Removing Distractions does not make more time for God
Last week I took up a challenge to go 40 days without TV or xbox in order to remove distractions from my life and to draw closer to God.
I am currently on day 5 and I have already learned something.
Getting rid of a distraction does not mean you have more time for God. Removing a distraction from your life is like removing a cup of water from a bucket. As soon as you remove that water, more water floods the space you just freed up and in a split second you cannot even tell you removed any water in the first placce.
Removing a distraction from your life just gives you more time for other distractions. Sure I spent more time this week playing with my son Malikai, relaxing with some music with Danae, and reading a lot of books, getting the house ready for company, which we can all agree are much better than watching tv. But my main purpose of doing this challenge was to draw closer to God.
Your flesh, and Satan, have a lot of proven ways to keep you distracted from God. If you want to take a challenge to go without something in order to spend more time with God, you must not only remove the distraction, but commit yourself to actually spending more time with God.
There is a war going on, your flesh wants to keep you focused on the flesh and the things of the world, and Satan wants to keep you focused on anything but God and the Bible. Declaring to fight by removing something from your life isn’t as easy as you may think.
It takes some dedication and discipline to spend that extra time with God above and beyond what you already spend every day. So if you want to take on this challenge, go into it prepared with a battle plan.
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This was a blessing to read!
Thank you 🙂
I definitely know what you mean in this post, and have experienced it plenty in my own life as well. No matter how much we strip down our lives of unnecessary things, we still manage to not do the things we need to do. It’s all about developing habits to do the things we need to do and this can sometimes be a very challenging process. Something that helped me was reading the 7 habits of highly effective people. This is a wonderful time management tool which you can apply to all areas of life, including time for God
I have heard of that book before. I think this shows that not doing something wrong makes you do something right. We have to intentionally spend time with God, then our priorities will be right.
Thanks for the comment Kamel.
Many people fall into the flawed logic that minimizing will lead you to more time with God. The truth is that if you haven’t cultivated the desire to spend the time when you are busy, then you are not going to spend the time when you are available. Concentrate on loving Him and remembering everything He has done for you and the rest will fall in line.
Great point Jeremy. What matters is getting the desire to follow Him, if you have that desire then nothing will keep you from it.