Aww come on. Don’t tell me your too busy to date your wife. When you were courting her, you were as busy and yet you made a way to make time for her. Why can’t you do it now?
Do you have a prayer list? I’ve been looking at my prayer list and some of them have been answered, some can never be answered (because the person has already died), and some God is still working on. But I have a few special prayer requests that I know God is asking me to make the first move first.
- Consistent family devotion time
- That I be able to date my kids one on one
- Write a book on event management, photography or marriage.
- Compose songs for an album
- Learn Chinese (Mandarin)
- Learn to play piano or guitar
Honestly, some of my prayers which was meant to fill a need in the society (which in the past was asked of me to do by God) have been fulfilled by others. What my reason? I simply don’t have the time…
Ilocos was an 11 hour drive. I was willing to do it if it meant getting the family together for a week!
Time is a very precious commodity… no matter how rich you are you can’t buy more of it. Whether you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, christian or non-christian we all have the same number of minutes in our clock. I remember a joke that Pastor Bong shared yesterday, he said he was walking in a mall and in one watch store the girl told him “Sir, may sale kami sa (expensive brand of watch)” and he said “Magkano?” the girl replied “Dating 500k ngayon 250k na lang.” and he asked “anong oras ba diyan?” and the girls reply was “2:00 po”. Upon hearing that he looked at his watch and said “Ah… 2:00 din dito sa akin, pero ito bili ko P2,500 lang mas mura!”.
How true that when someone gives you time, they are actually giving you a portion of their life. But how sometimes, we take these times for granted.
Anyway, this morning my wife and I had our usual Monday breakfast date… something I remember putting into my calendar during one of the most hectic moments of my life — as I gym, work, kids chores, message preparation, counseling time and doing events were not enough to fill my day and I was thinking “How was I ever able to fit this 2-3 hour chunk of task in my already hectic schedule?” The answer is simple… I placed it in my calendar. At that moment, my wife asked me if I would be willing to set a weekly date breakfast, my brain cells began processing how important this really was and when the lights turned green, I took out my planner and just placed it there. I knew this was critical if I wanted to have a happy wife and If I wanted to be a good husband.
So let me ask you, how is your schedule like? Are there important things in life like going to church that you haven’t been doing. Let me take a guess, just like my prayer requests… maybe its not in your calendar. May I suggest drawing out a pen or your tablet or smart phones for that matter, click on calendar and put it there. It doesn’t take long… and the next time you are tempted to bump it off because work is coming in. Think which is more important – work or that thing you just scheduled.
As I look at my prayer list once again and ask why he hasn’t been answering my prayers, some of them he answered with “Because you never made time for it…” Do you want to learn Chinese? Put it in your calendar. You want to write a book? Put it in your calendar.
For some of you it might be a good boy friend or girl friend… do you actually take the time to get to know them and go though the proper dating process or do you just jump into one night stands and casual relationships that you hope would turn out ok? Do you actually take the time to get to know them before you date them so you can guard your heart incase you see red flags all over?
Credits: Thank you to my distant mentor Bill Hybels for teaching me this principle during the Hillsong Conference 2 years ago in Sydney. It resonates till now.
