Live intentionally. Love intentionally. Rest intentionally.

My world is BUSY. I am sure yours is too. I feel like much of my life is passing by me as I try to catch my breath from the constant running around doing the 1,001 things that are jammed into every millisecond of my day, week, month, and year. Life with Jesus offers so much more than the exhausting, draining life we often accept. He offers us an abundant life filled with love, joy, peace, and restoration, regardless of the circumstances. He wants us to live an engaged, impactful, intentional life that glorifies Him in all we do. I hear people saying all the time that we are just so busy. We are so tired. We are so stressed. I feel ya! I say those things way too often.

IT IS TIME.

It is time to choose a different way of life. It is time to live with intentionality in our daily mission. It is time to love more deeply and more intentionally. It is time to rest in a way that we are renewed each day physically and spiritually. You have to choose this way of life. You have to guard this way of life.

On living intentionally…

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{[a] 38} This is the first and greatest commandment.

Matthew 22:37-38

 In Matthew, Jesus says that the greatest commandment in life is to love my God with all my heart, my soul, and my mind. This may be very familiar to you…I have heard it most of my life. But this commandment is a life-altering call to live each day choosing to love our God with every part of our being. How do we get to this place of choosing to live each day to the fullest, filled with love for and from our God?

We must abide in Him. The word abide has a few different meanings, but when we abide in God, we follow Him, remain in Him, obey Him, conform to Him, hold to Him. I believe there are several things we must intentionally do to abide in our Father.

1. Time

If you are like me, the one thing you need more of in this world is time. Someone once said that the only thing we all have the same amount of is time. I quickly disagreed and pleaded my case of being way busier than many people I knew and having way less time. I was wrong…we all have 24 hours. However, we do all have different amounts of free time. Now, I work full time and often feel like I have less “free” time than others, but, being a teacher, I get summers off and somehow I still have very little free or productive time in the summer when I am off. I am working as a stay-at-home mom during the summers and many times it is as busy and exhausting as my full time job during the school year. We all have some control of what our free time looks like. We choose to fill this time with many things-exercise, reading, watching tv, shopping, gardening, hanging out with friends and family and many other hobbies. I believe God calls us to tithe our time in a similar way that we tithe money. We should give a portion of our day to Him-no distractions, no just giving the leftovers. I truly believe that if you allot time to give to God through prayer, scripture, and worship, He will bless you, grow you, and enrich the time in your life. God will not add minutes to your day for spending time with Him, but He will add quality to the time you spend on other things throughout your day. When we intentionally choose to spend time with God, we are taking the first step to accomplishing our mission of loving Him with all of our heart, soul, and mind. We are allowing space in our lives for God to fill us so that we may live a life abundant in Him.

Come near to God and He will come near to you.

James 4:8

¹⁵ Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the most of every opportunity…

Ephesians 5:15-16

2. Prayer

Martin Luther once said, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” Prayer is our lifeline to God, a vital part to our relationship with our Father. Conversation is the way we most connect with people in our lives; therefore, it is only fitting that this an essential part to growing in our faith and relationship with Jesus. We cannot expect to live a life loving Him without talking to Him, without breathing Him in. We can pray anytime, any place, and in any way. I also believe that it is important to have a specific time for prayer. When we set aside time to talk with God, journal, and listen to God, we are preparing our hearts to love Him, worship Him, and receive Him. My prayer life has definitely had its ups and downs. When I am in constant communication with God, I feel His closeness, His peace, His joy. When I am not abiding in Him, many times my life is more chaotic, less intentional, and I am just going through the rat race. I often take on a negative mood and perspective because life becomes more about me and what I am not getting or what is not going my way instead of focusing on what I was created for…loving Him.

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;
    in the morning I lay my requests before you
    and wait expectantly.

Psalm 5:3

¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

James 5:16

3. Scripture

Reading God’s word is getting to know Him. It also serves to teach us who we are in Him and how to love Him with all of our heart, soul, and mind. In the past, I have used many devotionals in my quiet time with God. Devotionals are great! I love me a good devotional that directs me to God’s word, and there are many out there that are focused on His word, but there is nothing as satisfying to the soul as reading scripture from the Bible. It is in scripture that we find the truths and words to equip us for a world that is sometimes difficult and painful. In His word we can find comfort, peace, joy, and strength. As an adult, I have not been as good at memorizing scripture like I was when I was a teenager. I used to write down special verses on a spiral book of notecards so I could read and memorize them. I still have those notecards on my bathroom counter that I look at each morning. This helps me put my mind, heart, and soul in the right direction before I start my day. I am committing to improve this area of my spiritual life. I want to use the Sword of the Spirit that God has given me to fight my battles in life.

¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of God^[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Devotion of time, prayer, and scripture reading are choices we can make daily to live a life with meaning and purpose to fulfill our greatest commandment of loving God with all of our heart, mind, and soul.

On loving intentionally…

³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^{[b] 40} All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:39-40

 Well you may guess where I am going next. Right after Jesus gave the greatest commandment, He gave the next most important commandment-“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Most of us would agree that our number one priority of people to love and invest in is our family. It is my responsibility as a wife and mother to love my husband and children deeply and prioritize them at the top of my responsibilities. Many times we know this in our head and believe it to be true, but our actions tell a different story. Our family often gets the leftovers of our time, energy, and emotions. I am in the process of intentionally choosing to give my family the best of me. They are my number one assignment here on earth. I think it is important to find ways to truly connect with our families and show them that we love them deeply. We need to tell them often how much we love them. I am currently reading A Woman After God’s Own Heart by Elizabeth George, which has been eye opening in regards to my daily mission as a wife and mother. There are many things that I have failed to do as a wife that I am now making a priority in my home.  As a wife, I should have a heart that serves, follows, and loves my husband first, children second. This means definitely making quality time with just my husband a priority. This also means carving out special time for my kids. I have done Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages a few times in the past, and I am always interested in how I feel loved and show love compared to others in my life. It is important to keep this in mind when showing your spouse and children love. My oldest daughter’s strongest love languages are definitely physical touch and quality time. I am a quality time person so I speak her same language when it comes to fun outings and adventures! But…I am not as much of a physical touch person as she (and my husband) are. This an area I have to work on and intentionally seek out to do in order to show the people in my family that they are loved. When my oldest daughter gets in trouble, her immediate reaction is to ask for a hug and snuggle time to express that she is sorry and loves us. It is so important to truly understand our mission to love and serve our family and make a conscious, intentional effort each day to express that.

We also have a small circle of people around us that either need, want, or enjoy our relationship and love. I often get so caught up in my own world, my own schedule, my own to-do list that I neglect true, engaged connection with others around me. According to the Bible, we are supposed to love everyone as we do ourselves. This may be through kindness, graciousness, and prayer. Loving everyone is a wonderful thing that all of us are called to do-BUT it can be so much bigger and greater than just the passing through of each day with superficial conversations and smiles. We can decide-I am going to love this person, pray for this person, encourage this person, truly converse about meaningful things with this person, invest in this person.  My goal over the next year is to choose certain relationships that fall into my circle of influence and invest in them. These relationships will include people who need someone in their life to lean on, people with whom I grow spiritually in Christ, people who I may teach or mentor, and people who just need to see the Light. I am excited about the unbelievable potential of deep relationships that glorify God!

So you and I, as Christians, can go through life loving people all around us without much thought or we as Christians, and fellow believers in Christ can love so much more deeply when we engage our hearts and minds and love BIG and INTENTIONALLY. I am going to make a list, starting with my family and concluding with close friends and other acquaintances in my small sphere of influence, that I can love and serve over the next year. You can do the same.

On resting intentionally…

⁹ There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; ¹⁰ for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works,^[a] just as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

Hebrews 4:9-11

Oh this is a big one for our culture and me. Again, our busyness consumes every aspect of our lives including rest and rejuvenation. God commands His people in the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament to keep the Sabbath. Now-if you are like me, you may be thinking that this is so irrelevant in our day and time of jam-packed schedules and to-do lists.

When God gave that commandment He didn’t understand what our world looked like today, right? He couldn’t have possibly imagined how busy we would be.

 I am by no means a Bible scholar, and I know the commandment in the Old Testament refers to not laboring on the Sabbath, but I truly believe God wants us to honor a day where we can take a step back, remove ourselves from the chaos and constant accessibility, and reflect, rest, and renew our hearts, minds, and souls. Our pastor recently preached a sermon on the Sabbath, and it was so refreshingly applicable to our lives. We were not meant to be accessible 24/7, but with cell phones, social media, and email, we are. We need a break to breathe, to relax, to engage with those closest to us, and to reach out to God to be energized and revived.

It is so easy to speed through life going from one activity to the next, checking off the next thing on our to-do list, and miss the most beautiful and important things in life. When we decide to live intentionally and focus our hearts and minds on God first, we position ourselves to enjoy life right now, in the moment. Through devoting our time to God through prayer and reading His Word, we are living a life of intentionality and fulfilling the greatest commandment Jesus gave us…to love our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We are also equipping ourselves to fulfill the second greatest commandment to love others as ourselves. Make family your number one priority. Discover what makes your spouse and kids feel loved and love them big. Look for relationships around you that you can have a significant impact on. Choose to rest and renew your spirit daily through God’s Word and through prayer and find a day a week to give yourself time to not be accessible to the outside world, give yourself time to breath.

Live, love, and rest intentionally.

Shared with love,

Lindsay