What Drives Your Day?

A dull moment comes, the computer is before me, my hand stretches out to open the internet browser. "Stop! Don't do it. You said you weren't going to! There's nothing that important that happens on facebook anyway." My hand pulls back and I pick up the phone to make a few phone calls awaiting my attention.

I've decided to take a vacation. A vacation from media that is. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about several different things that I need to work on in my life. Things that will require concerted effort, daily intentionality, and constant attention. In the past as I think about areas of weakness it is all too easy to say I need to work on that and then move on with life without a change. I don't want to keep doing that. That in and of itself is a weakness. 

Making changes in your life takes intentionality. Patience doesn't come by saying "I need to be more patient" (don't we wish). It doesn't even come just by praying. God doesn't just drop a truck load of patience into our laps. He give us more and more opportunities to practice patience and develop the character. If I want to learn to be a better friend, use my time wisely, serve more faithfully, or help more cheerfully I have to make a deliberate effort to change my current course. It doesn't happen over night. 

For me, facebook, movies, and sometimes music, are the main things that distract me from what I should be doing, create/feed sinful desires, and often take the place of spending time with God. A red flag went up for me when I realized that my first priority of the day was checking fb. First thing out of bed- computer on, facebook open. Did anything happen since I last checked it right before I went to sleep? You know there's something wrong when you are more eager to check facebook 20 times a day than you are to spend time with in God's word even once. What are your priorities? What is your focus? Are you serving God or the idols you have created? What have you let become the most important things in your life? These are all questions that I have been thinking about for a while - ever since I read Idols of the Heart by Elyse Fitzpatrick. Also our pastor has talked about idols quite a bit the last few Sundays as ties into our study of Isaiah. I want my day to start and end in time with God, not with my cyber friends. I want the God to be the rudder that steers my day. I want to long for God, not my computer. It is so easy to let little things get in the way of what really matters and so hard to break down the idols we create. 

Deuteronomy 6:5 

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength." 

John 15:13

"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." 

These two verses have been coming to mind a lot. I want these verses to characterize my life and to make that happen it's going to take concentrated effort and focus.