Everyone, at some point in life, mixes up their priorities.
For me, I like to put work or making sure that my kill/death ratio on Call of Duty is decent, before school work. I like to put my tastiness of a soda and sweet tarts before the health of my teeth (found out at my dentist visit today I only have 1 cavity this time *pops champagne*). Mostly importantly, though, is most times, I put all of those things before God.
Recently, I've been putting more and more things before God in my priority list.
- Work
- Television Shows
- Sleep
- Comfort
- Friends
I say that I'm too busy all the time for a lot of things, because most of the time I am.
I'm too busy go see a movie with someone. I'm Too busy to go to San Antonio with my family. I'm too busy to go eat dinner with my Grandma. Most of the time, I'm too busy to do stuff like that either because I'm working or I have plans already.
But when I slip every now and then and tell myself that I'm too busy to spend time with God,
Once I hear that come out of my mouth (or my subconsciousness) Ron Weasley pops into my head.
It's one thing to not have time to do stuff during the day. However, I don't recall every reading anywhere in the bible about a specific time that God wants you to devote to him. Usually when that will happen, I tend to make a list about all the times during that day that I can be with God.
1.) Wake up early. (You can sleep during class, it's fine.) (Pay attention in class kids. Don't really sleep)
-You can wake up 30 minutes early and take that time to be in the Word and talk to God in a quite room about things that are going on.
2.) Play worship music in the car on the way to school.
-I've started doing this more often, and it has really calmed me down (because I am usually a angry, don't-talk-to-me monster in the morning time) and allowed me to start my day off with some encouragement.
3.) Just because you're at school, does not mean that God gets put on hold for 7 or 8 hours.
-The cool thing about our relationship with Him, is that we can talk to Him whenever we want. That includes during school. I know so many times when students in my class will say stuff that will tempt me to fall back into the old life I lived, and I don't think as often as I should about just going to God right there and talking it out with Him. Tell Him how I feel, remind myself that He will be there through it all and everything will be okay.
The list continues to talking to God during work, on the way home from work, before I go to bed ect. The point of the list is to get me to write down all of the times that I can be with God during the day and then look back on it and see what I was doing instead of that.
Lately I've noticed just how big an impact having time with God each day can have on your life.
Once you miss one day, then you miss another and another and it's easier and easier to keep missing them.
I don't know why, and I don't like it, but it happens. And once you stop having time with Him and you stop talking to Him regularly, even if it's just for a week or so, it's gets so much harder to resist the temptations of the world.
Whatever temptations come at you, it's very noticeable that you've decided you wanted to fight it by yourself, or not fight it at all.
God wants nothing more than for us to love Him and to be with Him in His Kingdom.
I mean, He did sacrifice his only son so that a bunch of us undeserving sinners could chill with Him in a place unlike any else. So you have to know it breaks His heart when he see's His children straying away and trying to fight the fight alone. And even more when, after they've made made decisions, they can't forgive themselves.
Most times when I mess up, it take a while to forgive myself. That's always the hardest part. I know that God has forgiven me, but I just can't bring myself to letting myself off of the hook of disobeying God. I'll cry, I'll hate my self for a while, and I'll think that everyone else is just perfect compared to me. I've gone through times where I've messed up so bad, that I think that God can't fix me, or that He doesn't want me anymore or, that, since it's happened before, the chance of it happening again is high and so what's the point.
It's always a pretty low point in life when that happens, but I have to constantly remind myself, and have others remind me, that God knew that I was going to mess up. He knew that this was going to happen, and, He sent Jesus down to die for it. I have to forgive myself then. Because, if I can't forgive myself, then I feel as if the cross wasn't good enough for me, and that's saying that Jesus isn't good enough for me. That is not true. Jesus is for everyone. All sinners of every sin. And he didn't die on the cross so that we would sin and go hide in a corner and stay away from God because we were too ashamed. He died so that we could sin and still be with Him in heaven ( as long as you ask for forgiveness and repent from the sin. And know that He's you're Lord and Savior. )
So, I don't know if this blog went very off track, it felt like it did, but Priorities and Forgiveness have both been big things on my heart lately, so they both just kinda smashed together in this. And Harry Potter too.
