“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Isaiah 26:19<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s hard to motivate myself to get up early and spend time with God. I know what you are thinking, “You are a veteran missionary, how is it that you struggle with that?” Our enemy loves to distract us! He loves to keep us from a faithful consistent relationship with God. And to be honest, ministry is one of the excuses he uses in my life to distract me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently made the commitment to give God the first hour of my day. No matter when I wake up, I committed to giving God the first hour. I made that commitment a week ago Friday. Saturday was fine, I had no commitments, so it was easy to comply. But, Sunday morning came and I struggled keeping my commitment. It was only the second day, and I was tempted to not keep my commitment. Why? Because I had to preach that morning, and I was not ready. “Surely if I don’t take all the time I have, I won’t be ready” was the lie I was telling myself. Ministry was distracting me. As the Lord reminded me of my commitment, I took the first hour and spent it in reading his word and prayer. Then, took the next 2 hours before church to finish by message preparation. I found that I still had enough time! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What excuses keep you from cultivating your relationship with God, and making him the first priority in your life? When you make time with God a priority, He will bless that time and, as Isaiah says, “He will shine on you.” You will see Him in new ways when you make your relationship the first priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Awake, O sleeper! Make God your first priority! This is my prayer for you today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Isaiah 26:19 I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s hard to motivate myself to get up early and spend time with God. I know what you are thinking, “You are a veteran missionary, how is it that you struggle with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}