It's a little bit funny to me; growing in a church you hear a lot of rules, views, and words and you never take the time to apply them to anything except the church. You tend to compartmentalize things. Everything you hear in church stays in your "church" bin while all the other garbage on the five days a week you don't attend church goes into your other bins. I suppose this is my conclusion to what I've done in some degree. Especially when it comes to tithing to the Lord. And I'm not just talking about money. If you grow in church you know that you're to give 10% of your earnings back to God. However, when we hear the word "earnings" most of us only think of solid cash. Up until a few days ago that's how I defined them as well. But after a late breakfast with a couple guys my age who are trying to live for God also, I came to the realization that our earnings span over much more than monetary wages.
Somehow during our conversation about areas of our lives we needed to improve, I was blessed with the wisdom to link tithing to other areas of life. Our time management especially. Tithing in its simplist sense is giving to God. So wouldn't it make sense to give our time to Him too? It's something that's incredibly hard to do though, so I stray away. I definitely can't drop the excuse "I'm too busy." That's definitely not the problem, I have a ton of free time between procrastinating homework. Which I should be doing at this moment but I feel this is important for others to see. But here's the thing, no matter how well I do in school, it won't matter next year if I fall into the pit of sin that's just waiting for me at college. I need to discipline myself to live for God now, while I still have physical accountability with people like Jake, Connor, and Andrew. Tithing time is hard to do because I have a tendency to be lazy. Like sit on the computer for hours playing WoW kind of lazy, when I can crack open the Book and learn His wisdom and teachings.
It's all a practice. I need to practice sitting and reading just like I need to practice stomping K-flips outside on my brand-spankin' new skateboard. I pride myself on going all out in areas of my life that I really feel passionate about. It's convicting because I'm passionate about my pursuit to Him, but I haven't done everything I can.
Lord,
Grant me the discipline and mindset to always make time for You. Help me train myself to always hunger for the Word. Beat my body until it screams for more of your wisdom. Thank you for being incredible.
Amen
