For the Sake of Time

‎"Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to impress. Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, just make your absence felt." -Unknown

I am not going to write some long drawn out beginning into this blog; I'm just gonna get straight to the point for the sake of time (you''ll understand in a second) We only get a short time here on Earth, 100 years max. So why do we spend a lot of our days doing absolutely nothing. I am as guilty as anyone. While in college, I do not do anything! I feel I sleep for 9 hours a day, I am in classes for about 4 hours a day, I spend 1 hour in the gym, and another 2 hours studying (that is an overestimate on most days). That leaves me with 24-9-4-1-2=8 hours...8 hours where I have no idea what I spend my time doing. It is often sitting down to eat a meal and watch The Price is Right with my roommate, mindlessly browsing the internet, showering, cleaning, driving, etc, but honestly I have more time than I know what to do with! Do why don't I use ever day to make an effective impact on the Kingdom of God and in other's lives? ...your guess is as good as mine.


Here's the thing that I have hit on this in a few other blogs and I will hopefully drive home by the end of this blog, as Christians, we should want to leave a legacy. We should deeply desire to leave God's fingerprint on everything that we do. I heard a great analogy one time that God is the stamp and we are the ink chosen to leave a permanent imprint on the world. When we do His work though, we need to make sure that it is for His glory. We need to leave a legacy, but it is not for our own gain.  That is what the quote above is addressing. We should be desperately striving to see the kingdom of God flourish, but we are not working for applause. Colossians 3:23 says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not men." Ultimately, we are never working for men! We may serve them in our actions and aid them with our words, but all work is to be for the Lord in the long run. 


That leads to the second part of the quote. We are not trying to impress anyone with our lives. There is a worship song by Phillips, Craig and Dean in which a few of the lyrics read, "I will glory in the power of the cross. The things I thought were gain, I count as loss." This should be our attitude at all times--That we are living for the sole purpose of ministry and that we need to express the love of God in every aspect of our lives. Lastly, "don't strive to make your presence noticed, just make your absence felt."  Jesus was not always noticed. Yeah, He preformed miracles and flipped some tables which surely drew some attention to himself, but there are other times where He spent time washing His disciples feet and spending time with small groups of people just talking to them. Surely His disciples knew who He was and were in awe when they were in His presence, but can you imagine the weight of knowing when He died that the world was going to change forever??  Naturally His presence was noticed, and I'm sure His absence was felt. I can imagine all of His followers' hopes were crushed when they found out that the Savior that they had trusted was being put to death (and then their hopes resurrected when He rose again). That  is the sort of impact we should have on the world. When we are gone, our legacy should live on despite maybe only having humble attitudes and dealing with behind the scenes work. We have so little time to make this impact, so why do we waste it? Again...your guess is as good as mine.


I challenge you to waste less time, in everything you do, make His name great! 
1 Corinthians 10:31-"So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."