Misplacing God's Time

Date of writing: Thursday 3rd July 2025

Time of writing: 9:28pm

Friend! I've just come to a realisation: I give things up with the intention of spending more time with God, but I find that I fill that time with other things, wasting it. At the beginning, I’m super eager, ready and rearing to go, get off to a great start, but anything longer than a week, and I begin to grow weak. 

Alt Text: Black woman wearing long-sleeved blue top, hands clasped, eyes closed with clock and lamp in background

I am meant to be in an hour prayer as I type this, but I found that I went onto my phone, pulled up a game instead. Then, headed to WhatsApp to reply to a message. When I decided to clean my glasses so I could see while doing this, I accidentally banged my foot against the unit next to the bed. Friend, if I were in prayer, I know this would not have happened. All that to say I misplaced God’s time and it isn’t a good look. 

I started a 75-day challenge, not the hard one, a modified version, and it’s not the soft one either; it’s a modified version. Very short version of this challenge, omitting a lot, but knowing if any of the young people read this entry, they will scold me, and I’m the adult. There are six things I should be doing daily, and I have only been doing three of them consistently. One of the things I am supposed to do is pray for an hour a day, and I’ve found that it’s a challenge to get back to it. It’s not that I don’t have the time, I now have more than enough time, as I recently gave up some things for 21 days, which should also look like me spending more time with God. BUT, it’s a lot of buts today, I have somehow managed to fill the extra time with games.

As I finished typing that last sentence, I went back to my phone and selected all 22 games that were on it to uninstall them. Twenty-two games. Twenty-two different distractions. Twenty-two ways to keep me away from God. Twenty-two things to prevent me from spending time with my Creator. 

I honestly wanted to finish the challenge stronger than how I started, but it has genuinely not been easy to get back into the swing of things. I can’t blame the heat and say this is the reason, because I pretty much slipped up before the heat kicked in.

Why did I share all of that with you? We are getting there, but may I say, God is good. The song that has just started to play over on YouTube is As The Deer, cover by Jordan G Welch, who, by the way, is a blessed worship leader. There is something different about her. Now, back to the regular scheduling. Why did I share that with you? Me being distracted. Me not praying. I shared it because I realised that I was filling in the gap of my time with things not of God. 

As I think about it, I realise I stole from God. Is it a reach? No, I don’t think so. Interesting as well that this morning’s devotion was on the 10 commandments. God said, thou shalt not steal, and I have been stealing the time that was to be for Him, for myself. I put myself before Him, which is idolatry; it’s self-worship. To worship is to serve, and I was serving myself. So, if I’m honest, I’ve broken two commandments: thou shalt have no other gods before me, and thou shalt not steal. 

What will I do about this? Well, I have begun handling it. I have uninstalled my distractions, and I have a week from the time I write this to finish strong on my 21-day swap-out, followed by an extra 14 days (21 from the time of writing) to complete the 75-day challenge. This brings me back to one of the ideas I had in mind for the last post: what do we do when spiritually weak? To finish strong, I must push through. I need to be intentional about drinking water, even though it's now when I struggle the most. When it’s really hot, I don’t want water, I want the sugary drinks to keep me going. I need to be intentional about my bedtime. I know that my body will wake me up at 5 am to get my 7 hours of sleep, so I must be asleep by 10 pm. When I wake up at 5 am, I can do my hour of prayer then, or do it at 9 pm, winding down after the day, and get into bed by 10 pm. I know what to do, it’s just doing these things. It's now 10:11 pm. Had I not wasted so much time playing games, I could have been tucked in and snoring by now. Maybe. I did have a nap when I got in from work today. 

So, what do we do when we find that we are misplacing God’s time —the time we were meant to set aside for Him —and spending that time on ourselves? We approach God’s throne, we ask for His mercy, His grace, and His help during this time. We go to Him in the state we are, we do not wait to be ‘fixed’ or ‘perfect’. We present ourselves to Him as we are, acknowledging our brokenness, and ask Him to do this work through us. When we want to do the things that will bring us closer to Him, it’s sometimes the most challenging thing to do, but we can’t do this of our own accord. Therefore, we must do as the woman with the issue of blood; we must push through the crowd, the things that are stopping us from getting as close as we would like to, and touch the hem of His garment. 

It’s good to be honest with self and acknowledge where we are robbing God of the time we owe Him. It is essential that when we recognise this, we don’t brush it off; instead, we go to Him in humility and ask for His forgiveness and help.

Verse I want to leave you with: 

Hebrews 4:16 (KJV) Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.