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Freedom From a Needlessly Busy Lifestyle In Christ

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11/20/2007 / Christian Living

Letting go of the false security of busyness is a tremendous thing. It is just as difficult to let go of busyness as it is to let go of any other dearly-loved delusion.

Ive reasoned, Surely, if Im this busy I must be accomplishing something! But this is a good example of foolish presumption. Our faith in God is evidently minuscule so long as we try to pack as much as we can into our schedules, supposing that this will accomplish everything we can possibly accomplish.

We might append an endless number of things to our schedules. But the sum of these things, apart from God, has no bearing on true success in His kingdom.

Therefore, while we live in this insecure, clingy world, we have this peacefully divergent calling to let go and let Christ manage our time. This is a superior, more God-honoring game plan than trusting ourselves to be busy enough or strong enough to accomplish everything that seems like a really good idea.

If we westerners sincerely want to know and follow after Christ then it remains for us to give Him our seconds, minutes and days. Until then, Christ as Boss will remain useless, intellectual theory.

We who follow Christ have one Main Thing to think about. Many churchgoers understand better than they would like to admit whether or not their time expenditures have anything to do with this Main Thing.

However when we're truthful with God about our naturally defective time usage then we will repent in favor of more dependence on Christ and less dependence on ourselves. When we are reduced to nothing in Christ, then our time constraints and our shallow concerns will become irrelevant.

College students in particular are busy bunch. They set out to absorb as much as possible as quickly as possible during that brief stint that separates their youthful liveliness from the drudgery of regular, working life.

They zealously buy into that hackneyed piece of advice, to "enjoy the college years while they can," as if they'll never get another chance to learn and expand themselves again. "Party while you can," is the best advice they hear from college veterans, as if partying is an end in itself.

College is also known as "a time to experiment." However, this mindset leads students to cram as much into their schedules as possible for fear that they might miss out on valuable "experimentation time."

The experimentation I refer to here is fundamentally different than the God-fearing kind of experimentation I talked about earlier. Here I am talking about a Godless kind of experimentation, explicitly designed not for spiritual development, but rather only to excuse every kind of sin, perversion and self-destruction.

And keep in mind that I'm not picking on college students, but rather I am using the collegiate mindset as but a window of insight into our misguided, westernized time usage. My goal here is to point anyone from any walk in life toward Christ. He is every human being's best Time-Manager, from the career-minded to the couch potatoes, from elementary school all the way through retirement-age.

The best version of "good time use" that we can come up with on our own is busy-ness. Apart from God, the western mindset leads us into planner-laden lifestyles, where we stumble along in a hectic stupor, digging ourselves out of our schedules as if our lives were a unrelenting sand-traps of weariness.

Granted, the college years are a useful time for setting free youthful minds and hearts. But, just as youth is a blessing sometimes, so also can it be a curse.

The total, collegiate experience includes such character-building traditions as cramming, all-nighters, burning-out, caffeine-highs and finals week. However, the souls that burn the brightest often burn out the quickest. Students might learn to multitask their whole existence so they jump through the maximum number of hoops at one time, but that doesn't mean that any of these hoops lead anywhere.

So it also goes that formerly bright-eyed, youthful individuals become wretched burn-outs as they stretch their minds out into the barren wastelands of exhaustion. In retrospect many of the best-informed people in the world have gone down in history, not for their erudition, but for bearing the fruit of a despicable heart, mind and soul.

In their zealous attempt to get ahead of the game, success-driven college students set out to learn a lot of information as quickly as possible. And they sure do! ... sort of. The highly educated and the worldly elite line the corridors of their past with every prestigious award and achievement, and yet they are no more likely than any other portion of the wandering masses to have a clue about the things that make life worth living.

But the rules change for Christ-followers. If I am a Christ-follower, then however much time I have is no longer an issue, because it's not my time anymore. I have a strategically small amount of say in how this life of His (the one that used to be mine) should be run. My time is not mine to dole out because, if I am Christ's, then I have been bought with a price, and Christ Himself will portion my time in the most eternally expedient way. If I am seeking Christ, and He is allocating His time (the time that used to be mine) according to His eternal plans and yet I am still distracted by worldly concern, then His commands will probably grate against my estimation of good time use.

by Patrick Roberts. Find his book and additional material at www.BooksByPatrick.com

Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people to Jesus Christ.

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