It was almost a month ago now that my pastor preached a sermon entitled “A Theology of Time from the Life of Christ”. <\/p>\n
I listened, I was convicted, I couldn’t figure out what I needed to do. I was busy. How was I going to put this into practice?<\/p>\n
At that time, I was reading James in my personal devotions and the part in chapter 1 about the man who looks at his face in the mirror and then forgets what he looks like was stamped on my brain. <\/p>\n
I mentioned something from the sermon to Lisa, she invited me to share more from the sermon with her. I was eager for the additional motivation to take another hard look at my face in the mirror–and this time to remember what my face looked like.<\/p>\n
So I’ve been slowly revisiting Justin’s six points.<\/p>\n
Point 2: Fight to be alone with God<\/strong><\/p>\n Jesus did. He regularly got up early in the morning to find a secluded place to pray. Even when the demands on His time were great, His need to be away with His Father was greater. (Mark 1:35-36; Luke 5:15-16)<\/p>\n Justin used the illustration of flying on an airplane with a child. If the air pressure inside the plane drops and the oxygen masks are needed, parents need to put their masks on first. Why? Because they can’t help if they’re dead.<\/p>\n In the same way, we need to be in communion with God. If not, the rest of our busy lives will be unfruitful–because we’re living them out dead.<\/p>\n Fight<\/b>. That’s the word Justin used. Fight<\/i> to be alone with God. <\/p>\n Struggle. Work at. Push towards.<\/p>\n Fight to be alone with God.<\/p>\n I fight for things I love, for things I consider important. <\/p>\n I fight for time to blog, coming home for lunch if I know I won’t have time to prepare a post some other time.<\/p>\n I fight for time to read, taking a book with me to the bathroom, into bed, with me as I fold laundry.<\/p>\n I fight for my evening baths, giving up sleep to make sure I get them.<\/p>\n But do I fight<\/b> to be alone with God?<\/p>\n I’m choosing to. I’m choosing to make time alone with God a priority. I’m choosing to make the time to be alone. <\/p>\n I want to be like Martin Luther, who said he prayed an hour each day, except on particularly busy days. On those days he prayed two hours.<\/p>\n Even more than that, I want to be like Christ. <\/p>\n And if He fought to be alone with His Father, than I want to fight to be alone with the Father as well.<\/p>\n If you’d like to listen to Pastor Justin’s excellent sermon “A Theology of Time from the Life of Christ”, you can find the mp3 at Highland Park’s Worship Service Archive<\/a>. It’s “A Theology of Time” dated 7\/31\/11.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was almost a month ago now that my pastor preached a sermon entitled “A Theology of Time from the Life of Christ”. I listened, I was convicted, I couldn’t figure out what I needed to do. I was busy. How was I going to put this into practice? At that time, I was reading … Read more Fight to be alone<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7733"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}