Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Plastic Plants

Waiting is difficult. Waiting can be very, very difficult. Our natural tendency is to speed along the process. We get tired of waiting on God. We think we can short-circuit the system. We assume we can speed things up a bit by doing life our own way. That's the exact moment that things begin to go really wrong. I once read "the longest possible distance between two points is called a short-cut."


 

Think of it as if you want to grow a nice, beautiful plant to decorate your room or office. Instead of working through the process of planting, nurturing, and caring, you go out and you buy plastic plants.


 

Instead of embracing the uncertain, yet totally invigorating process of growth, you try a short-cut. Plastic plants are cheap imitations of the real thing. Plastic plants are never what they appear to be. Neither are plastic Christians.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

Renewal

I've been thinking about the importance of my own spiritual renewal. I'll not be preaching to you blog-folk, just expressing my own heart and feelings.

If Jesus had to go away and spend some alone time in devotion, meditation, prayer, renewal, whatever term works here for you . . . how much more do we need to do the same? I know, I know, you've heard this before. So have I. My question is: why don't I do this more often? Why do I (as Mark Batterson said) do ministry out of memory? Why don't I treasure time spent with the Timeless One more than I do? Bill Hybels wrote an entire book about being too busy NOT to pray. Where am I on this spectrum of busyness?

I'm not saying that I need to spend 12 hours a day in prayer, but I am saying I need to spend some amount of time in prayer every day. Dr. Jeffers once leveled me with this question, "Are you so busy doing the work of the Lord that you have forgotten the Lord of the work?"

I'm not casting stones at anyone. I'm publicly asking myself about my renewal time. I'll privately answer.