The Wasting of Spiritual Energy

As Christians, we are called to be stewards. Stewards of our time, resources, work, family, ministries, money, etc. If you think about it, our life on this earth consists of management. However, we hardly, if ever, adapt this principle into the spiritual realm. If we are not careful, we could be doing what Oswald Chambers calls "wasting spiritual energy." What this means is that the energy we could be spending on meditation, prayer, obedience, and study, is often spent on daydreaming, anxiety, rationalizing, and being just plain lazy. We can also see this principle worked out in the areas of our spiritual giftings and ministries. In using our giftings and our time in ministry, we should ask, is this a good investment? Paul also gives an example in Phil. 4:6 about wasting spiritual energy. The verse reads "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made know to God." The phrase "be anxious for nothing" in the Greek is a command. Paul is commanding us not to waste our time, thoughts, and energy on being anxious. Next, he tells us what we should be doing with our energy, and that is to pray. The energy that we spend in our worry is less energy that we spend in prayer. And as a result, we miss out on God's peace (v.7). By holding on to our worry and not submitting our request to God, we wrongfully judge Him as unable to care for us and our problems. The reason we spend our time in worry instead of prayer is because we are not taking our Christianity personally. For if we did, we would take God at his word and spend our spiritual energy in prayer, thus reaping the fruit of a life of peace. For it is this peace that will guard us against an anxious mind and a troubled heart. In Ephesians 5:16, Paul speaks of redeeming the time. Though we may have spent much time in the past wasting our spiritual energy, we can start to day, and redeem the time. We can choose today to repent, and start spending our energy on what truly matters.