Fr Ed Stewardship Message

A Disciple’s Response: Stewardship  {#4}

________________________________________________________________________

_______What do you have that you didn’t receive as a gift?  I Cor. 4:7_____

 

In the last news letter the significance of our time was raised.  How are we stewards of our time in a way that serves the Kingdom well?  Pretty much every day most of us have more to do than we are able to do.  Given that reality, we are often ‘railroaded’ by the things that are the most demanding or the most vocal, but not always the most important.  Key to having our stewardship of time be done well is to set priorities that actually reflect our values as sons and daughters of God.  The more clearly we set and maintain those priorities, the greater the likelihood that when faced with choices of how to spend our time, we will make the right ones.

The first priority in our lives is always our relationship with the Lord Jesus. For that relationship to work we must pray.  Prayer takes time. The highest priority for our time needs to be the time we spend with the Lord Jesus in prayer.  Having said that, it is probably all of our experiences that, while prayer is the most important need in our life, it is also the least ‘demanding’: family, work, school, many other needs demand our attention far more vocally than does our prayer life.   Knowing that, we need to take special care to set aside time for it.  Fr. Michael Scanlon wrote a book called Appointment with God in which he recommends sitting down and scheduling in appointments with the Lord Jesus, just as we would any other appointment, and then sticking to it, just as we would any other scheduled meeting with someone of great importance in our lives.  The Scriptures clearly favor an early prayer time.  It has two great advantages.  First, it is not a time that is as likely to be interrupted by other events; second, if we begin the day anchored in prayer, it will tend to keep our whole day more focused on the Lord Jesus.  This will require a certain amount of self-discipline, e.g. getting to bed on time so that we are actually conscious for our prayer time in the morning.  This can present a significant challenge, but the results are worth the effort: a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus!