I am persuaded that living in the moment is the only way to serve God to the best of my abilities. I came to this conclusion after spending a day worrying about a possible future problem. I realized how crazy it was to waste time thinking about the possibility of a problem that may never occur. Time is too valuable to waste on the what ifs of life and it is emotionally draining.

Another situation last week also made me think about living in the moment. I spent one morning thinking back over the past. I was saddened by a situation that brought back some past memories. I wasted time replaying old problems over and over again in my mind. It not only used up valuable moments of my day, but it also become an emotional weight that burdened my mind.

While contemplating Luke 9:23, the Lord convicted me about wasting time on the past and the future. I was looking at the verse for a lesson I was preparing. The Lord, as He often does, used my studies to show me that I was in an unhealthy habit of which I was unaware.

Luke 9:23 says, “And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23, ESV) The word daily made me think. Jesus doesn’t ask me to take on all of my history at once; he wants me to submit to God’s will for today. He wants me to follow the path God has laid out by stepping forward right now in this moment.

I remembered some other verses that back up the idea of living in the moment.

“forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,” (Philippians 3:13, ESV)

“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Hebrews 3:13, ESV)

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”” (James 4:13–15, ESV)

God knew the emotional toll that I would pay when I attempt to live in anything other than the moment. Living in the past often weighs me down with guilt and regret. Other times my views of the past are filled with so much nostalgia that I lose enthusiasm for today because I think that nothing can compete with the wonder of the past. Focusing on the past diminishes my zeal for today. I need to forget what lies behind and work towards a God-honoring future.

Planning for the future is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Every time I make a plan, something changes and I have to revise my strategy. It takes so much time and energy to make new plans. It drains me and then the tasks of today go undone. I must leave the future in God’s hands.

I know that it requires faith and trust in God to let go of my time. I choose to depend on Him to plot out my next steps. So today along with the Apostle Paul, I want to say, “I am always of good courage. I know that while I am at home in the body I am away from the Lord, for I walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:6–7, ESV)