What do you do when God sends you an e-mail?

    No, no, I’m not getting overly mystical here. But I’m not being silly either. When you seek to submit your life to the Lord and he begins to lead you into some serious convictions about where your life is and you get a an e-mail message like the one which follows, then maybe you’d better pay attention. I’ve been wrestling with a lot of clutter in every aspect of my life. To put it bluntly, my office at church is a mess, my office at home is a mess, my car is a mess, and until I received this e-mail, my yard was a mess.

    Yes I’m busy doing very important things. Yes, I minister to people all day long and spend a good chunk of the night on web ministry. Yes, I am a conscientious father who spends time with his kids and loves his wife. But my lack of discipline in the area of organization was beginning to make a negative difference in my ministry and it to put it bluntly, it was DRIVING ME CRAZY!

    So when I stumbled into my office, strewn with videos I was working on for a Wednesday night lesson, Zip disks which contain much of my back up web material, computer packaging and parts for the computer I rebuilt for my wife, a stack of religious and web magazines, three briefcases, dozens of wires, and five different translations of the New Testament, I found the following e-mail in my Eudora Pro InBox. Yeah, I know it’s signed by Mark Brown, but the timing reminded me that God often uses everyday folk to get their attention and put their life back on track!

Dear Phil,

I'm a pretty laid back guy. A single 27 yr. old Christian that sings in choir and helps with Cub Scouts ... but some recent events have made me do some hard thinking about how well I organize my life. Organization is NOT my forte and I've always chided people for ignoring the relationships in their lives over their material stuff ... possibly out of envy. Recently, though God gave me a wakeup call when I missed an important meeting with my Cubs - I actually slept through it one Sunday afternoon! I was characterized by never writing anything down and it caught up with me. I was sorry, but it isn't anything that you can make up to a bunch of seven year olds. So God is "cleaning my house" now ... and organization while coming slowly is taking hold. Maybe you could relay some of what I told a friend recently.

Mark Brown

Friend> So, what is it you mean by God is straightening you up?

Mark>I mean that I've developed a bad habit of letting my daily life go in pursuit of the moment. Like laundry, like mail stacking up, like papers going unfiled, like software and hardware never being installed, like giving up my musical training. Too often I would be more than willing to go to the next conference, read another novel, go to another movie or concert, watch another program, or kill another Saturday or Sunday afternoon sleeping than doing what I should to "manage my home" like it teaches that men should in 1 Timothy 3.

Not that any of the above is necessarily wrong - but they are all escape tactics, escaping real life (real work) in pursuit of temporary pleasure. But you know what the problem I've discovered is? If left unchecked, they become a way of life that doesn't help us develop any further as individuals. When we are younger, all our basic needs are provided for us (food, clothing, shelter) and generally our affairs are managed for us ... leaving us with the main pursuit being pleasure in any form. However, as we get older, that responsibility and the consequences of not managing our own home life quickly shift over to us ... and you know what? It takes us to a deeper level ... it's not that "adults" can't have fun anymore or act like kids ... they have different kinds of "fun" - they clean up so they can have friends over or so that life is more organized for their kids to enjoy, they plant and tend gardens and flower beds so they can enjoy the fruits of their labor, they practice musical instruments and solos so that they and others can benefit from the investment that they've sacrificed on the altar of discipline.

There are only two ways most people ever have a reckoning with escapism (more commonly known as a reality check). God either places someone close enough to our lives that is conscientious enough to intrude and tell us to change (spouses, parents, siblings, close friends, etc.) OR we have a major backlash from the result of our inability to manage life (the IRS comes calling, you are denied a second date because of your disorderliness, you become slothful at work, you overdraw your bank account, you lose a roommate, you get divorced). It effects your relationships and it effects your character.

Will I ever be a Type A, perfectionistic, scared of dirt, planner dictated person? I hope not. But I do hope those that look at my life can see that I care about what God has given me the ability to possess and that I'm constantly striving to better myself and those around me. And while my relationships with others will always come first over things ... I keep my things in order to more fully enjoy and increase the depth of my relationships -- always.

    This week HEARTLIGHT is all about priorities. While there is not a particular article strictly about priorities, you’ll find that what holds them together is all about priorities. You see, what we do with our life, why we do it, and who calls the shots all reflects who we live for. If the Lord is really our Lord, then his presence casts a very long shadow over what we do and how we do it.

    It is easy for us to bounce through life like leaf caught in a strong autumn wind. It seems so much easier and honest than planning and scheduling and handling the details. Only one problem, a leaf has no choice over where it is going. In our more mystical spiritual moments, we’d like to think that we were blown along by the Spirit. But if our lack of planning is due to a lack of discipline and submission to the will of the Lord, we can be sure it is a much more hostile wind than the breath of the Spirit.

    In my years of living for the Lord, I’ve found that every spiritual vacuum I left unfilled, Satan rushes to fill it up with something that inhibits, deflects, interferes, or downright crashes what the Lord wants to do with me. It reminds me of evil spirit Jesus talks about in Matthew 12:43-45!

    So I guess the point this week is pretty simple. Get the Lord back at the center of your planning, do your work as if you were serving him, and remember that people matter most to him so they should to us, but they can’t matter most to us if we are so cluttered up we can’t see them to serve them.

    Who knows, maybe the e-mail I got from God was meant for you, too!