The overwhelming need to change washed over me, threatening to drown me. I needed help, so I asked God to bring true life back to the “slave to busyness” life I was attempting. God is good; He answered me with a plan and direction. Was I willing to listen and follow His instruction? Yes, I was. Are you? Each day I’m learning that real life is found in Christ alone. Am I perfect now? Not yet, but I hope that my journey will encourage you.
As I have cried out to God he has always graciously answered me.
“Teach me to be still and know that you are God. Lord, I come to you today with the conviction of sin in my heart. Your Holy Spirit has brought an awareness of my extreme busyness. I have been running for so long, my co-workers and friends are runners too. We have become “human doings” not “human beings”, and our task lists have pushed you out of the picture. I have not been willing to view my busyness as “sin;” but you have revealed its root, my pride is to blame. Lord, I have a love/ hate relationship with busyness. I am resentful and stressed when I’m too busy, yet I don’t feel important unless my schedule is packed with people, places and things. Show me what am I filling up my life with?”
I am learning to ask myself the following questions:
Q: Are you in my daily agenda Lord?
A: Barely. I want to trust Him and get to know Him better.
Q: Is my family in my daily agenda?
A: Barely. They’re used to taking a back seat to my activities.
Q: Are close friends in my agenda?
A: Barely. They know I am often late, and frequently frazzled.
I‘m sick of barely living and I’m starting to see that all this self-centered living is sin. The scary thing is I don’t even know how to stop; I have to ask the Lord to slow me down, turn me back around and put my tired feet on his narrow path. I am learning to pray each day that God will make things clearer to me, to show me where I am wasting energy, sometimes living to please other people who barely know me. The “pleasing” drive squeezes out my time with God until he is the one I barely know.
Are we willing to do what it takes to get back on track, surrendering our lives to Him? He created us and knows what is best for us. Let’s allow God to turn us back around and I believe that our joy in living will return as we are turned to him.
-M
