You Have a Treasure! Guard It!

2 Corinthians 4:7 "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us."

This is the scripture I have been thinking about this morning. I want to guard this great treasure. I don't want to allow other things to come in and crowd Him out. I want to be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19). God is trying to teach me more and more all the time, that my life is not my own. My time is not my own. For instance, I knew that my husband was going to be working all Saturday evening, so I went to the library and checked out a christian novel. I love to read a good christian novel occasionally. I mean, love. Well, wouldn't you know, I was asked to lead the devotional time for prayer meeting Sunday morning. This was going to take some prayer and preparation for me. I battled with that book. Every time I walked past it, it called out to me. But, I knew, to really get the mind of God for this prayer time, I didn't need my mind being distracted elsewhere. I needed to spend time in prayer and listening for what He wanted for this prayer time. So, I didn't get to spend my evening the way I had originally planned, but making time with God was so much more rewarding in the long run. God has been speaking so many things to me as a result of that time spent in prayer and in His word.
Guard your prayer life. Make your time with God a priority. 1 Thess. 5:17 say, "Pray without ceasing". If things are coming into our mind that make it hard to be in a mindset of prayer, we need to not allow those things in. 1 Corinthians 6:20, "For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." I know, the majority the of the things on TV, leave me in a less than prayerful mood. If I let myself watch these things, I feel like I've allowed a crack in this jar of clay for His spirit to seep out. It takes effort to get back into an attitude of being worshipful and prayerful. I want to be able to say, like Paul in Phillipians 3, that anything that I have to suffer or give up for Christ, is worth it, just to get to know Him.

Phillippians 3:10 "That I may know Him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto His death."