The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals
You blocked an hour on your calendar weeks ago for thinking — for the real work underneath the work, the kind of slow, prayerful, strategic reflection that only happens when you are not reacting to someone else’s request. And then this week, just like the week before that, you gave it away. A client needed something. A colleague asked for a “quick favor.” A meeting expanded. You told yourself you would get back to it tomorrow, the way you always do.
Years ago, an organizational effectiveness consultant I was partnering with kept urging me to spend more time thinking. That echoed what I had read in Essentialism years before. I even ran trainings where I taught leaders and their teams to protect thinking time. And then — this is the hypocritical part — I did not follow my own advice. I kept giving the hour away because there was always one more client to schedule or one more task to handle. Last year in my PhD work, it hit me how much focusing on the love of God actually transforms a person. I finally started thinking on purpose. The difference has been real. The love of God moving from head to heart has gotten clearer. The practitioner’s guide I have been building to serve clients better has come together. I am being proactive instead of reactive. And I am grateful.
The hour you keep giving away is not really a calendar problem. It is a belief problem. Somewhere underneath the surface is a quiet conviction that being responsive to everyone else is more spiritual, more responsible, more loving than sitting with the one thing only you can think through.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10, ESV. God does not produce wisdom in a leader who never stops moving. Scripture reveals that stillness is the soil in which knowing Him grows. The Holy Spirit reshapes leaders who are willing to protect the hour no one else will protect for them. Trust that God’s love is faithful enough to multiply what you do in the hour you stop giving away.
Here is the question for this Wednesday: If I really believed God’s love is at work in me in the quiet hour I keep sacrificing, how would that change the way I guard it this week?
One move before Thursday: Find the one-hour block on your calendar this week that you are most tempted to give away. Label it Thinking with the Lord. Treat it like a meeting with the most important client on your list — because it is. If this is the only thing I do from this CHEW today, it is enough.
With you on the journey,
Ryan
If you had to put this into one sentence for today, what would you say God is inviting you to rest in or return to?
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