How Do We Spend The Precious Gift Of Time?

The Treasure of Time
from Adoration - Mary of Bethany - The untold story
by Martha Kilpatrick

Time is the treasure of life. Time IS life.
Time is the willing sacrifice that you offer up to
the worship of what you love.
Don't tell me what you love. Tell me where you spend your
TIME and I'll tell YOU what you love.

The dispensing of time, the investment of time
is the exposure of what you truly love.
You give your time to your cherished treasure. You do.

Frenzy says that there is no time left for God.
Hurry cannot live the life of Mary.

Haste insults HIM. It says there are
other important, more urgent activities than being with
the Lord of the Universe.

It takes giving the costly gift of time to find Him,
to hear His heart,
to gain the wisdom of where to spend your
riches of time.

Many give their lives to Him,
who do not give their time.

To the frantic, Mary's life was a waste.
The waste of time and energy on Jesus.

To the busy, time is always critically short.
There is not enough time for the ambitious...and the worried.
Their many works are more than their shoulders can
carry, more than their hours can cover.

They are like Martha, always behind and
even in self pity because of it.

Their efforts are their own.
Jesus did not call for them
and cannot be blamed when the efforts
do not succeed or give fulfillment.

Time is the shining jewel Satan steals.
We do not understand its value as much as he does.
If he can get your time, he has... you... without God.
Your time is your life.
So by noble demands and foolish distractions,
he ekes away the minutes of your eternity.

There is all out war for your time,
a relentless and clever scheme to fill
your days with what is not God -
what is not for Him or even about Him.

Martha was the unwitting instrument of that fiendish enemy
to call foolish and irresponsible in Mary what was really...
God's highest and best.

Thus it always will be.
There is a fight to be a Mary.
And it takes a strong-hearted resistance
to defend the preciousness of your own time.

To lose your time is to lose your destiny.
To squander time is to waste your only wealth.

There is abundant time for your assignment...
for God's authentic will.

Plenty of time to listen and ample time to accomplish.
God set the earth on the axis of Time
and when He rules it,
it is - like all His gifts - an extravagant supply.

God requires in this day, the offering of time.
Give time to God and you become rich in Him.
For to give time is to give your self
and He gives HIMSELF in return.

God is ever real about time and humanity's limited span.
So whatever is given to Him is multiplied by the mystery of
His transcendence over Time and Space.
Time given to Him is returned enlarged, expanded by a
multiplication that cannot be comprehended.

Mary lavished time on Him...
because she deemed Him worth it.
Martha had no time for Him, only a period to work
for Him, a labor He
rejected as a real... waste of time.

To Martha, Jesus was not worthy of her focused attention,
and this He painfully knew by watching how
she spent her... time.

(To order the book, "Adoration," please click here)

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We are so busy these days. We hardly have time to breathe. We rush through a shower, brush our teeth, gulp coffee. We race in traffic. We run to meetings. We have so many responsibilities, so many needs to attend, so many demands.

Here and there we steal a moment to remember Him. We flop in bed at night feeling worn out for all we did, and guilty for all we did not. Some dutifully spend time with Him, but too often dutifully, with the clock ticking in the back of our minds. Some rarely have the time for so much as that.

Do you sometimes, in a moment, just feel tears well up? Is there a longing, an ache?

I lived that way for 30 years in Him. Even spending days alone in a hotel room with Him on occasion barely had the onrush of responsibility recede from pressing my consciousness into distortion, barely quieted my pulse from quickening with pressure from a thousand demanding tugs that floated and hovered over me, an ominous cloud of my importance. You know those feelings too. I know how easily I could again become embroiled in that roiling sea.

That current may well again drag me out to sea. It has a call that I hear easily. For now, I am caught to Him, not my own doing altogether for sure! I haven't the wisdom or the courage or the strength to joyfully embrace the cross, the freeing cross, the cross that is a birthing place, not just a place of death, but a place of freedom to new life. A daily cross. You may or may not be good at that. I am not. If you are not, I pray He will grant you the opportunity, the circumstances, the hemming in of events till you have nowhere to climb but to the cross. It is love, not hatred, that bids us to that cross. He only needs your permission.

Lovers are dreamers. Lovers come out of space and time to their own place. Lovers long for each other, can never "get enough" of each other. Lovers are luxurious in being together, in touching, in being consumed by the other. God is our Lover.

As I sat in stillness this morning, my mind free and clear, I saw Him lying by a river, a finger absent-mindedly dipped in the flowing stream, lazily looking back at me. Keeper of a few billion souls, Lord over legions of angels. Architect and sustainer of the Universe, of life. Dreamily looking at me with a smile that came from deep within Him, as if He had nothing better at all to do, nothing else in all of existence but to lie here, looking at me, smiling. I melt into Him.

He has nothing better to do (He whispers).

Have you?

"My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come
away." (Song 2:10)

How He longs for you, this Lover of your soul, this memorizer of your voice, your face, your very heart rhythms (like fingerprints, like song, your particular song -- and if we come close, and lay our head on His breast, we can hear His -- no doubt for each of us He has a special rhythm we need to hear. For me, it sounds like wooing doves and singing birds by a river).

-Art (written by Molinas)
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Millions of people endure abusive marriages and relationships because of fear -- fear of abandonment, fear of a lack of finances, fear of violence, fear of hurting the children, fear from social stigmas, etc. These are mere earthly reflections of the real sickness going on in the world’s churches. There are millions of Christians who, out of duty, come to church twice a week and do the “Christian” thing called worshipping God. It is plain from the expressions on their faces that they are only doing it out of obligation or fear. They’ve never developed an intimate, loving, passionate relationship with the lover of their soul or if they ever had a real relationship in the first place, it’s long been replaced by dead traditions, rituals and forms of godliness that deny God’s power. (2 Tim. 3:5)

They bought into a relationship with a church that promised them a ticket out of unending misery if they followed a few basic rules and became a member and paid their dues. They entered this covenant relationship, really with their church, not with Jesus. They entered into this pact out of fear of eternal torment, not out of an all-abandoning love. Perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:18) The world can plainly see that most of the church world’s relationship with their god is fear and tradition-based, not love-based. They know what really passionate love looks like. They can see deep love expressed on the faces of young people in love. All true lovers want to do is spend time with each other. They have google-eyes for each other. Their faces beam with their love for one another.

Why is it that so few Christians glow with their love for the lover of their soul? Sometimes we see it on a new Christian. But within a few months, the glow fades away. Many Christians have never had this glow. Perhaps it’s because their relationship is not with Him, but with an idol, with a set of doctrines, with other people also locked up in fear and not really in love with Jesus Christ, Himself. Perhaps it’s because many Christians have followed the ways of the Jews of old who “honored Him with their lips but their hearts were far from Him.” (Matt. 15:6-9) Perhaps it’s because many Christians are putting up with an abusive relationship with their church and it’s god out of fear of what might happen to them after death if they end this abusive fear-based relationship.

What a tragedy! What a waste of the precious time He gave us to spend with Him intimately. Jesus came that we might have life, and more abundantly. He came that we might be full of joy. He came to give us peace that passes all understanding. He came to fill us with an everlasting love. (John 10:10; Acts 13:52; Gal. 5:22; John 15:11; Phil. 4:7; Jer. 31:3) He wants us to glow with our love for Him in such a way that the world can see that we are truly in love. He wants to give us HIS glory, a glory that truly shines like nothing in this world. (John 17:22) If we don’t have these things, then something else has crowded them out or we never had them in the first place.

Real love is a seven day a week kind of thing, not a twice a week obligation to fulfill bodily needs. (Read between the lines.) True lovers show their love wherever they go. Let us take a moment of the time He has allotted us here on earth to reflect on what it is that we are really projecting in this world. Are we projecting religion? (The word “religion” comes from the Latin “re” which means return, and “ligare,” a legal term meaning bondage. Religion is a “return to bondage,” it’s abusive.) Or can the world plainly see that we are passionately in love with our Creator, friend, and lover of our soul?

Let us put off the pretenses, the excuses, and yes, the lies, and allow the Holy Spirit to do some real soul searching. He is the best one to reveal to us those things in our lives that are crowding out intimacy and true worship. There is a “form of godliness” which lacks substance. It is so easy to develop, but it produces no life. It’s made up of ruts and rituals and produces nothing but dead rotting flesh. It stinks! Yet much of the church world is filled with it.

“I have come that you might have LIFE, and more abundantly.” He came to reproduce. What are we reproducing? Are we reproducing religion? Expanding another denomination? Or do we contain the LIFE that actually has the power to reproduce itself in the souls of others? Choose ye this day what you will manifest – a living relationship with the lover of our soul, Jesus Christ -- or religion, a relationship with a system of traditions of men and doctrines of demons which promote a form of godliness that denies the very power of God in one’s life. Jesus truly seeks to glorify His bride, His people. Choose ye today. A loving, lasting, lively, real relationship with the Living God, or dead, rote rituals once or twice a week with a dead rotting body? Are we giving birth to LIFE or death? --Gary Amirault