How do I spend my time..

Last night at home group, we were studying on the Sermon on the Mount and we spoke about the commitment that we make when we decide to follow Jesus Christ. When we realize that this life is not about me and I am dependent not upon myself, this world, or various accoutrements. My husband asked what it means, no really, what does it mean? What changes? Your appearance? Maybe. Your speech? Hopefully. What about the way I spend my time?

When I thought about how I used to spend my time- in what directed me- vaulted me from activity to event to excursion. What drove me? Passions, wants, lusts, ambitions… All of these sound stereotypical as emotions and desires that sound like they should be anesthetized or suppressed. However, on a given day, that is what pushes me to make a pumpkin spice latte or listen to the music I crave at that moment. Not all passions, ambitions and desires are bad. How then, does that change the way I move about my day?

In a book that I am currently reading to grow my son into a mature and whole, loving person, I find that I learn more about myself and my sinfulness than his. The following excerpts struck me: “God created us to exist in a constant state of desire and appetite.” There is tension in this continuous struggle of what I want versus what is the best for me and those around me. And in my example here, what God wants for me in my life. How do my desires and appetites line up with who I am to be and who He is shaping me to be?

In one of my favorite books, Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger, Zooey tries to attain spiritual purification by obsessively reiterating the "Jesus prayer" as an antidote to the perceived superficiality and corruptness of life. She painfully tries to "pray without ceasing" and endures so much stress and pressure at such an insurmountable task (some may think not) that she suffers a breakdown. I worry that the same false forced spirituality could be applied in how we weigh and gauge our daily to-dos and wants. Could you become obsessive in evaluating righteous and desires that you become a religious zealot? You might look kind of silly if you took it to an extreme; at the grocery store you pick up a box of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies… “Ok, Lord, is this what you want me to desire at this moment or am I acting out of my own selfish motives?” I think this could easily veer too far on the side of Gnosticism, wherein one “puts to death” the physical aspect and denies the body’s very human urges. Some Gnostic monks would be so heretical as to deny themselves of food, water and the necessary items of human survival.

So then, what drives my day? I believe that we are free agents that have the option to choose whether we eat, drink, or surf the web at 1am. I also believe that we have precious time on this earth as our life. So we should ultimately choose well.

All mankind are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God stands forever.
Isaiah 40:6

Another excerpt from the same book I quoted before, called, To Train Up A Child by Michael & Debi Pearl, they make this point about raising a child: “His growing humanity will give way to a desire to build, to know, to be appreciated, to be recognized, to succeed, to be a lover, and to survive in a secure state of being”.

This is not too far off from what any of us want on a given day or a given man’s life.

To be known, appreciated, loved and to succeed…God created these wants and desires and they are good in the nature that God himself fufills them. I know that the Lord is not a detached watchmaker who has left us to our own devices to unravel what he intended to be beautiful. There is still beauty, justice, passion, growth, renewal and goodness as we draw closer to Him. Then and only then can we truly know that our intentions and inclinations will be close to the heart of God. As we abide in Christ and submit to the Holy Spirit, He is able to work in and through us as He desires to do so within us all.

Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her
right upon the earth,
Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
-Salut au Monde, Walt Whitman