When you’re all alone and there’s not one person around you, who are you?
Do you find yourself, like me, a completely different person than you are when you are around others?
Maybe you talk differently or your thoughts are on different things.
Maybe you worry about different things or are in a completely different mood.
Who are you when you’re completely alone?
Who Are You When You’re Completely Alone?
I have to tell you the truth that I like myself far better when I am alone than when I’m around anyone else.
When no one’s looking, I’m almost always in prayer, thinking about God, trying to figure out what He thinks about, trying to get to know Him more, listening to sermons, reading my Bible.
And I got to a point in my life where I realized that who I am alone, when no one’s watching IS my most best self. Because I’m not worried about the thoughts of others, worried about what ails them, worried about the world and it’s going ons.
And so I decided for myself that I wanted to spend a lot more time by myself. Time spent with just me and God. To start setting aside time every day, just for Him and me to fellowship and communicate.
Here’s what happened…
My life exploded.
I got addicted (in a good way) to Jesus Christ. To the point where now, I want to read my Bible all the time, I want to listen to sermons all the time, I want to sit at Jesus’ feet and just LISTEN.
I want to spend as much time with Him as possible, to get away from the crowds, as it were in order to drink Living Water. To have that holy communion of time with just me and Him.
So much of my life is public and that’s okay. We can’t ALWAYS stay alone with God, there must be balance. We must be used for Christ to meet the needs of the world, to do what He’s called us to do, but so many of us aren’t spending that time alone with God that we need to be and so our focus is 100% on the world, and there’s so very little time for Christ.
We think to ourselves, “Well, I know Pastors spend a lot of time with God, they spend maybe Saturdays with God preparing the sermon and then on Sunday, they preach it, but that’s for them, not me. I’m not a Pastor. They lead a lot of people.”
Good Pastors, steeped in the Word of God, ones who are being used to move mountains are NOT JUST spending one day a week preparing their sermons. They are spending every second they can, whether alone, with family, or with others serving needs, with God.
They are constantly praying.
Every day I’m opening up my Bible at LEAST 10 times through out the day to pray, to read the Bible, to seek God’s path for me, what He wants me to do for that day, and so much more.
It’s a minute-by-minute relationship. It’s not just…do whatever you want and on Saturday’s, spend the day preparing a sermon, no. People who lead are committed to spending every second they can with God, cultivating that love relationship with their best friend and Creator.
Maybe you think to yourself, “I don’t lead anyone, so I don’t need to do that.”
Are not your children watching you???
I assure you that your children learn a lot more about God from your ACTIONS and the things you DO, rather than the things you SAY to do.
Do we, as a people, have a love for God all the while telling our children to love God?
Do we sacrifice for God, constantly wanting to spend time with Him, putting Him first in our lives, while we tell those around us, “I’m Christian. I love God.”
And what about our husbands? Are we not also THE biggest influence in his life, apart from God?
How do we wield that treasure that God has bestowed upon us?
Do we forsake such a great gift and leave our husband to himself to learn and see God?
And all that is just within your own family.
What about extended family? What about those family members not saved? What about your friends at church? What about when you’re in the grocery store?
What fills our hearts and where we spend our time, comes out of our mouths. If we are spending our time with God, our mouth will show it. It will begin to permeate everything we do.
My blog, your business, all should smell so intensely of God’s glory, majesty, and praise for Him!
Whether we are with our kids, our husband, our friends and family, our business, our church, or the watching world, we must streamline our lives in a way that ALLOWS us freedom of time TO spend as much time with God as possible.
After all, is He not the reason we are here in the first place? Is He not why we are on earth? Is His lovingkindness and patience with us not the reason we are saved?
Streamlining our lives isn’t the easiest thing to do but I tell you the full truth, I don’t live my life in a chaotic crazy way and you’d THINK that as a single mom, things are constantly wild and crazy.
I get that email or message from a friend, all the time. It begins with, “I know you’re busy but…”
I’m not busy.
I serve the world, run empires, manage my house, train my children, and I do it all as a single mom. I delegate to a couple assistants some things to help me accomplish more. I’m teaching my daughter to learn to cook (which also helps me eat, killing two birds with one stone: setting her up for her future and helping me in the meantime).
And I feel like if *I* can do all this, with a peaceful life, then surely you can too because you have a husband, you have more help than me! You’re not out there trying to run empires and manage a house all by yourself (although it may feel like it, it’s not true). Your husband makes the money. I don’t have a husband to make money. I do that too. And it’s a LOT of pressure.
If I can do all these things, then I KNOW that you can too!
I KNOW you can set more time aside for God purposefully and intentionally.
I got a question the other day that asked, “How can I find the proper balance between spending time with God, my family, and building a small business.”
The answer?
Spend your first priority time with GOD.
If you seek first HIS kingdom, all these things will be added unto you. If your heart is aligned to HIM first and foremost, so many decisions become EASY!!!!
Everything else will begin to fall into place naturally.
Your life becomes less stressed, because you come across verses like Matthew 6:34. Listen, God doesn’t want us, as women, to be so busy we are stressed out, have health issues, our adrenals are a wreak because we’re not getting enough sleep, and we’re running on a hamster wheel.
This is NEVER God’s intention for us.
Working peacefully, and systematically. Working with purpose, in all that we do, whether we are caring for small children or whether we are running an empire, must all be done peacefully.
Satan and the world wants us to believe that we have to go a mile a minute to be successful but such is not the case. I’m successful and I don’t run a mile a minute. I put God first! So obviously the world is wrong.
They want you to live a crazy and wild life. They want you busy because it hinders the gospel.
Don’t let the world win!
You need time to sit at the feet of Jesus, you need to be fed with His love, because you cannot minister to your family, your husband, your friends, or the world unless YOU are satisfied in Christ. Unless YOUR needs are met. Otherwise, you’re just running ragged, and that’s not helpful to anyone.
You need your needs met. God is the only One who CAN meet your needs. All of them. By ignoring Him, not spending enough time with Him, you are literally hurting yourself and all those around you.
Imagine peace. Imagine a life of peace.
Will things be perfect? No.
Last night at 9 pm, my smoke detector decided it wanted to break and I had to call my security system guy out (who is amazing by the way and came right over at 9:30 pm!!! What a blessing he is to me!)
Things break. Things go wrong. All the time. This IS the world after all. We cannot escape it.
But it does mean that while the world will rile us up momentarily, it’s JUST for a moment. The second the situation was over and he left, I spent the next couple hours in prayer and then went to bed. Woke up early the next morning and am listening to a sermon, all before writing this.
God CAN BE the focus of our lives and we can live in this world but not be OF this world.
The more time I spend with God, the more I fall utterly and hopelessly in love with Him. The more I see things from His angle, the more I walk in the Spirit and the more I’m able to serve YOU.
We need to be a people who are emphatically committed to spending time each and every day with our Lord. To sit at His feet and be fed with His love, mercy, and grace.
What time constraints can you eradicate in order to spend more time alone with Christ in your life?
Does it mean waking up 30 minutes earlier each day?
Does it mean going to bed 30 minutes later at night?
Maybe it means while your little ones are napping, you spend your time in the Bible and resting instead of doing that long laundry list of chores that aren’t done.
You think that if Jesus was standing right next to you, He’d care if your house was immaculately clean? God wants us to manage our homes well, but sometimes we put so much pressure on OURSELVES that it’s unbearable.
If you’re just starting out, close out loose ends. Start investing in things that are for God’s glory and further His kingdom. Invest more time into your family’s salvation and walk with God. And less in what the WORLD says matters.
You don’t HAVE to be busy.
You can have a streamlined, peaceful life but YOU have to commit to making it happen. You’re the only one who can!!!