A common phrase is, “If I could go back, or do it over…” But the truth is that we can’t. We live each day after another and time does not turn back, it only goes forward. Either I am going to put aside my excuses and surrender myself to the work of God’s glorious name or I am going to waste my life searching for fulfillment and meaning that does not exist outside of Him.

Will you be resolved with me to give all your days this week to God specifically by setting aside part of each day as a special time to sit still before Him in His Word and in prayer?