12 Hours at a Time

Ok, so my friend was sharing with me some advice a wise sage gave him to think about when battling with temptations. Can you resist the temptation for just the next 12 hours. Instead of having to try and make it in the battle for a week or month or whatever time frame one chooses, just take it 12 hours a time.

Why do I find this so profound? Well for a copule of reasons.
First of all, whats most manageable. Is it easier to focus on doing something or in the case of temptations and addictions, not doing something, for a specific small amount of time. 12 hours is approximately the majority of a persons waking hours. Its 1 half of a day. It is the present/near future. We aren't talking about large amounts of time its only 720 minutes, or 43200 seconds.

Second of all it reminds us to focus on the present. If we take care of life right now and right here and are faithful in living it as God calls us to we are being faithful. He wants us to not worry about the future, or tommorrow. Focus on what matters now, living a Godly life, and listening to God.

Third, I think it allows us to focus on God in small bites and we are able to "Be still and know that I am God" psalm 46:10. We can more easliy and effectively call on God for His help and strenght. When we think of large periods of time we focus on what can I do to make this or that happen, but when we look at a smaller amount of time we can program ourselves to more readily call on God for His help and strength.

Fourthly, its easier to focus on the small time and when we do find ourselves struggling we can reach out for help to God and others more easily. Instead of saying that I didn't pray or that I've struggled with this or that for a week, we can say. Today I'm having a struggle, a battle for who God wants me to be........ in some ways it minimizes it but allows us to be more able to admit our weakeness as it feels less like we are failing God and not being the person he wants us to be, but instead since we are dealing with it as it happens, we can be in the battle and it is part of the battle. We must enlist God and others to challenge us, pray for us, and support us in our weakness.... Most importantly we need God!

And finally..... God sometimes only reveals to us a small part of his plan. So I blieve we need to be faithful and focus on the present and living our lives for God. We can't worry about the future or how we are going to respond in the future. We need to live in the present. Deal with the relationships, temptations, addictions and struggles of the present life.

so just be still, live in the present, and depend on the only one who matters.

---tfkr