With blog month coming to an end today here’s another post for all my subscribers! Also, I’m always welcoming new subscribers as well so fell free to hit the big orange subscribe button 🙂 This blog is about an article I read during one of my devotions. It’s called, “Tyranny of the Urgent” by Charles E Hummel, and it really spoke to me so I thought I’d share with y’all!
It talks about how to discern between URGENT tasks and IMPORTANT tasks. A quote from the article says, “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.” I know that some days I use all my time and energy trying to complete the tasks that seem urgent at the moment and completely bypass the important ones at hand. I’m so focused on the little things that are right in font of my face and I lose sight of the big picture.
But on the night before he died, Jesus said to his Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” (John 17:4) Even though not all the sick were healed and blind could all see, the Lord still had peace because he knew he had completed the work God had given him. I wish I could go to sleep every night with such peace knowing thatI did all that God asked of me that day. I used to think it was easy for Jesus because it was in his blood. However, Jesus also had to decide between urgent and important tasks while he walked the earth, which He did not do on his own.
Jesus didn’t just get up and go about his day doing whatever he pleased. Instead “very early in the morning, while it was still dark Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Mark 1:35
This really spoke to me because I always pictured Jesus already knowing what he was going to do each day. I figured it was just ingrained in his brain what he was supposed to do. It didn’t really occur to me that EVERY DAY he asked for guidance from his Father. “He had no divinely drawn blueprint or schedule; he discerned the Father’s will day by day in a life of prayer.”
He Prayerfully waited for his Father’s instructions.
This image of Jesus waking up every morning and praying for guidance and instruction from his father made him even more relatable to me. Because just like me I do not know what the day holds and I need help making decisions on what I should focus my energy on and what I should set aside. I know Jesus came down to take on human form to walk the earth but to know that he also NEEDED guidance daily to be able to discern the urgent from important was encouraging.
I also became very guilty as I read this. Many mornings I wake up and immediately start getting ready for my day (usually in a rush because I snoozed one too many times) and forget to pray to God to help me get through my day. How can I expect to be able to focus on what is important without the Lord’s guidance?? Two quotes from the article that really got me were:
“The worst sin is prayerlessness.”
“But the root of all sin is self-sufficiency-independence from the rule of God.”
Without prayer we have no direction and can end up down a long dark path we never intended to go down because we didn’t know how to see what was most important. Don’t try and go through this life on your own because you will fail. PRAY EVERYDAY. It will make a difference, I promise! My goal is to increase my prayer time each day and to wake up and make prayer the first thing I do and I’d hope that would be yours as well!
This article was really encouraging for me and if you have a chance you should give it a read as well. I am putting the link below:
http://www.olemissxa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Tyranny-of-the-Urgent.pdf
