Power of 15 minutes

Time is a special resource God has given to us. We can’t see it. We can’t touch it. We can’t stop it. Old or young time is the same. Everyone has 86,000 seconds, 1,440 minutes, 24 hours a day. This does not change. If you were to live until 80 years of age, you’ll have 691,200 hours. How are you using your time?

How is it that everyone has same time but some people are able to accomplish so much more? Some complain they have no time, while others are able to accomplish great feat? Interestingly enough they both have same amount of time!

The issue is priority! God has given us enough time to accomplish what he wishes to accomplish through us. There isn’t enough time to do everything but we have enough time to do the right things.

What are the essentials of your life? What are the priorities? What does not make sense is that people say they have no time to prioritize but they spend so much more time correcting issues in their life as a result due to time negligence.

If you were given extra 15 minutes a day what will you use it for? To stretch? To review your day? To do your quiet time? Write a letter to your loved one?

Reality is that we all have 15 minutes a day to spare. Take 15 minutes out of non-essential activities, such as TV, surfing the net, chatting online, games, doing nothing, reading newspaper...etc. Wake up 15 minutes early and go to bed 15 minutes late. Eat faster and gain that 15 minutes. Don’t go far from your work place to eat and save the 15 minutes. If we so desire, we can take that 15 minutes out of our schedule.

I want to encourage you to take that 15 minutes and spend time with the Lord through Living Life. What’s in 15 minutes? If you did this for next 3 months, you would have spent 22.5 hours in the word and prayer. In 3 years, that would amount to 11 days. Now if our work days are about 9 hours a day, that would mean you have extra 30 work days.

Do not underestimate the power of 15 minutes! Spend your time in the Lord 15 minutes a day and see what God can do in your life as you being your day with the Lord.

P. Sam - content reworked from Success is Not an Accident by Tommy Newberry]

Children are gift of God...

HiRes

Bethel Church Children | Gift of God

Our children are gifts from God...

Q.T. Time | Faith & Seeking

Hebrew 11:6 | And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. [ESV]

Because faith is indispensable to a good relationship with God, its importance cannot be overemphasized. But notice the condition in this verse. It does not say that God is the rewarder of everyone but "of those who diligently seek Him." Living faith is direct; it has its foundation in diligently, actively, consistently, zealously seeking Him in study and prayer and in conforming to His will. Those who are doing these things are encouraged that they will be rewarded. The reward is to find Him. This, in turn, increases faith. The biblical word "faith" is most synonymous with the English word "trust." "Faith" can be a mere agreement with a cold, hard fact. This is fine as far as it goes, but it loses a great deal of meaning when we consider that this One with whom we are dealing is a warm, dynamic, powerful, loving Personality. Biblical faith, trust, is firm. It is faith in full flower, acting consciously and with agreeable feeling—we might call it "conviction." This faith is not done coldly and calculatedly—simply because a thing is right. It is not done with a "perhaps" or a "maybe," but with joy and with firm conviction, with a consciousness that one is in agreement with this dynamic and loving personality. We should be aware of our unity with Him just as we are aware of our sense of touch—our strongest sense in terms of evoking emotion: consider a punch in the nose compared to a kiss. But faith, trust, is sensitive in the same way. It is conscious of the things of God; it sees God. In addition, faith not only evokes the hard, cold facts (it has "a remembrance of truth"), but also responds emotionally to a wonderful, dynamic, gracious, and powerful Personality, who is our Friend. John W. Ritenbaugh | from Prayer and Fervency

Annoyance...

It's been awhile since I wrote anything here but just a short thought today:

If someone had a headache that stems from let's say a particular cancer, which should you deal with in terms of importance? Of course the obvious answer is that depends. But humor me. What is the priority in treating this person? Of course we want to work on both, get rid of this headache through a pain killer and cure this cancer asap. But which is priority? That which is the source of the headache, cancer!

I wish Christians do that. We work on symptoms all the time without ever getting to the source of the problem... annoyance.

Google Sky

What an amazing tool. I just discovered 'google sky' and it is an amazing tool. You can look at various clusters of stars and galaxies. Some galaxies bumping into each other. It is said that in our galaxy alone there are about 200 [conservative number] - 400 billion stars like our sun, except that our sun is considered small compared to other stars. Go beyond the Milky Way, our galaxy, and you got huge, huge galaxies and stars. You just got to wonder, why did God create such a vast universe? Couldn't he have just created a galaxy that was about 80,000 miles across just to fit us rather than this Milky Way that is 100,000 light years across? And Milky Way is a small galaxy.

Read Psalm 19:1-5 - Wow! They were created so they can share a small dimension as to who God is. God created all this with words and sustains it in his hands! Universe is held in the bowl of his hands! Wow! And this infinite God listens to us in our prayer! 

You are left to whisper in awe as the Psalmist did, "What is a man that you are mindful of him."

Who am i that last night when I prayed over my children, your ears heard my whispering cry?

So big yet so intimate... thank you God! You are awesome and I am not. Your are infinite and I am at your mercy! Oh God be the center of my life! Help me to see myself with divine perspective! May I and my family and our church, savor and find our greatest joy and greatest pleasure and greatest satisfaction in Jesus and in Him alone! Amen.

E X C O G I T A T I O N ...

Last month or two has been very fruitful in my endeavor to know my Jesus in his sweetness and pleasure. Psalmist writes, "You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I long for such pleasure and joy in God. Psalmist sings, "...to God my exceeding joy..." God commands us, "rejoice in the Lord always, let me say it again, rejoice." Ezekiel writes that the word of God is sweet as honeycomb! God's word, God, is sweeter then honey, the most pleasurable substance known to the ancient middle eastern world. We are told to "come and taste that the Lord is good!" We are told to rest upon that 'taste' - rest in Jesus. O, how I long to know God that even in my most troubled time, I can declare, "To live is for Christ [greatest and infinite pleasure and joy], to die is gain [for i will be face to face with my Lord, the Rose of Sharon]." I want to share a quote from Jonathan Edward, a man who knew how to savor and find pleasure in Jesus! May we endeavor to savor and find delight in Jesus as He did...

God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God’s glory [doesn’t] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation of it and his delight in it.

Jonathan Edwards

Miscellanies