Chasing Daylight

Recently I have realized how much of my life I have been wasting. I have been filling my free time with video games and movies and not much else, it is a sad reality. Though I know I was wasting my life away I could not break free, an addiction not realized at the time and the chains were deep. I was caught in a moment, a moment that swept me and did not allow me to leave. Like the famous verse from Amazing Grace, I was blind, but now I see. Strangely enough though what drove me to this place was feeling burned out with ministry, I was tired of dealing with everyone's spiritual lives and not wanting to deal with my own. It burned me deeply, and drove me to a place of apathy and escape in a online world, where I played games and God and people's problems did not matter. It seemed very satisfying at first, but sadly drove me deep into a pit of despair. I was stuck in a moment.

Moments are all we have and a moment that started with escape quickly pulled me into a prison with no chance of freedom. Reflecting upon this I realize that many of us are stuck in moments in the past, whether past relationships, or painful memories, and we allow them to change our lives in the future. But we do have future moments, ones where we do not have to allow the past to control our future. Much like myself right now, I am choosing to write and express my feelings instead of playing a video game. Though I was stuck, all I had to do is make a conscious decision to not allow my addiction to run my life anymore. I chose this moment to effect my future, and not my moments of the past to control my destiny. I like to think of this as "Chasing Daylight," a great book by Erwin McManus. Its the idea of time travel, where though we cannot travel into the past, we are traveling into the future. And our future moments are choices left to us. Like the famous words of Joshua, "Choose this day whom you will serve." We can chase daylight, newness, freshness, or we can live in the dark, our past, our hurts, our scars; it is simply in the next moment that you can change your future.

This is where I am at, I am changing my moment to reflect what I know God wants me to do, and this will be quite a change, but it does not have to be a lot of work. For it is as simple as a moment-take it and make it yours. I am, and I am not looking back, at my past as wasted as it was, I am chasing daylight.