DAILY TIME WITH JESUS
The most important thing we have to do each day is to spend time with Jesus. We simply cannot afford to neglect this daily discipline. Our spiritual health and vitality depends on it. Jesus is the source of our life and our strength. Make time with Him the most important part of your day.
As our example concerning how to live close to God, Jesus made time to spend with His Father, no matter how busy He was (Luke 5:16). So many things are constantly clamoring for our attention. Christ, however, deserves to have the full attention of our lives, and He is the only one who does.
We are not talking about something that should be viewed as a duty, but rather as a privilege. It is our joy to appreciate Christ and who He is to be in our lives. There is no relationship with anyone, including Jesus, without spending time with them. Our time with Jesus needs to be daily fellowship.
Jesus said that He is the vine and we are the branches, and without Him we can do nothing (John 15:1-5). The way to be strengthened and enriched and fed by the vine is to take time to meditate on His word and talk to Him, believing that He is listening because He desires intimate fellowship with us.
The great invitation of Jesus is to “Come to me, all you who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Coming to Him begins by coming to Him for salvation, but we should continue to come to Him daily in renewed fellowship and concentration on Jesus as our spiritual life.
While we need physical rest at times, and Jesus can certainly help us in every aspect of life, this is primarily rest for the soul that He promises us. It is a time of spiritual connectedness and renewal that can come only from the hand of Christ.
Time with Christ is never wasted. You are not too busy to spend time with Jesus. You are too busy NOT to spend time with Him. In other words, the affairs of your life need to be ordered with the correct priorities, with Jesus as the first one. Everything else is better when Jesus has His rightful place in our hearts.
We are mindful of God’s provision for His people in the wilderness, the daily manna with which He fed them (Exodus 16:4). They were not allowed to gather manna for the next day. They had to trust Him daily to provide for them. The only relationship with Jesus is a daily one. It cannot be once a week “at church.” Our devotional life is essential to being the people of Christ.
Jesus spoke often of “abiding” in Him. “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples” (John 8:31). Abiding in Him should be equated in our minds with thinking about Him, meditating on Him, and spending time with Him each day.
Jesus’s friend Mary knew that spending time with Christ was the “better part,” more important than any “work” that we can do for Him—as important as that is (Luke 10:42). Work must be understood as flowing from our relationship with Jesus.
Again considering the 15th chapter of John, we see that Jesus said that by abiding in Him, we will bear fruit. Working for Him will take care of itself if we spend time with Him.
Let us sit at Christ’s feet daily and receive strength from Him. Let us spend time with Him, like Mary sitting at His feet, to receive from Him the things that we need each day to live for God.
The sweetest thing in life is personal fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Bryan Dewayne Dunaway
