Just killing time….

For the first time in several weeks I jump started my morning and my weekend at Cracker Barrel at men’s bible study. Having been out of touch for a while I wasn’t sure who, if anyone would be there and I was prepared to just spend some much needed quality time reading and meditating, and oh yes eating. I was reading Romans and my eyes kept backing up to Romans 5 :

“And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us”
Romans 5:2-5

I found myself thinking about the times that hope, or at least I thought that was what I had, did disappoint. And then in walks my friend who has gone through his own flavor of hell and back. After almost 3 years of suffering, character building, persevering and hoping he shared some news that was nothing short of miraculous and the synchronicity of what I had just read and this man’s story brought tears to my eyes. Even when others encouraged him to cut his losses and move on, he invested 3 years of his life in prayer, in hope, in his word, and what seemed unlikely at best is now close to being reality. What an incredible way to start my day and to my friend - you are an inspiration beyond words and I am so grateful to have you in my life.

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people and worry spend it for you.”
Carl Sandburg

I don’t know about you but I have spent many an hour, a day, a week,a month just pretty much “killing time”. Seems like most of us spend more time waiting to live versus living. We wait for this or that to end, or this or that to start, or we worry about something bad that might happen or even better something bad that already happened. We’re so busy trying to start or trying to finish or trying to get ‘somewhere’ that we miss the “here”, we miss the present and we go deaf and blind to God. So…. we wind up just killing time. Sadly, as we wile away the hours, days, months, a lifetime, just killing time, we miss that we are also killing off our life. And what did time do to us to warrant being killed off, anyway? And the twist is that it’s not really our time anyway. We didn’t create it, we can’t get more of it and yet day by day we live like there’s an endless supply and some day one day, when I’m done killing time, I’m going to……. well, you fill in the blank(s). Then at the end of the month or year we survey and wonder – gee, what happened? where did all the time go? where did my life go?

Each of us get 60 seconds in each minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in the day and somewhere between now and many seconds from now we will have no more seconds left. Time is given to us to appreciate the present moment as the greatest gift from God and yet we race around trying to get more done wondering where “it” went instead of pausing to wonder where “we” went.

Agreeing with theives and lions

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;” John 10:10

I read somewhere that most men and women have about 60,000 thoughts a day. Pretty amazing, ehh? And most of our thoughts are pretty random and most are just like the thoughts we had the day before and the day before and …….. well you get the idea. For most of us our brains are prone to carry on repetitive and often negative conversations all day long. If you don’t believe me, make a conscious effort for two hours to catch yourself mid-thought(s) and let me know how often you were thinking of the glory of God or how all things are possible with Christ or just how very grateful you are to be alive.


“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” Mark 11:24

Unless I make a conscious effort to do so, my thoughts do not edit themselves, they just sort of go with the flow and negative thoughts tend to attract more negative thoughts. I lose my cool with my daughter and I think, “oh great I blew it again”, and that morphs into “I always blow it”……. at which point it occurs to me that maybe I’m just a lousy parent. You do a bad thing and that moves to you are bad, or not worthy, or whatever. Then, by golly, we gleefully swallow that poison kool-aid down and it becomes a cloud (for some of us lots of clouds) and ultimately agreements that we live under and accept. And these agreements give permission for the enemy (what’s that about, I have seen the enemy and he is me) to enter some part of our lives. And with those agreements in place we set out to live our lives and are somehow stunned when it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8

Yikes, man “devil” - “lion” - “devour” - sounds a bit dramatic and over done in this high-tech era. But, if someone offered you a cup of rat poison or draino I suspect you’d decline and it seems terribly old fashioned and over blown when we hear the “devil” or the enemy, but good grief the things people just roll over and accept as the truth or God’s will is incredible.

“So it becomes the devil’s business to keep Christians spirit imprisoned.”
A.W. Tozer

We are under attack folks yet we are so busy, so informed, so connected that somehow we don’t see this as an attack from the enemy, we just accept these impressions as our own and then become stuck - “just the way it is, I guess”. I was reading in a psychology publication that something like half of the issues that men and women are trying to work through in counseling offices today started out as (faulty) agreements that they made, the most dangerous being way back in early childhood. “Sheesh, I can’t ever do anything right” and years later little (now big) Johnny is still in counseling trying to work through his “low self esteem”. And be clear that I’m not advocating chanting positive thoughts or positive thinking (although I think that’s good) but what I am suggesting is that well before James Allen and others, 2000 years ago, a man walked on this earth; He came armed for War; He came to give us life, He came to tell us not to make agreements with “Thieves” and “Lions”.

Peace!