Is your life overstuffed and out of balance?

Do you ever pause and take inventory of your life, and realize that all your secular responsibilities and tasks—school, work, sports, music, movies, doomscrolling on social media—has hindered your relationship with God? You’re certainly not the only person. In fact, it’s to your credit that you paused and peeled yourself away from those things long enough to take the inventory in the first place, much less admit to yourself that your life is out of balance.

So, here you are, realizing that God has taken a backseat. What do you do next? Maybe you’ve thought to yourself: “I don’t study the Bible like I should…” Okay, great. Now what? Probably you’re thinking: “I will start studying the Bible like I should.” That sounds like a good answer, but it’s not. At least, it’s not the first thing you should do. Granted, you SHOULD study your Bible more, but if you realize that your life is out of whack, and that you have too many balls in the air that you’re trying to juggle, tossing a Bible into the equation is only going to make your life MORE complicated and overstuffed.

So what should you do when you realize that you’ve not been studying like you should, or that you’ve not been attending like you should, or that you’ve not been forgiving like you should, or patient like you should, or a servant like you should, etc? What should you do FIRST to fix things? The answer isn’t to change what you do and certainly isn’t to do more.

The answer is to pray.

The first thing you should do is talk to the Lord. Tell Him you’re sorry. Appeal to Him for help, for clarity, for the strength to cut what needs to be cut, or at least to cut back what needs to be trimmed in your life. Your first step should be communication with the One you’ve gotten out of touch with. Spend some time talking to God. Seek forgiveness. Return to the cross—mentally—and then, with a cross-centered focus, you’ll be able to see all those things in your life that prohibited you from being cross-centered before now. Suddenly, when you look at those things, through the lens of your discipleship, you’ll see which ones are glaringly unimportant, and you’ll start hacking away at the fat in your life.

Take an inventory. Turn to God. Then try again at a more cross-centered life.

~Matthew