Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above
all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. –Eph 3.20
I don’t know about you…that’s a lie, I do know, you’re just
like me. Our day to day is filled with TO DO lists, appointments, timetables,
reminders, and schedules. This morning I woke up, as I do every morning, before
my alarm sounded and would like to say that I “Hopped up off tha bed Turn my swag on,
Took a look in tha mirror said wassup” but I’ll leave that little ditty
to Soulja Boy. What I did do was take a
quick thumb through my iPhone Facebook app to see who else was up at or before
the crack of dawn and saw that a friend had already run unexpectedly into a blank
cell on her excel spreadsheet, an empty block of time in her planner, an empty
field in her calendar. Having gotten up
before the Lord finished answering His prayer requests on the other side of the
International Date Line, she’d made her way to the gym for an early morning
session with her trainer only to find out that, get this, THE GYM WAS CLOSED! I’m
just speculating here, but I believe Jesus may have had to shed a few more
drops of blood to cover this situation –I know he would have had it been me.
By the time I’d finished reading that post, I’d mustered
enough awake to zombie into the kitchen and plug in the coffee pot before turning
on the Tom Joyner Morning Show and showering.
I, for a brief moment, basked in my terrestrial ability to have warm H2O
restore my Sight beyond Sight and replenish the Kryptonian multi-tasking powers
I tend to lose each day when the sun goes down. As my supernatural
time-juggling cells replenished themselves, I could see the day’s details pouring
down in front of me like the green data stream in The Matrix and suddenly
realized all the extra’s I needed to get done before even leaving the house –“pack
my workout clothes, fix a salad for lunch since you ate pizza for dinner,
return the call from YESTERDAY morning, take out the trash that’s starting to
smell” (don’t act like it doesn’t happen to you!), yada, yada, so on and so
forth. Jumped out the shower, attached the Bluetooth and I’m talking and
lotioning, salading and gathering. “Got the coffee, got the workout bag. Now,
get the trash, and I’m out!”
How many times during the day have you said it, “Now, I need
to…”, or “Now, that I’ve finished that, I gotta…”? Sound familiar?
When I read this scripture in Ephesians this morning, it
dawned on me, that far too many of us make the horrible mistake of mishandling Now. Not just talking about the specific moment in
time, but more so the activity we’re engaging in, Now -each block of time
sectioned off for another appointment, class, task, job, or meeting. Whether you are like the original Arnold Schwarzenegger
version of the Terminator and have your day’s activities scroll like some
digital readout across your retina, you still carry the bulky Franklin-Covey
Daytimer, or you are the iPhone/iPad app King or BBM Queen, you have a list of
things that need be accomplished for the day. You may be, and as I said at the
beginning of this post, you probably are just like me; you say a quick “Jesus gimme strenf”, ” Lord take the wheel”, or some other non-descript appeal as you rush
off to put a choke-hold on the wheel.
Here’s something I learned years ago as an Intercollegiate Student
Track Athlete -tense muscles hinder your performance. If you’ve ever watched runners, especially
sprinters, you’ll notice how the flesh on their face just kinda flops up and
down as they run at near supersonic speeds. That’s because they are, while
muscling down the track, at the same time relaxed. Runners, who tense up, stiffen up, lose form,
and lose the race. Same is true as we,
unfortunately, run through our days.
The scripture declares that God can do so much more with “Now”
than we can imagine or even ask for, but often we neglect to go through our
runner’s warm-up.
Stretching- our
hands to God in worship at the start of the day
Drilling –scriptures
in our minds that remind us of our position with God and how he wants us to
succeed
Envisioning –ourselves
as successful and accomplished through the power of God in us
Breathing – out the
word of God to God and self reminding us of, and holding him to his promises
Relaxing- in the
work knowing that we’ve prepared for the competition and we have the strength through
God to finish strong.
Every task and To Do presents an opportunity to let the
power of God work in us to accomplish the next “Now”. So I
give my Now to Him, because I recognize that He is able to do more with it than
can I. Give him your Now.
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Glad to see you turned the magnifying glass on yourself. First step to being and staying positive about the things of life!
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