Where Does Your Mind Spend Its Time?

One drawback of living in an the “Instant Age” age where I can get my coffee in thirty seconds from a Keurig whilst downloading a book-du-jour to my eReader is that I come to expect things quickly. Slow is aggravating and unacceptable. Movies are instant, information is always breaking and I like it now rather than later.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work when it comes to cultivating a spiritual life. The spiritual life is hard because, well, it is “spiritual” and our flesh fights it, but it also takes slow and steady work, building precept upon precept, trusting step-by-step when we don’t see answers, holding on to the sovereignty of God and bowing to His time frame instead of getting what we want when we want it.

I am currently re-reading The Pursuit of God, a book written in the 1940’s. Tozer talks about how people then wanted things “instantly.” I hardly think of of the 1940’s as a fast paced time, and can only imagine what he’d think today.

He’s talking about taking time, slowing down long enough to be receptive and aware of God. He’s comparing the spiritual giants that he’s admired with the seemingly weak, ineffective state of Christians in general of his day. Here’s his take:

I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward…They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response.

Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common.

We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.

For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs.

We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied.

To put it differently, we have accepted one another’s notions, copied one another’s lives and made one another’s experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed.

If this is true in the 1940’s, I’m sure it’s true of us. Sometimes slowing down takes self-control and self-discipline. It’s retraining our mind to meditate again on God’s word in a world where Twitter-style snippets of one second sound-bites are the communication style of choice. Lingering and enjoying God, sitting and taking time to know Him are choices that won’t just happen by chance. We need to put on the brakes. The brakes of our mind in order to learn and appreciate what we have in Christ.

I have to ask myself some tough questions. Am I seeking God first? His ways? His word? Or does where I spend my time betray my true love? Often good things can morph into all consuming things that need to be brought back under the Lordship of Christ. This is true of all technology for me.

Plan to be still and slow today. If your schedule won’t allow it, you can still control where your mind goes today and you can choose to meditate on God’s word. If you don’t choose wisely, it does affect your future. One of my favorite quotes: Never sacrifice the future on the alter of the immediate. The choices we make today, affect and direct our future.

Chime in: Do you struggle with slowing down physically and mentally? Doesn’t there always seem to be a hundred and one things vying for our attention? How do you plan to change this and be intentional with where your mind spends its time?