Attention Undivided

Have you ever talked to an old friend after not speaking for a time and you remember how much you enjoy hanging out with them? It wasn’t like something happened that caused the lapse in time spent together, you just looked up and realized it had been a while. This happened to me this morning as I was having my quiet time with the Lord.

It was an interesting feeling because I have my quiet times every morning during the weekdays, so why was this coming up? I don’t know about you, but I get distracted quite easily. There are so many things to catch up on in the morning – emails, the market, fantasy baseball, the list goes on. I’m seeing that my time with the Lord is no different than my time with any other person. It’s not about time spent near the Lord, in my quiet time space, what’s necessary is quality time spent with Him.

I’m coming to find that I need to fight for my mornings. If there is an opposing force, an enemy, that’s trying to keep me from knowing the Lord more intimately, than it makes perfect sense that he’s going to do all he can to distract me and keep me from connecting. Now, I’m not saying I’m being attacked by the enemy as I’m sipping my coffee, but we do live in a world that majors in distraction.

This all came to my attention as I was in prayer and sensing the nearness of the Lord as I was being honest with Him as to where my heart was at. It was a sweet moment and I found myself asking the question of why I don’t do this more often – all I was doing was praying. What was different about this was that I was being intentional about how I was communicating with the Lord. I forced myself to go a little deeper and to spend a few extra moments considering how I wanted to relay my feelings to the Lord. I was focused.

I began to think back a few seasons previous for me. There was a time where I was excited to go to bed because that meant the morning would come quicker and I could have my morning time with the Lord. I had carved out a specific time in my day that I was intentionally setting aside to focus on prayer, Scripture reading, and contemplation with the Lord. And the weirdest thing happened – I actually felt closer to Him.

Presently, this has been slightly convicting for me. It was as if the Lord was telling me, you’re here but you’re not really here with me during our morning time. It begged the question of why I was having quiet times in the first place. Well, the goal has always been to begin the day pointed towards the Lord and to set aside some intentional time to seek Him and be with Him. If it would be considered rude to be staring at my phone and looking at my struggling stocks while I was sitting across from a pretty girl on our second date, then I’m probably not going to sense a strong connection to the Lord if I’m doing the same to Him.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John to abide in Him. When we do this, we will produce good fruit. To abide means that we are to dwell with and be filled by. There is personal accountability that’s attached to this command. We need to fight for our time with the Lord. We need to protect this time.

Friends, God desires that we would know Him. It’s His intention to give us abundant life. He only does this when we are living with Him and by Him. We practice this by spending intentional, quality time with Him. I’m not suggesting you quit your job, shut the door and pray in your room for the next three weeks straight. I am, however, wanting to remind us all that God is after our hearts. He wants to reveal Himself to us, and we have a role to play here. Our job is to seek Him. I want to encourage you, set aside time today, this week, to seek the Lord. Even if it’s for 15 minutes a day. When you do that, put your phone down and give Him your full attention – you just might be surprised as to what you find.