One Hour

One Hour

One Hour. That is what some photo labs give you to get your pictures developed or some eye glass companies claim to have your lenses ready. For some cities it's a limit in certain areas to park your vehicle. Most television drama's run an hour. What is one hour to you?

There are 24 hours in a day or 168 hours in a week or 8,736 hours in a year. If you want to look at it different consider there are 1,440 minutes in a day or 10,080 minutes in a week or 524,160 minutes in a year. My point is, one hour isn't very much. Even if you work 8 hours a day in a 40 hour work week, you still have 128 hours left. If you sleep 8 hours a day in a week(56 hours) that leaves you with 72 hours left in your week. Or 8 hours a day.

Now I know some of us may work more than 40 hours and may sleep less than 8 hours a day, but, my point is, when you look at our time, what is one hour? One hour is what many people give God a week and that's it. Out of 168 hours in a week, some people come to church for one hour a week on Sunday morning and think that is enough to help them grow and mature in their faith or personal relationship with God.

What if you only got one hour a week to spend with your kids? What if you only got one hour a week to spend with your spouse/significant other? What if you only got one hour a week to watch tv or spend doing your favorite hobby? Would we really have a good relationship with the people we love if we only got one hour a week? Could we really enjoy our favorite tv shows or hobbies if we only have one hour a week to fit it all in?

We make time for what's important in our lives. We cannot expect to truly know God and learn from Him if we are only attending a church service at a local church one hour a week. We have to spend time reading and learning the Bible on our own and developing devotional time. We have to spend time talking to God and communicating and listening to God(prayer), and we have to spend time in study learning with others, whether in a Sunday School class, a small group, or a weekly bible study. We have to make time to serve God using our gifts and talents. We can't possibly fit all those things in our lives in one hour a week that we are spending sitting in a church service observing and not participating.

Our one hour of public worship at the local church should be a spring board to start our week off right. Sunday morning worship once a week is a time for us to come and worship God through song, prayer, communion, prayer, and fellowship as a church family, not to fill our quota or cover our faith for the week.

It shouldn't be the only thing we do during the week that is spiritual. We cannot truly expect to know God inr a real way or His will for our lives, or grow or mature in our faith by simply attending a public worship service one hour a week.

Weekly worship is important, but it cannot replace making personal time with God for study, reflection, learning, prayer, fellowship, and service. It is so vital that as individuals we eventually move past just attending church services and start actively being the church. That we go from being just an observer once a week and become a participant.

One hour a week at the local church worship service is not enough. We need to make time for our personal relationship with God in our daily schedule. Just like we have to balance everything else in our lives, we must balance our faith. We make time for what we want. I pray that we all will make more time for God than just one hour of sitting in church on Sundays. I can't tell you how much time to spend with God every week that's up to each individual, but if all me or you are giving is one hour attedning church, it's not enough. If we expect to have a life-changing relationship with God, we have to take it serious, make time for it, and that takes energy, effort, desire, discipline, availability, and time. Let's give God our best not our minimum.