the 24th hour

Sitting next to a fire drinking some coffee I was reminded of something, a simple idea really, at least at first glance. We were called to live our lives for God. Wow! Have we not heard that a couple hundred times in our lives. Is that not what EVERY pastor says every Sunday at the end of their sermon. I mean is that not what the 'life application' is there for, to tell us how to utilize the last 45 minutes we spent listening to this framed idea in our life for Him. Somehow, though, we all fail to grasp this concept of living our lives for God.

Most of us will look at our life and try and incorporate God in their somewhere. For some it looks like a quiet time a few times a week; for others its just going to church every Sunday. We get wrapped up in this idea that we need God-specific time and make our goal to increase the amount of time we spend with God each week. I think somehow in the mix of things we come to this point where we think He is calling us to spend an hour a day reading our bible, or something along those lines, and that is what our walk is supposed to look like. That in turn leads to a subconscious separation of God and our life, a BIG problem.

God didn't call us to live for him 3 or 4 hours out of the week, or even out of the day. God wants our hearts. He wants us to reciprocate the love he has for us back to him. He wants our lives! If we 'give Him our life' then why do we think one hour a day is enough? What is it that makes us think that devoting a specific time every day to worshiping the Father is living our lives according to His will. We are missing the point if that is what giving up our life looks like.

Think about a marriage. You make a commitment to love someone else and devote your intentionality to that person. When that commitment is made we don't walk that path trying to devote just one hour a day to our spouse. No! We consider that person in every decision we make. We try and please them whenever possible. There joy is what we seek in that marriage. Why do we think its different in our walk with God!?

24 hours a day is what it takes to glorify our God. He wants every second of our day to be lived in worship for Him and the love and grace he has extended. Our calling is to glorify Him in all things, ALL! Not just the parts of our day we can squeeze in. All is defined as the whole of, the greatest possible. We were called to surrender our life for God, our WHOLE life, ALL of our life! In every single thought we have we should be worshiping Him. We are to live our lives for God and God alone. Notice that if we live for God 24 hours a day, there is no time left to live for ourselves, not a single minute in the week, month, year, or life.