Finding Time With God In A World Of Distraction

Is it hard for you to find time for God? I have been distracted the past two days to the point that I have not blogged, nor spent much time with the LORD. Last night we watched The Hobbit as a family. We finished the movie, hugged the kids, and headed off to bed. As my wife and I lay down, I told her I needed to confess that I had been angry ever since I came home. I was actually angry an hour before I walked through the door for the stupidest of reasons. One of my kids had sent a text to me asking if we could watch a certain movie that we had previously gone to see in the theater. I told her no because of all the swearing. I did not want the smaller two kids to hear such words and did not want to re-pollute the two that had seen it with me a few months earlier. The response was silence. Then when I got home I was questioned as to why I would not allow the movie. I did not like the question and so everything that followed throughout the evening threw squirts of gasoline on the flame of my anger. Bad, bad, bad. Such a sinful man I am. After I confessed my anger to my wife, I brought it before the Lord. He is faithful and just to forgive me of my sin because of JESUS Christ. I am so thankful for JESUS.

I have been thinking over the past couple of days to see if I could trace the source of my anger. I am not looking to blame anyone or anything, for I know that this sinful anger resides in my heart and have only myself to blame. My kids did not cause my anger. They merely revealed to me and them that their daddy still has hints of depraved anger lurking in the darkness of his heart.

Using my keen skills of perception (ha, ha), I see that the previous two mornings have been mornings of a distracted heart discontented with worldly false sources of satisfaction. Monday morning I woke later than usual. I turned on the coffee pot and prayed as I do every morning. I then opened my Bible app and copied the verse I was going to meditate over into my writing app. The app did not work and icloud failed to sync. Instantly distracted, I spent the rest of my 35 minutes trying to figure out why icloud was not working. This morning, I woke at a good time, but had the same distractions with a different app I tried because I did not want the same problems as the day before. Blah! Makes me disgusted now to think it through. Both of these problems could have been remedied in one minute by writing in an application that does not require syncing. But of course being an HVAC service technician at heart, I hate when things don’t work, and become obsessively driven to fix them.

Looking back, I see that it was my heart all along that needed fixing and both my technology and my children were servants of the Lord to show me.

JESUS was a man who did not live in a world of beeps, buzzes, and do-hickeys alerting him every moment of every day. He, nonetheless, was distracted by the never ending onslaught of people demanding his time. It amazes me that just when it seems that he spent his last bit of energy, he would lay his hand one more time upon a child that needed healing. How did JESUS re-fuel? He got alone with his Father.

Mark 1:35 (ESV) And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

Luke 5:16 (ESV) But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

My mornings are the only time during the day that I can be alone with the Father. When my appointment with the Father gets replaced with another calendar appointment, the devil wins and my soul looses. If JESUS needed alone time with his Father, how could I be any different?