Just yesterday I suggested a challenge on the blog, and already it is 
stretching me. It didn’t seem to be anything too hard, but old habits are hard to break.
The challenge: Start each day, from the moment of waking, with instant communication with the Lord. Making Him the first thing, before anything!
This morning I woke up and went directly for my cell phone. My life is on that thing…calendar, email, messaging. It makes sense to check it first thing, right?
My cell phone was just sitting on my bedside table and it looked like someone had texted me. But….I have to get it, don’t I? Yeah, I can get it later. But, I was used to getting it NOW. I am used to connecting via my cell phone from the moment I wake up.
How hard can it really be to FIX my mind on things above first thing in the morning? Evidently, my habit is to connect immediately with people through technology, first thing in the morning. This sets the day, from the moment I open my eyes. And, I think that the enemy wants it that way. If he can keep us people-focused, activity focused, self-focused and relying on self-strength from the moment our eyes pop open each day, he will have us hooked and distracted in self/activity from the beginning of each day.
I think of temptation as many things, but not often as this. Yet, this type of distraction is a very real temptation of the enemy, trying to keep me from connecting with God, or at least trying to keep me so involved with activity and networking that Jesus no longer is the on the forefront of my mind.
Today’s Verse: Matthew 4:1
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, ” If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus answered, ” It is written:’Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”
Ken Gire writes in his devotional, Intense Moments with the Savior,
“The temptation is not to make Jesus doubt himself but to depend on himself. Since the Father hadn’t lifted a finger to alleviate his suffering, why not take things into his own hands? After all, it’ been forty days. But, Jesus doesn’t take the baited hook.”
Are you taking the baited hook? Am I? Good questions to think about and ask ourselves.
I am not suggesting that cell phones or connecting with people are from the devil. But, what I am suggesting is this…ask yourself if your connection with the Father might need some intentional thought, planning and system. Ask yourself if you truly are seeking Him first, or connecting with anything and everything else first. I am asking myself these questions too.
I am continuing this week to make it a focus to begin each day with my Father in the forefront of my life from the moment I wake. It may be harder than I realized, but it is eye opening.
walking alongside you,
Debbie
