Forgetting Distant Dramas: Serving Your Neighbor Instead

Forgetting Distant Dramas: Serving Your Neighbor Instead

Forgetting Distant Dramas: Serving Your Neighbor Instead

The curse and the blessing are often mingled together.

You and I as I write this post and you as you read it are living in that slice of time called "the present".

Very quickly the present becomes the past and the future moves before us. This cycle of "time" continues on a linear path until our current life ends, we die and are absent from the body face to face with the Lord.

Our time is short (a reality that we tend to ignore) we are like a vapor that appears and then we are gone.

Along with our time being short comes time being precious. What we think and do matters. We can never relive these moments, minutes, hours, and days over again. They are present before God the Father from beginning to end. He knows our frame, he knows our sins, he knows our abilities he gave us and how we will use them (or not).

So how will you and I use this precious gift of "time" to his glory and the benefit of those around us? Will we let ourselves be consumed by sin, by evil?

Today, right now what is consuming YOU?

Are you immersed in Christ? Is Christ the focus of your day?

As illustrated by our ancestor's decisions in the Garden of Eden we are prone to selfish and futile choices. In our time, in our culture, we have so many choices of what to do with our "precious and limited time" that it is very easy to waste it on foolish and sinful pursuits.

Looking objectively at American Culture for the past decades we see how we as a people have lost our moral compass and have decided to exclude God from our lives and manage it ourselves.

Even many Christians have given into secular desires and lifestyles. As a result of The Body of Christ, the Church has marginalized itself into irrelevance.

So I challenge you today to reflect on your day-to-day faith. How is your relationship with Christ and The Person of the Holy Spirit? As persons, they are the most important persons in your life. Have you acknowledged them this morning, prayed to them, asked them about problems in your life, or....

We live in a time of unprecedented information. We are actually overwhelmed with information yet most of us would never admit to that. You and I should be attempting to understand the times. We do that through Godly Wisdom that comes through prayer and scripture.

1 Chronicles 12:32

32 Of Issachar, men who had an understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs, and all their kinsmen under their command.

During the time of David, there were men who understood the times, just as there are men today. But do we listen to them?

People today are immersing themselves in the times and are consumed by news and distant dramas that have no real bearing on their lives or the people around them. The opposite extreme is if we choose to disconnect and try to ignore the times. Both choices are not realistic or wise.

Ecclesiastes 8:5

5 Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.

Do you have a wise heart?

Matthew 6:3

3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

Just as Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for willfully ignoring what was before them for their own prideful and evil agendas he rebukes us for wasting our time.

Is this you?

We are incapable of deciding our times: Jesus says, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). Through Christ we can have a general understanding of our times, yet in reality as men living under the sun, “man does not know his time” (Ecclesiastes 9:12).

We can know enough about the times to keep us alert and aware (Romans 13:11). We should also “keep awake” and stay “on guard” because “you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33). The reality is our understanding of the times is never complete, and given the complexities of creation under the sovereign hand of God we never will have a grasp of it.

With this in mind, we must choose to put down our social media, at least for a while, and return to the reality God intends for us. The internet and social media are a great tool and blessing for discipleship but we DO NOT live in it.

We must stop ignoring our calling as Christians, to love God and neighbor, the first commandment and the second, as Jesus referred to them (Matthew 22:37–39). We must have the wisdom to love the people beyond our times and also love the ones bound up in the time before us, the Now. Specifically those near us, our real-life neighbors, not the “distant dramas” that fill our precious time with things beyond our control.

What then my friends will YOU do with the times given you?

#extraordinarygod