Recreation, Abiding, & True Re-Creation

I am usually a very focused person. I have many goals for myself – both for the short and long terms. If you read my series from earlier this year, you saw how my Vision, Mission, Strategy, and Steps fit together to inform and guide my decisions on what I should be doing. But amidst all that I have planned to do, and all that I want to do, I have come dangerously close to omitting two items from my life – recreation and abiding.

As for recreation, it is not that I do not enjoy life, but I do not take much down time. I am blessed to live within several hundred feet of my office, so I am able to eat lunch with my wife and we often do so while watching a comedy of some sort on television. However, in the evenings, I may sit near her, but I am often doing something like grading assignments for the classes I teach or planning/preparing for PTC (Pastor Training Community). Effectively, I have my full time job as pastor while also serving as an adjunct professor and leading a new organization in addition to personal responsibilities we all have. I know many people who are busier than I am, but, for me, what I have lost for most of this year was being intentional about finding a time for fun. I may be busy, but I must make time to enjoy my life, which includes enjoying my wife and having some time to do things I like – such as reading (without the pressure to meet my reading goal for the year) or playing a video game. But as important as the recreation may be, it is the next item that deserves my attention in the coming years.

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, I have three different roles leading others in ministry-related matters. I pastor a church. I teach future church leaders various aspects of administering the church. And I am organizing an organization to train pastors and church leaders in underprivileged areas around the world to have the knowledge and skills necessary to lead their churches. All of these are very important, and I believe God has called me to each one. But He has also called me to abide. In a recent look at John 15, I have been convicted that I have been so busy working for God that I have not spent as much time with God in 2017. Again, I have met or will meet most of the major goals I set this for this year, but as John 15.4-5 suggest, my work will be fruitless or amount to nothing if I am not abiding in, and with, Jesus. We can all get by for awhile, and may fool ourselves into thinking we are fine over a longer period of time, but the words of John 15 are directly from the mouth of Jesus, so I (we) can either choose to believe Him, or be duped by our own misunderstandings.

Of course, how a person defines abide is important. Truly it means to remain, and I have no intentions of abandoning Jesus in a formal sense. However, if I am not fully engaged with Him then I am not fully abiding (remaining) as I wish to be. Again, if my Vision is to “Become the man God wants me to be” then how can I do that without spending time with Him and know how He is leading me in the moment, not just the bigger picture of the year.

So, I am making a conscious decision today to better abide in the coming year. I have had many good moments with Jesus in 2017, but not as many as I would like to claim. But if I am to be fruitful in 2018 and beyond, I must abide deeply with my Lord. Of course, I must take time for myself, my wife, my family, and my friends as well, but I must take time to be intentional with Jesus so He can be intentional to me. For, if I only focus on working and recreating, then I will miss out on the “re-creation” that He has in mind for me. And, as a child of God, He is far from being finished with me yet.