“Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples,

Give to the Lord glory and strength.

Give to the Lord the glory due His name;

Bring an offering, and come into His courts.

Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!

Tremble before Him, all the earth.” Psalm 96:7-9……………….

I love the Lord more than anything and anyone on this earth, and anybody who knows me for more than about 5 or 10 minutes can probably tell because He and His love and His Word and His blessings tend to pour into and through me continually. And when it comes to spending one-on-one time with the Lord, personal time with Him, communing time with Him, fellowship time with Him, time to love Him, praise and sing to Him, worship Him, seek Him, and oh, to study His glorious Word, the Bible, I absolutely LOVE to spend time with Him. I spend time with Him throughout the day and night, not leaving Him behind in the mornings as I used to do but all through the day and night communicating with Him, seeking and hearing Him, following Him as best I can step by step, but oh how I love and rejoice in spending concentrated, dedicated time with Him whereby I’m either taking walks and spending time with Him or sitting down with His Word and spending time with Him.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me one day when I felt a strong urgency to work on my writing for the day and realized I had studied the Bible already – in the middle of the night mind you – and sought and heard Him give me instructions for my life, for which I am so thankful that He does this regularly, but that I hadn’t taken my usual morning walk with Him yet. Of course, I would have to lay aside my writing and go for my walk, right? After all, I couldn’t afford to get out of the “routine” and “ritual” of how I was spending time with Him. Right?

Imagine to my surprise then when I started thinking I should go take my walk and instead the Lord sent me to the computer to write. What exactly was happening? The answer contains a message for all of us, I believe.

I had gotten so caught up in my daily “ritual” of spending time with the Lord, of the time frame and agenda and plan of it, that that morning I was more focused on “accomplishing” what I was to accomplish in spending time with Him in “the right order” according to “the way I always did it” that I had found myself on the verge of not following the Lord and the leading of His Spirit in how He wanted to direct me that day so that instead I could go through my “daily tasks” like a “ritual”. While I personally believe that spending time with the Lord at the very start of the day is utterly crucial and I would recommend this to absolutely anyone and everyone, when spending time with Him becomes a “ritual” and is not led by His Spirit as far as how He wants to spend time with us, when, where, and in what manner, how often, etc., then does it not become more about us and our flesh and our human plans than it does about the Lord and living to love and worship Him and bring Him glory forever?

Spending time with the Lord should never be a ritual, a chore, nor simply something else we have placed in our calendar books, on our schedules, etc. There should be NOTHING and NOBODY more important in our lives than the LORD JESUS CHRIST, and how we spend each and every day should not be about “accomplishing” things most especially “accomplishing” our relationship with Him, but our every day should be a period of time He has blessedly given us in which we seek and are led by His Spirit right down to the personal one-on-one alone time we spend with Him! If we find ourselves in the place I did that day, we need to make the decision He led me to make.

I chose not to go on my walk when I ordinarily did, but instead went to the computer – to write this in fact. A message, a reminder, for all of us that the Lord is TO ALWAYS BE NUMBER ONE, and that we should yield ourselves to Him continually whereby we give His Spirit the free reign He is due to lead us step by step through each and every day of our lives. For His glory, friend, for His glory! Amen!