Is there an area of your life that continues to trouble you? Perhaps bitterness, anger, anxiety, fearfulness, sarcasm, fear of man, overeating, laziness, ____________? You fill in the blank. If you have been walking with Jesus for any length of time, I would venture to guess that you pray about that pretty regularly each morning.
“In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly… But I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you…. With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O LORD! I will keep your statutes. I call to you; save me, that I may observe your testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words.” Psalm 5:3, Psalm 88:13; Psalm 119:145-147
So we pray in the morning for God’s help to overcome the sin…then what?
We get up and get on with our day. On the way to work someone cuts us off and we are instantly annoyed or if you live near Keswick, someone who can’t see over the steering wheel is going 35 in a 50 mile an hour zone, and that annoys us. You get to work and the person in the office that you just prayed about 2 hours earlier is already on your nerves and it is only 9:30 am. And so on and so on.
My question is this: So we pray in the morning for God’s to help us overcome _______ and then what? What do we do in the moment when we are tempted to ____________?
Recently, I was thinking about practicing the presence of God. Moment by moment being aware of Jesus in my day. Of the 1440 minutes in a 24 hour period, how many am I consciously aware of God? I want that number of minutes to be ever increasing week after week, month after month, year after year. Don’t you?
One of the ways I see that happening and bearing fruit in my life is when temptation comes, to silently call out to God to help me in the moment.
“But you, O LORD, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid! … I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies…In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help.” Psalm 18:3, 6; Psalm 22:19
Lord, help me be kind to him; keep me silent; love her through me; give me Your gentleness; help me be patient while I wait; empower me to forgive him; make the car in front of me get out of my way (oops- that one slipped in); Lord, make me more like You in this moment.
The more we practice reaching out to God in the moment, the more of those 1,440 minutes we practice His presence and put feet to our morning prayer. Excuse me a moment while I preach that to my own heart. Thank you. What will you do with your 1,440 minutes today?
Written by Diane Hunt: Diane Hunt serves on the board of America’s Keswick and is the Executive Director & CEO of Changed Choices, a Christian non-profit in North Carolina. She is also a biblical counselor and women’s event speaker. For more information about having Diane speak at your next event please contact her at dhunt@americaskeswick.org.
