Everyone, it seems, is celebrating the time change. Gaining an hour of sleep, what a gift! But if you have a 20-month old son named Tyler who has been waking up before 6am, daylight savings has the opposite effect. The last two nights I’ve lost an hour or two! It’s not that he wakes up crying so I get him. He wakes up calling out, “Mommy!” “Love you!” “Oatmeal, please, Mommy!” and his newest statement, “Obey God!” over and over again. He wakes up and just will not go back to sleep which makes it hard for me to. This morning I made his breakfast while it was just getting light outside and I thought about how so many people tell me that this season will fly by and that really helped me be truly thankful for it and take it to heart as a personal ministry.

All day I have thought about this morning and how tired I was when I woke up. I wanted to just roll over and sleep another hour, but I didn’t. I had several things on my to-do list that I would have much rather just put off to an undetermined later date, but I didn’t. It can especially be difficult if the rest of the world or family is sleeping while you are awake working, but just as I said all that to myself I had a sting of conviction in my heart. Why do I host such a pity party about being tired or busy or having to do work? People say, “You’re a mom now, your time is not your own anymore.” What a silly thing to say. It was never ours to begin with!

LORD, make me to know my end,
And what is the measure of my days,
That I may know how frail I am.

Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths,
And my age is as nothing before You;
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah

Psalm 39:4-5

Time was never my own but at times I foolishly live like it is. Having a child and working from home helped me become more aware of this temptation. Don’t get me wrong though…becoming a mother is not an insta-cure for selfishness and bad priorities. But being forced to loose sleep and always care for this little person continues to show me how truly selfish I am. Especially on days like today.

Because of sin we act like our lives are up to us to do whatever we want. Like we are independent creatures, not accountable to our Creator. But if we are Christians, we’ve been set apart to live for the Lord not our own agendas. I don’t know how many times I hear people complain about having to be out another week night to be with their church family or of having people over or freeing up an hour for prayer. We act like we are just so busy and maybe are “keeping busy.” I’m not trying to say we need to get signed up for more programs in our churches necessarily. But in every 24 block God gives us we should not be giving Him a half hour in the morning and then living the other 23 and half for ourselves . We need to give him all 24.

A Christian is full-time for Jesus. You never clock out of serving. You never get a vacation from ministering as a way of life. And that shouldn’t make us sigh with exhaustion. It should make us plunge ourselves into God’s Word for sustenance.

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm.
Let nothing move you.
Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,
because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1 Corinthians 15:58

Always giving fully is pretty intense. I wonder if we aren’t more dynamic in personal ministry because we are too casual about our daily quiet times. If we treat time with the Lord as an afterthought or something we squeeze in at the end of the day how are our hearts to be focused on or even able to give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord? We need to safeguard our time with Him and be much more intentional at laboring for Him all hours of the day. For we know our labor in the Lord is not in vain.