Leaving God on Read: A Look between Urgency and Importance
I feel like many times in my life, my relationship with God is summed up through the way I use Facebook messenger. I feel like God calls me to do things all the time, such as read the Bible, pray to Him more often, and live a Christian lifestyle, but this often happens:
In this situation, I justify to myself by thinking, “I’m a bit busy at the moment or I’ll reply later when I have the time.” In other words, I’m implying that this person is not worth my time at the moment. But when it comes to God, what would it be like to say that God is not worthy of my time?
God’s already deemed us worthy of His love.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6–8
If God has deemed us as worthy of His time, God is more than worthy of our time. Any other task could not possibly compare in value than to what He provides for us in eternity.
Urgency and Importance
Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Okay, I should take time to follow God, but I’m so busy with other deadlines and priorities in my life, like applying for jobs or finishing that homework assignment due at 11:59 PM. What about these? ”
I think we should first make the delineation between urgent things and important things. Urgent things are often tasks to prevent a form of crisis, and require us to always be in a state of action, often leading to stress, anxiety, and worry. Important tasks usually are ones that need preparation or involve positive maintenance of a system, and these require discipline to pursue. As people, we get bogged down with urgent things in life, and often forget what’s important.
In the story of Mary and Martha, Martha was very busy trying to prepare dinner, worrying about the urgent manner at hand and becoming extremely task-oriented, while Mary was at the dinner table listening to Jesus speak. Even though Martha complained that Mary wasn’t helping, Jesus said that Mary did well because it was far more important to “choose the good part”. This is not to say not to serve. The point is that Martha was so task-based that she lost sight of what would be more important for her Christian life.
Even in Jesus’s ministry, he allocated his time to doing things that were important, such as performing miracles and eating with sinners. Jesus was in fact very busy, but he was busy with activities that had long-lasting impact on others, and I think that’s how we can identify the urgent from the important things: What decision will have a lasting impact on my life and others?
What decision will have a lasting impact on my life and others?
For example, as a student: An urgent task could possibly be finishing my homework assignment as soon as possible, but an important task could be taking the time to understand the course material, which would be a foundation for further learning.
With regards to my spiritual life, I find myself identifying with Martha. When serving my fellowship, I work to make sure every event will go perfectly, but not only does this give me unnecessary anxiety, but it also makes me lose track of what’s truly important, which can range from having quality fellowship time my friends, giving myself time to rest or, devoting time to read the Word.
No Regrets with God
In retrospect, there are many things in life I wish I spent less time on. I realize a lot of my time over-studying, or endlessly perusing Handshake for jobs could have been better used for other hobbies, rest, and even God. That’s why a question I want to ask myself in the future to help me delineate between urgent and important is “Is this action something I could say I might regret in the future?”
Parents won’t regret saying they spent extra time tucking in their children at bed at night. My mom has told me she will never regret sacrificing her sleep every morning to wake up early and cook me breakfast.
I can confidently say that I will never regret taking 5 minutes of my day to have intentional prayer time with the Lord, or that I decided to do my morning devotionals instead of getting an extra half an hour sleep, but I can say that I do regret the times where I spent so much time on homework and skipped church as a result, or I decided to apply for jobs late into the night, which ended up costing me a few hours of sleep.
Beloved friends, I hope that all of us are able to find out what’s important in our lives. I’m not saying we should completely drop the urgent matters in our life, but rather we should take action, be disciplined, and accomplish the important things in our lives, especially the things that God finds pleasing and wants us to do for His and our greater good.
Let’s not leave God on read anymore, and instead, take the time to respond to the Father whose more than worthy.
