I'm too busy for holy moments!!

Chapter 2- But I’m too Busy!!!!

And there it is, the elephant in the room.

We spend 7-8 hours a day sleeping. We spend another 8-10 hours a day working and travelling to work. We spend around 2 hours on preparing and eating food. Then we spend another 2-3 hours watching TV or looking at some form of social media. That is around 22-23 hours a day of activity. Where is a Christ follower supposed to find the time to be holy???

This is exactly the dilemma that led me to write this book. In my 68 years of living, I have served in full time ministry, run a ten-million-dollar medical device business, served in several churches as an elder and teacher, and celebrated 48 years of marriage to the love of my life Nancy. Together, we have tried to love God and each other, and have been blessed to see our two children grow up to pursue Jesus as they build their own families. All of that took enormous amounts of time and energy, and all of that required sacrifice in one area of life in order to achieve something in another area of life. Each choice we make comes with consequences that we don’t always have control over. Each consequence leads to another set of choices, followed by consequences based on those choices we make. All of life is based on choices we make and the consequences we experience as a result of those choices. 

 I came to know Jesus at a YoungLife meeting when I was struggling with alcohol and gang activities in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the 70s. The first thing my YoungLife leader taught me was to make time to pursue Jesus daily. He showed me how to read the 4 main sections of the bible daily, which took me about 10 minutes a day. He showed me how to pray and make prayer lists so I could remember people to pray for. That took another 10-15 minutes a day. Then he challenged me to makes choices about what I watched, listened to and read, as well as what activities I chose to be involved in. He told me that every Godly decision will come with a perceived sacrifice to be made, and an unknown future reward to experience. He was right. Every time I chose to go to a bible study instead of a party, I sacrificed my relationship with party friends who saw me as backwards, narrow minded and boring. The reward was that I spent time with quality people who loved me unconditionally and helped me pursue Jesus more fully. Every time I chose to work out and train in my sport, I missed the chance to play a video game or watch tv. The reward for all that exercise time was a PA state championship and a full wrestling scholarship to UNC Chapel Hill.  Choices and consequences. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. We always make time for what really matters to us!

You may think you are too busy, too hurt, too sad, or too selfish to seek out the holy moments in your life. That is what this book is about. I want you to realize that you- YES YOU- can choose to experience holy moments with God every day and experience the presence and power of God personally when you do.

Let’s look again at our key verse for this book, Ephesians 2:8-10. Paul was responding to the growth and challenges of the church at Ephesus. He was confirming the doctrine and spirit of the new faith they were now living in. He makes a critical statement we sometimes miss. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand for us to walk in them”.

Think of it. The creator God of the universe, the one that spoke time into existence and then brought forth all the physical material that fills our universe has planned out good works for you to do! Developing a holy moment attitude means centering your life around this amazing, humbling, uplifting truth for your everyday living. Let’s break down this truth again.

We are God’s workmanship. That means everything you are right now was created to be empowered and redeemed by God. No failures or past sins disqualify you as God’s child because He knew what he was doing when he made you. In Christ you possess everything you need to see and be a holy moment.  

Created in Christ Jesus. Jesus is real, and that should change everything in your life. Jesus was there at creation and was there at your re-creation. He sustains everything and holds everything together. To be created in Jesus means you have eternal worth and potential. As one of my youth leaders shouted, “God doesn’t make junk!”

For good works. Not selfish works, angry works, jealous works, or lustful works, but GOOD works. Imagine if more people started looking for the good works they were created to be doing and started doing them. Ask God to start showing you the good works He has all around you to do.

Which God has prepared ahead of time. God created time and lives outside of it. He holds you in His presence and can experience a relationship with you that is personal, intimate, and powerful. At the same time, He is doing that with billions of people. He never gets tired, never gets bored, never gets overwhelmed because he is outside the constraints of time. He already knows the things He wants you to do in life, and He prepared you by giving you spiritual gifts, a personality, abilities, talents, and desires to do those good things. They are all out there waiting for you to do them. What an exciting way to wake up every morning!

That we should walk in them. This is the goal of this book. My desire is by the time you finish these pages you will already be experiencing holy moments and creating holy moments for others to experience. God wants you to walk in them, not sit in them, think about them, or go to school to learn them. He wants you to actively walk in those good works now, today! Remember He made them and will empower you to accomplish them to His glory. He will make you able if you will be available.

But maybe you think you are too far gone to walk in good works. Maybe you are too ill, or too old, or too young or too much in debt to attempt the good works God planned for you to do. Maybe you feel you’ve missed too many of those good works in the past to be any good to God at this time in your life. Good for you! You’re asking the right questions! Keep reading and consider the possibility that its not about you. If you think that this was about you learning how to perform good works, do great things, accomplish wonderous activities, then you will have missed the entire meaning behind the definition of a holy moment, which is:

God’s presence

 Accomplishing God’s purposes

For God’s glory

and man’s benefit

Can you see it? The only place you fit into the definition is at the end when it is for your (and others) benefit! The holy moment is made holy by God, not your conditional purity or holiness at any given moment. You and those you bless with a holy moment are the beneficiaries, not the creators of the holy moment. Once that thought settles into your soul and you understand it more fully, you will be empowered by God to make changes in your life you may have desired in the past but privately thought could never happen.

You don’t need to be perfect to experience a holy moment. This is not about performance Christianity or legalism. We can’t ever do enough to gain God’s acceptance through good works or church attendance. God wants our hearts, not our performance. When a person surrenders their rights to their selves and invites Jesus to come into their life, He does, He really really does!

 Surrender is the key. When I surrender (choice) my life, my future, and control of my life, Jesus responds (consequence), and His Spirit enters my life to redeem and re-generate my being. This is a miracle that literally changes my life from the inside out. My spirit is now alive, and I can understand and know God personally! Now I can experience holy moments daily with God. Can this be possible? Can the Creator God of everything enter my life and awaken me spiritually? Yes, this is the reality of the relationship we can have through Jesus Christ.

Oh no, now I must be perfect and Holy!!

  We don’t experience a holy moment because we have somehow become perfectly holy. 1 John 1:8-10 tells us;

 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

I cannot be perfectly holy 24/7/365 this side of heaven. Jesus must intercede and present me to the Father as righteous in the light of His death on the cross for my sin. Now when I come to God in Jesus’ name I am welcomed into the presence of the perfect, righteous Holy God, not because of my performance but because of Jesus’ work for me on the cross. All I can do is accept His work and learn how to pursue Him in righteousness and holiness. Colossians 1:19-22 gives a great summary of this holy truth.

“For in him (Jesus) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things (you), whether on earth or in heaven, making peace (with you) by the blood of his cross.

And you (us, His creation), who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.”

All the work has been done, the price has been paid, and we are invited into the presence of God to be presented holy and blameless!

So now you can relax. This side of heaven we will all struggle. The goal is to continue in the faith we have been given. We need to grow in our knowledge, obedience, surrender and spiritual strength, something that can happen as fast or slow as you want.

 One of my comfort verses is Philippians 1:6 which assures me that “He who began a good work in you will keep on perfecting it until the day of Christ.” Jesus begins the good work in you and promises to keep developing you until you see Him face to face. This is called sanctification. It is a process and takes as much time as we need for it to take.

Some new believers will grow quickly and experience the presence of God’s power working in their lives immediately. They will surrender to Jesus quickly, and learn to obey, trust and respond as He instructs and calls. The joy of knowing God deeply will come to them early in their walk as they sacrificially make the time to grow and make the sacrifices needed to pursue Jesus in every part of their life.  They will sacrifice much to grow in this way, and they will suffer in ways they did not prepare for on this fast track. Their choices will bring consequences, just like the more worldly-minded believers’ choices will bring different consequences.  These fast-track believers will be rewarded with more opportunities for service in the body of Christ, but they will face more intense spiritual battles along the way. They will also make mistakes like we all do, but they will learn faster and repent more earnestly, obeying what they learn along the way. They will sacrifice worldly pleasures for the joy of knowing God more intimately. This will be the result of their choices and God’s consequences.  They will NOT be invited to the neighborhood drinking party, or the employee strip club trip, but they will experience something supernatural, powerful, and fulfilling that no worldly event can provide.

 Other true believers will take the slower route, growing incrementally and making mistakes along the way. Past hurts and abuse (soul trauma) from broken people in their lives may make trusting God more difficult for them. They may benefit from a spiritual coach who can help them gain spiritual insight here.  Total surrender to God may intimidate them. The emotionally charged stories they see and hear from their friends on the spiritual fast track may scare them and threaten their social status.  They may be afraid of the total commitment they see others making, not understanding what treasures lie ahead on this path. Some followers of Christ may still be interested in the things of the world and yearn to be a part of the culture in some way. They still want to be up on the latest shows and the latest Twitter feeds. They want to be seen on Instagram and be able to talk the talk of the people around them at work and in the neighborhood.  The need to be accepted and judged as culturally relevant is a strong desire. They may see total commitment to Jesus as odd, out of place, a little out of touch culturally. That’s ok because God still loves them and has a plan for them to grow into spiritual maturity no matter how long it takes them. Remember Philippians 1:6- “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion”. I’m not judging people in this phase of their journey; it is just what I’ve observed over the 50 plus years I’ve known and been known by Jesus. People will grow in their pursuit of Jesus to the extent of their desire for relationship with Jesus.  I heard a great line from the movie, ‘Miracles from Heaven’, where the little girl is asked about the people who heard her miracle story and still didn’t believe. She said, “That’s ok, they’ll get there when they get there”. How profound. The journey starts with surrender to Jesus. Once that happens, the power and presence of God enters, and your life will change as much as you want it to.

You get all of Jesus when He enters your life. That is called the infilling or baptism of the Holy Spirit which happens at salvation.  You spend the rest of your life learning how to experience more of Jesus. That is called the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Every believer has all of the Holy Spirit they can get when they experience salvation. The manifestation of the holy spirit happens as a Christ follower surrenders to God’s presence and power in their lives daily. Read John 15 here for perspective.  That is what the holy moment is all about.

I was radically saved from alcohol and the deadly gang activities in the Philadelphia suburbs. God knew I needed a quick exit from that lifestyle. I remember being saved on a Tuesday and saying yes to an invitation from a friend to go to a sexually explicit movie that weekend. I didn’t know any better because this was what I did before Jesus.  I went to the movie, but as it began, my heart sank, and my new spirit was repulsed at the things I had once embraced just a week ago. I told my friend I couldn’t stay here. He promptly told me where to go, and it wasn’t heaven! I walked the five miles to home, rejoicing and praising God for the powerful, redeeming change in my life. That was a holy moment! I have never watched another movie like that since. God was showing me early in my new life that pursuing holiness meant being separated from anything that would lead me away from Him and back into the darkness of sin. The point of this story is not to make myself look holier that you, but to drive home the point that once a believer begins the miraculous journey with Jesus there will be decisions we make that will help us grow closer to Jesus, and decisions that will take us away back towards the darkness. Take inventory now in your life if you are a Christ follower. What are you clinging to that is a filthy rag, a selfish desire, a bitter pill you swallow daily. What is standing between you and a more intimate pursuit of Jesus? If you want, you can start laying that down at His feet. I promise it will be a holy moment.

Start Seeing with Holy Eyes

We live in a physical world, with physical laws, and physical limitations. As spiritually alive believers we also live in a spiritual world, where spiritual things happen all around us and manifest in the physical world as God allows. The past ten years have seen an explosion in tv shows about the spiritual world around us. Amateur spirit hunters from all walks of life take us into their reality shows and entertain us with ghostly stories and spirit boxes that have the dead telling them to leave now or else. While I admit I’m interested in the shows, it’s not just for the entertainment. I watch to see if anybody on the show truly understands the spiritual dimension they are messing with. A few of them do, but most see the haunted house as a chance to make a show and thrill their viewers. Some of their choices result in spiritual consequences that follow them home and cause harm spiritually, emotionally, and physically. For a believer in Jesus Christ, ignorance is not an option when it comes to spiritual matters. God’s word is very clear in what it teaches about spiritual warfare and spiritual battle strategies.  It’s not hard to learn the biblical teachings about how to see victory in the spiritual realm. It’s all the extra stuff people have added that makes it confusing or challenging to the average believer. Remember the holy moment happens when God’s presence achieves God’s purpose for God’s glory and man’s benefit. The challenge is to develop the spiritual sense of when God’s presence is getting ready to achieve God’s purpose. Spiritual sensitivity is the ability to understand at the spiritual level of your being what is happening around you in the spiritual realm. Don’t get concerned, I’m not about to teach you about seeing dark entities and battling demons in your home. That doesn’t normally happen to a Jesus follower unless God orchestrates it for His purposes. The moment you received Jesus into your life, His spirit entered you and raised your spirit from the dead, creating a new person that is now supercharged spiritually. See              2 Corinthians 5:17 here.  You may not have felt it, but you were instantly redeemed from death and darkness and transformed into the light of God’s presence. You were also given a mighty creature as a guardian called an angel, who does NOT resemble a fat little baby you see in art. If you were to see an angel in their true form, you would be amazed and a little freaked out as they were NOT created in God’s image, and only appear to us in human form so we can relate to them without passing out. They are mighty, powerful, eternal beings created by God for specific purposes, one of which is protection of His beloved creation, YOU. They are present but not seen, protective but allowing your choices and consequences, good and bad. They carry out God’s purposes for your life and are often present in the holy moments you experience. This kind of heavenly protection and guidance should bring you comfort and a sense of awe as you fully grasp the ramifications of these truths.

Now for the other part of the spiritual war. Satan fell from Heaven when he desired independence from God and desired to rule over God. He chose independence and self-will over obedience and fellowship with God. Every choice has a consequence. Satan’s consequence was to be cursed to the earth and become a part of God’s redemptive plan no matter how much he hated it. Satan believed he had won when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden of Eden. He is the father of lies and believes his own lies, which is his demise. The spiritual battle is not one of power, but one of truth. Satan cannot overcome the truth. His power comes in the lies you believe. When you learn and obey the truth of God found in His word, you will become a powerful adversary the enemy doesn’t want to deal with.  If Satan does send a demonic entity your way, it will have to get through the angels, the word of truth, and the Holy Spirit to do you any harm.

 That is, unless you invite the enemy to the table yourself. How do we invite our enemy to our table? It is usually a slow process, not a frontal assault. If Satan attacked you overtly, the resulting response from God would be a crushing defeat to any entity foolish enough to attack in that way. Satan is called a prowling lion because he prowls, stalking his prey, taking time to observe weaknesses, watching reactions to temptations, offering you little compromises that lead to little consequences. The increase in temptations happen as we allow them to happen. The Holy spirit will move in us and convict us of sin, giving us that uncomfortable feeling that we shouldn’t be doing this, watching that, going here, or saying that. Trusted friends will show us where we are starting to stray and what lies we are believing. Our spiritual battle is for the truth to win out over the lies. As long as we are embracing the truth, we will see the lies and confess them to Jesus, empowering the holy moment that expels the tempter and rewards us with the peace of Jesus. Choice and consequence. It is a simple and as challenging as that.

I once was blind but now I see!

Before Jesus entered my life, I was blind to anything spiritual. Many times, God offered me a holy moment, and for an instant, I was opened to His presence. Sometimes it was the beauty of nature on a hike or fishing trip with my dad. Other times it was the pure joy of family at Christmas or Thanksgiving. Sometimes I was ‘holy moment struck’ at a funeral or wedding. I can remember times when some people around me were exuding God’s presence, but I didn’t know what it was. I just felt better in their presence, or I felt uncomfortable to be around them. All these moments were holy moments orchestrated by God to move me towards His presence. Remember, this was before I surrendered to His love and forgiveness before He redeemed me and filled me with His presence. We all have the opportunity to be holy moments to the people who are still on their journey to Jesus. Who knows, you may bring someone closer to Jesus tomorrow!

Am I holy enough to do this??

Remember, you don’t have to make some holiness perfection journey to start seeing and being holy moments. You don’t have to have some secret holy experience, or reach some biblical nirvana, or lose yourself in hyper worship experiences to have a holy moment. Remember, it used to be about you but now it is no longer about you. Your new life is new, different, eternally based, empowered for eternity, and empowered for victorious living this side of heaven. You can start having holy moments no matter where you are on your spiritual journey. God is always working and always inviting us to His good works. 

Recognizing Jesus in the moment makes it holy. Holding your child while they sleep and thanking God for them. Praying a short prayer for a friend over the phone between cleaning dishes. Changing the radio to worship music and singing along. Sending a verse text to somebody that God just prompted you to send. Bringing family into the conversation with unbelievers. Choosing an uplifting social media post over self-righteous or divisive statements. Speaking truth over spreading gossip. Giving the benefit of the doubt over self-righteous justice at any cost. On and on the opportunities come as you ask God to show you the good works He has prepared for you. Every moment you ask Jesus to be there or recognize He is there, that moment becomes a holy moment.

We will study holy moments using the definition I shared in the beginning of this chapter. We will also explore what an unholy moment is. We will learn how to see and be holy moments in our work, our play, our family, our tragedies, our communities, our sufferings and our blessings. Stay with me on this personal journey that will affect many thousands in your life as you leave a legacy of holy moments that bring Glory to God and joy to those God touches through you.

A holy moment in a busy airport

The three business partners were just coming to the airport from a last-minute meeting and now they were late. They bumped and pushed their way along the crowded hallways, asking forgiveness and looking for the empty spaces between people to run through. As they rounded the corner of the hallway where their plane was departing, they came upon a woman on her knees, sobbing and grasping at the handmade baskets that were sprawled across the floor and now being kicked into the ever-growing crowd of humanity. One of the men slowed and took in the moment. The other two cried out for him to hurry as the airline was closing the door to the plane any moment. The man could see the woman’s panic, her hopeless situation, because she was a blind person selling her own hand made baskets as the source of income for her family. Now her tiny business was in shambles, and she cried quietly as not a single person stopped to help her.

The man told his friends to go on without him. He would find another flight later that day. In his hurry and busyness, he saw the holy moment and embraced it. He moved into the woman’s space, slowly so as not to startle her. He told her to go back to her kiosk as he would be finding and bringing the scattered baskets back to her to arrange on the shelves again. She looked up, with eyes that changed from dark and dull to bright and twinkling, even in her blindness. She asked, “Sir, are you Jesus?” Now it was the man’s turn to shed tears. He had seen the need, asked God for the chance to be in the moment, and brought Jesus to a needy person by the simple act of service. 

Everyone around them was too busy, too caught up in their own moments to see the special holy moment right in front of them. This is the miracle God offers us in our busy moments.

Now get busy with those good works waiting for you out there!