This morning, I skipped breakfast because I felt I needed to spend every moment working in my office. I was at a conference last week. A lot of work piled up while I was out of the office. At the conference, I was blown away by what God is doing all over the world and I was unaware of it. I was so encouraged! I want to be fully engaged in what He’s doing and see what’s happening in Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, all the places we saw transformation happening –I want to see it here…now!

In my rush to get busy and ‘redeem the time’ the Lord arrested me and sat me down. He said to me, “Bill, you are so uptight about things. I want you to relax and spend some moments with me.”  He had my attention, for a moment… I sat down, looked around my office at all the mess. I agreed with Him that I was uptight about many things. Then, –ding, ding… I was distracted by text messages, email notifications and the wind blowing fiercely outside.

After replying to texts, I stopped what I was doing. I think its rude when you are in conversation with someone and you look at your cellphone to read an email or respond to a text message. Yet, here I was doing that to the Lord! My heart melted. I refocused on Him and in less than a minute, I was filled with SHALOM that passes all knowledge.

Most of us think we know what we need, but we are probably deceived. We don’t need more time. We don’t need more money. We don’t need more exercise —well, actually, many of us could all use a little more exercise. What we need is His Presence. We need to sit in His Presence and just allow Him to love us and fill us with His peace.

Do it now and don’t allow yourself to be distracted. Let me know what happens.

Shalom, y’all.