Day Tight Compartments

Phil 4:6-7  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Recently at work I got to go through the Dale Carnegie Leadership Academy. One of the principles to avoid worry is to “live in day tight compartments”. Like most leadership principles found here and in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People they are all based on Biblical principles.

Dale Carnegie says that a lot of physical problems stem not from “what you eat, but what is eating you”.

Eccl 2:22-23 What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun?  All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest.

I recently had one of these sleepless nights. I just couldn’t turn my mind off. I had let a couple of interruptions and delays ruin my only night off this week. I had planned on coming home, relaxing and catching up on some TV shows that had been recorded on my DVR. I just wanted to veg out and take my mind off things. As usually happens, life got in the way and I had to hit the pause button multiple times and I lost the continuity of the shows as well as my composure. Instead of just taking it stride, I let it ruin my evening and it lingered on into the night. I couldn’t sleep as events repeated themselves in my mind and the enemy spun them in ugly ways and attached hidden meaning to them. Instead of praying or worshipping I finally got out of bed, still stewing, and I began to pick up the house. Mind you then I got upset because the house was a mess and didn’t anyone else care about the way the house looked? In the middle of all of this my wife got up and came downstairs wanting to know what was going on with me which only made me angrier because I couldn’t put into words why I was so agitated. I finally went to bed, still agitated and it took forever to get to sleep.  The next day I got up, still brooding, I hardly uttered a word at breakfast with my wife and dragged myself to work.

During the middle of the day I went into the prayer chapel at work and spent some time with God who gently, lovingly, but firmly showed me the error of my ways. I apologized to my wife and realized that all my angst was self-inflicted and had I only followed this Biblical principle and takem my cares to Him, His peace would have taken over and my evening, night and following morning would have been a lot different. Not to mention how it affected the people around me.

Knowing how to do things and applying them are 2 different things. I know what God wants me to do. Walking the walk is hard, purposeful and intentional work. God is trying to teach me more about prayer. In his book, Mystically Wired, Ken Wilson suggests including short prayer times throughout the day in order to make prayer an integral part of our days. When I do this, it allows God to moderate my life and incidents like the one I described above tend not to linger as long.

Lord, I want to be led by your Spirit, but how can I when I don’t spend the time in prayer to listen to Your voice? Forgive me for my self-centeredness and help me to pause my life at intervals during the day so that prayer can permeate my life. In prayer I find you and when I find you there is rest. When I find rest I am at peace. When I am at peace, You can shine through me. Please shine through me. In Jesus name, Amen.

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