Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Taking care of your soul”
Our Bible verse for today: “Set your minds on what is above, not on what is on the earth.” Colossians 3:2 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Soul-care involves setting correct priorities”
“Hi, my name is Jim and I’m a multi-tasker.”
Yes, it’s true. If there was a support group for habitual multi-taskers I’d be the president. It’s not unknown for me be in the middle of a phone call while checking a text message while reading an email and munching on a sandwich. And even though we think otherwise, multi-tasking really is not productive. When we’re distracted with multiple things we’re not really focused on anything, and that’s when mistakes get made. Multi-tasking actually makes us less effective and less productive, not more.
The problem, really, is an inability to set priorities. Rather than deciding that one thing is more important than another, and therefore paying attention to that one thing rather than the others, multi-taskers tend to treat all things as being equally important and rather than prioritize, they just try to do it all – all at the same time!
While multi-tasking is bad for life in general, its death when it comes to taking care of the soul. You cannot multi-task your quiet time. While it is true that we are to pray at all times and in all situations – including in the middle of a busy work day, or in a crowd; and we can in fact sing praise songs and have worship time while we’re driving our car in heavy traffic; that’s not really “quiet” time. We absolutely have to have time with the Lord which is not shared with anything or anyone else.
This is why they came up with the old-fashioned notion of a “prayer closet”. People used to actually go into a closet and close the door so they could be alone with God. Now-a-days it’s much more common for someone to simply have a special quiet place of solitude that they may figuratively refer to as their “prayer closet”, but which is actually just a quiet and private place for them to meet with God. I once read about a busy Mom with a large brood of kids, she would periodically go sit in a corner and draped a towel over her head in an attempt to shut out the noise and distractions for a few moments. When she did that the kids knew they’d better be quiet because Mom was having private time with God.
In Colossians 3:2 the Apostle Paul urges us to be intentional about shutting out the things of earth so we can focus exclusively on the things of heaven. Soul-care involves setting correct priorities. Sometimes that will mean saying “no” to the things of the world so we can say “yes” to the things of God.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 