My entire schedule has been messed up the last couple of years and like everyone else, especially in 2020.  I used to set aside every Saturday morning studying the Bible or researching lesson plans. This time alone with the LORD was always fruitful and a blessing to my spirit.

My schedule really changed when the pandemic set aside early shopping times for the “at risk” people (insert smirk emoji). Instead of spending time with God, I spent it going to the store before the crowd. This eventually became my new habit. My time studying suddenly vanished and I had a hard time focusing on it at any other time. Something always got in the way. This was supposed to be my date-morning with God.

I fast every January as a first fruit offering to the LORD and for guidance for the year ahead. I fast alone and with my church. This year I asked God to help me realign things again. I felt out of control with the inability to focus. I needed His help. Praise God, He never disappoints!

I am at the end of my first fruits fast and I was feeling a little disappointed in myself. I felt that somehow, I failed in focus, prayer, and study. Nothing had changed. I felt I hadn’t done enough through the fast (which is a works mentality and lacks faith in God’s grace.)

But God!

Last night as I was crawling in to bed, God reminded me of our Saturday date-mornings. So, I set a date for 6:00 am. I can go to the store later in the morning, I can run later in the day. I can clean house this afternoon. But today, beginning at 6:00 am, that is God’s time.

My life verse is Ezra 7:10, especially the part that says Ezra devoted himself to the study and observance of the law. But I love to teach it too 😊

Whenever I study for others I am so blessed because I learn for myself as well. If I try to just read the Bible as something to check off my reading plan for the day, I usually leave rather empty. It was a duty and not a joy. Oh, but when I set aside time to meet with God, on purpose, for the joy of it, I am so very blessed, each and every time. God is faithful.  

As I began reading Ephesians, I had focus today and I started to see Scriptures that related to the class I begin to teach on Monday! It was awesome. I was reminded of God’s love, His grace and the Power that He has bestowed upon us. I was reminded of the life I am called to live.

Make a date and be faithful. Give time to God and He will give to you in greater measure.

Ezra 7:10

For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.

Luke 6:38

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

I have been reading James W Goll’s book THE SCRIBE and he said something that really hit home.

He had always used the phrase “spiritual disciplines” when it came to setting habits for prayer, worship, journaling, being in the Word and so forth. He recalls a time when the Holy Spirit said to him “you are not disciplined enough to have spiritual disciplines.”  Well, if that is true of James Goll, it is even more true for mel!

The Holy Spirit’s response to Mr. Goll was to call these things ‘privileges”.

This puts a whole new spin on things. A discipline is performance based. It often turns to a drudgery or just something to check off a list. Doing the same thing as a privilege, however, means doing it because you can do it. You do it because God has equipped you to do it and because you want to do it. You do not have to do these things for God to love you more. He loves you already! Praying, studying His Word, praising Him, worshipping Him are all things we get to do! They are things He invites us to do so that we can can have relationship with Him. They are benefits and gifts that our Father has lavished on us!

To take this thought a little further, what if we have that same attitude in everything we do? What if I do not see cleaning house today as the drudgery, I believed it to be? What if I saw it as cleaning and caring for the home that God gave me 10 years ago? What if my commute to and from work every day is not seen as a long drive and time wasted, but as time spent worshipping God with the radio or being taught God’s Word through audiobooks I’ve downloaded? What if its neither of these things and just quiet time with Jesus? What if I see going to work every day as the privilege it is! What if I see it as something God has enabled to do? It is God’s provision for me. The same with errands like going to the store.

I believe if we looked at more of the everyday things in life as privileges instead of routine things we must do, we will be more thankful, and in doing so, we will reap the benefits of a blessed and more joyful life.

Philippians 2:14-16

Do everything without grumbling or arguing, ¹⁵ so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”^[c] Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky ¹⁶ as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.

Colossians 3:23 (NIV)

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,