Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."…"If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
- John 14:21,23
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Since having Katelyn, life has been really hectic. It's been really difficult to live in any kind of normal routine, sleep schedules are all off, sleep itself is rare, and because our world revolves around her needs now, our entire daily map is drawn differently. To-do lists go undone, priorities change, and our entire focus has changed. From 3pm to 8pm, we try to make our older girls the priority, and shuffling all of this drama can be hard.
Really hard.
In a home that's turned on it's end, and a marriage that's between two sleep-deprived people, we've come to realize that living with intention is really important. If anything is going to get done, we need to make a list. If we need to leave the house, a plan must be made and executed, if Andrew & I are going to have any time together alone, help needs to be brought in, if family time is going to happen every Friday night, then schedules need to accommodate, and if we're going to keep our heads afloat, we need to be intentional.
In the midst of this new, crazy, exciting, amazing, precious life, that we wouldn't trade for anything, Andrew & I have had to sit down, really focus on one another, and decide what's important. And one of the areas of our life that we've realized we need to be the most intentional about is our personal walks with The LORD. We need to carve out time, in order to make God a priority, and not allow the "stuff" of our day to distract us from intentional Christ-like living.
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I'm using this word "intentional" a lot, so why don't we make sure we're all on the same page of what I'm talking about.
Websters defines "Intention" as: "A determination to act in a certain way, or to resolve."
So when I say we've had to live intentional lives, I'm saying, we've needed to determine to act a certain way, and choose everything in our lives to allow for that, making our daily course accommodate our plan.
If we are going to have personal time with God in the midst of our crazy day, then we need to resolve to do it. We need to be intentional.
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Do you know how important it is to make sure we're doing what scripture tells us to do? Today's verse tells us that in order to prove our love for God, we need to be keeping His commandments. And if we don't do that, than we are not living right lives before God. We are living separated from Him, and The Bible tells us we actually don't love God.
You may be thinking: "Whoa, that's a bit far isn't it?" But scripture doesn't allow for excuses. God says if you love me, do what I say, and if you don't, than you never really loved me at all. God doesn't want our excuses, He wants our devotion, and He'll accept nothing less.
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We are able to love God's commandments for us when we are able to love God, and we are able to love God when we know Him, and the only way for us to know God, is to spend time with Him, reading His word, and worshipping Him. It's through personal devotion time that we are able to learn who Jesus is, and fall deeper in love with our Savior. It's in spending this time with God everyday, that we demonstrate our love for Him.
That's how important personal time spent with God is, and that's why we need to be so intentional about making the time to do it. We are growing closer to our God, we are learning to love Him more, and learning His plan for us, learning His Word.
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We all live busy lives. We are all connected to the outside world all the time, through TV, radio, social media, cell phones, we feel the pressure of an encroaching world all the time. We all experience pressures at work to do overtime, children's extra-curricular activity schedules cut in, and we allow so much junk to fill up our days that we completely forget why we're really living in the first place.
To honor and glorify God.
We fill our lives up to the tippy top, but all God requires of us is that we love Him with our whole heart.
Life would be so much simpler if we focused on that, if we chose to live intentional lives, setting us apart from all of the craziness of our world, and allowing us to focus on our loving God who promises to reveal Himself to us when we spend time with Him.
Doesn't this sound refreshing? Don't you just want to go erase your social calendar and mark in: "God time" in red pen, and make time with Him a priority?
I know I do, because my heart needs it. My heart needs that kind of rest, needs the love of my Father, needs that time to just soak Him in, and allow Him to heal all of the crazy of my day.
I need to live intentional, I need to carve out time, and I'm probably not alone.
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