Why Not Waste Time with God?

Dedication

To Jane, whose love for me is amazing.

Thank you.

Table of Contents

Dedication 2

Acknowledgements 6

Preface 8

Introduction 10

Chapter 1. Waiting and Wasting 14

Waiting Is Hard 15

Why Would We Want To Wait? 18

Catching the Waves 19

Intimacy 20

From Fiery Passion to Smoldering Ashes 21

Impediments to Intimacy 23

Doing 24

Fearing Rejection 24

Walking in Darkness 25

Recovering Intimacy 26

Giving up the Doing 26

Overcoming Rejection 26

Walking in the Light 27

Waiting on God 28

Wasting Time with Him 28

Chapter 2. The Value of Nurturing the Soul 30

What We See in the Mirror 31

Treasure in Jars of Clay 32

God Made Us of Immense Worth and Value 34

We Misunderstand Love 37

Results of a Poor Self-Image 38

A Lack of Trust 38

Rebellion 39

Inability to Build Genuine Relationships 39

Seeking Acceptance and Approval 39

Negative Body or Mind Image 40

A Sense of Shame 41

Cursing Ourselves 42

We Are at War! 42

Fighting the Battle 43

Claim Protection 43

Know Who You Are in Christ 43

Do Not Focus on Circumstances 43

Renew Your Mind 44

Wait in Silence 45

A Nurturing Relationship 46

Chapter 3. The Benefits Of Waiting On God 47

Scripture Teaches Us to Wait Upon God 47

Scripture Teaches that God is Our Provider 48

God’s Provision for Abraham 49

Our Needs Are No Surprise to God 50

My Own Journey of Faith in My Provider 51

We Are Often Ungrateful 52

Learned to Wait 53

Silence and Stillness Equal Rest 54

Chapter 4. Are You Listening? 57

Prayer Involves Listening 57

Balaam and His Donkey 57

Discerning the Voice of God 59

God Is Trying To Get Your Attention 60

An Exercise in Listening to the Voice of God 61

Two Areas of Discernment 61

Discernment Comes from Choosing to Listen 62

The Discerned Word Must Coincide with Scripture 62

Slow Down, Tune Out the Static, and Listen 63

Chapter 5. The Tragedy of the Church Today 64

Losing the Message of the Cross 64

Finding Suitable Time in Solitude with God 65

Religion As An Opiate 66

Why Do We Settle? 67

From the Shallows to the Depths 68

God Calls Us to Much More than Normal 69

Obedience and Humility 70

Obedience Requires Yielding 70

The Yielded Life 72

Others May, You Cannot 73

Refusing to Yield 74

Maintain the Message 75

Chapter 6. The Foolishness of God 76

God’s Message and Plan 77

Peace, My Brother 78

God’s Message vs. The World’s Message 80

The Army 81

Proclaiming the Message 82

Chapter 7. When It Is Okay to Be a Child 84

The Honesty of Children 85

The Sensitivity and Openness of Children 86

Retaining Childlike Qualities 86

Being Childlike: A Doorway Into Relationship 87

Things that Keep Us from Childlikeness 88

Not Understanding the Father’s Love 88

Holding Back our Emotions 89

Not Having the Heart of a Child 89

Not Understanding the Human Jesus 90

Adopted by God 90

Coming as a Little Child 92

Chapter 8. The Traps of Condemnation, Intimidation, and Accusation 93

We Are Forgiven! 93

We Are to Forgive 94

I Deserve Condemnation! 96

Intimidation Can Keep You Down! 98

Accusation is Deadly! 99

To Forgive or Not to Forgive 101

Chapter 9. What Are You Willing to Die For? 103

Our Cultural Idols 103

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego 105

We Must Die to Our Idols 109

Chapter 10. The Kind of Person God Uses 111

Confronting the Reality of Jesus Christ 111

What is Your Life Objective? 112

We Must Be Willing to Pay the Price 113

Changes Along the Journey 114

Developing A Love for The Word 114

Producing the Heart of a Servant 115

Becoming Part of God’s Team 115

Losing Confidence in the Flesh 116

Loving People 116

Confronting Sin and Bitterness 117

Seeking Discipline 117

Our Foundation is Christ 118

We Are The Treasure! 119

Chapter 11. Our Goal is Intimacy 122

Created for a Purpose 123

Spirit to Spirit 125

Our Spirits Need Awakening 126

We Need to Be Available 127

God Are You There? 128

Worshipping in Stillness Before God 129

Worship Helps Us to Understand Our Worth 129

True Worship 130

Chapter 12. The Reality of God 132

A Life of Obedience 132

The Trap of Complacency 133

He Reveals Himself 134

He Is So Proud of You! 134

Why Not? 136

Reviews of Why Not Waste Time with God? 137

About Wholeness Ministries 140

Acknowledgements

The journey with our Father God, our Lord Jesus and His Holy Spirit continues and should deepen throughout our lifetime. I am not where I was ten years ago, I am not yet where I hope to be ten years from now. I couldn’t possibly remember or list the names of all those whose personal journeys with the Lord have spoken into my life, but I am truly grateful to all of them and to those specifically who helped me with this book.

My special thanks to Dr. Harold Helms and my wife Jane who read the manuscript as I wrote it, for their input and encouragement regarding content, Biblical accuracy and grammar. The many hours they spent helping me better express what I was trying to say were invaluable.

To Rick and Carolyn Pruett without whose help this book may not have been possible.

Thanks to my pastor and friend James Ranger. His encouragement during the writing of this project and his prayers and friendship over the years have been both healing and inspiring. Also, I am deeply indebted to my close friend and spiritual mentor Dr.Francis MacNutt. It has been a privilege to know him, sit under his teaching and minister alongside of him. His humility and grace have taught me much about the love of the Father expressed in the flesh of a man.

I could not be where I now am without the valuable input into my life of men like my friend and former pastor Dr. John Lavender, the teaching I received sitting under John Wimber, or the books I have read by men such as Francis Frangipane, Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, and Richard Foster to name a few.

A profound note of thanks to my editor, Grace Sarber, whose expertise and gracious handling of the manuscript brought it together as an easily readable book.

A special thanks to the following friends who, as the full manuscript developed, read it and offered valuable comments and objective criticisms for which I am eternally grateful: Dr. Jack Bailey, Barbara Brown, Chris Burciaga, Jana Deem, Dan Divita, my son Joshua Evans, Rod Fink, Jim and Pat Fitzpatrick, Evelyn Freidt, Tony Kim, Howard Kliever, Jan Lockhart, Bill and Jackie Luehe, Mike and Cindy Maddy, Ben Maxwell, Carol Moss, Gail Preston, Pat Rodden, Kathy Sampson, Gary Tobin, Silver Veloz, Captain Lanell Wasington, and Bill and Joy Wright Jr. They all made suggestions, raised questions and offered encouraging words. Special appreciation to Nathan Sampson, a fellow traveler on this journey, for his enthusiasm and support.

I deeply appreciate my two dear friends who have been there to encourage and help in this process, Allen and Kim D’Angelo. The many hours they spent on the first edition’s cover, layout, and publication of this book made the final product all the more special because of their love for me and the extra effort and encouragement they gave me to get this done. Though I never intended to do so, Allen always told me I was going to write another book.

And to Hannah Victoria, a special thank you for your selflessness in designing the new cover for this anniversary edition.

Above all of these, I offer thanks to the Lord Himself that He chose to redeem us, love us, and have an intimate relationship with each one of us.

Preface

Mike Evans is a mature, wise counselor and gifted healer. He exudes a warm gentle spirit. His smile is infectious; his compassion is engaging. He is relaxed, humorous, and attentive. When he talks, he looks you right in the eye. He is, in John Wimber’s phrase, naturally supernatural. Mike is a listener. He listens to us and, more importantly, he listens to God. This is what this book is about.

In writing Why Not Waste Time With God?, Mike joins the current renaissance in spiritual disciplines among empowered evangelicals, such as Richard Foster and Dallas Willard. Like them, he invites us into a life of intimacy with our Lord. To accomplish this, Mike calls us to a significant shift in priorities and time commitments. Rather than wasting or spending time on lesser things, he invites us to give this to the God who loves us and who delights to have us linger in his presence. Mike’s thesis is clear, If I want to build an intimate relationship with God, I must spend time with him.

This book is not a how to manual, although Mike shares his own journey and helps us immensely with ours. This book frames spiritual growth with God’s heart, given in his Son and validated by His Spirit. This book demolishes our excuses and defenses against divine intimacy.

Mike demonstrates the personal value of drawing close to God, such as restoring our self-esteem and bringing a sense of well-being into our lives. He also scatters telling quotes from spiritual pioneers throughout the book: Thomas Kelly, Julian of Norwich, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, A. W. Tozer, to name a few.

This book is for those fed up with superficial evangelicalism and our fast-paced consumer society. It is also for those who have or want a spiritual hunger that only God can satisfy. It is for those willing to have a fresh self-encounter and a fresh God-encounter.

We all waste time on lesser things. Mike gives us a grace-based invitation to waste time on God and reap the personal and eternal benefits. This book will convince you of the value and take you on the journey. Read it and be prepared to have your life deepened and transformed. We are all in Mike’s debt for opening God’s heart to us in such a knowledgeable and alluring way.

Dr. Don Williams

Senior Pastor (Ret.)

La Jolla, California Vineyard

Introduction

This journey into deeper intimacy with God the Father became compelling for me after I hit the wall. I was at a place in my life where there was no one to whom I could turn, no one who would understand what I was going through. Because of physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion, I was unmotivated and uninterested in helping anybody with anything. My wife recognized the symptoms of burnout and wisely suggested I take some time off by myself, rest, and decide what I was going to do.

About twenty minutes from my home is a canyon with a raging river running through it. In the beginning, I simply would sit by this river. I did not read any inspiring books, listen to worship music, read my Bible or pray. I just sat. That is all I wanted to do and all I was emotionally capable of doing. Most of the time, I would sit and stare off into space. After about six weeks of this, my body began to feel rested. I started enjoying this time alone doing nothing. I began to notice and enjoy the beauty of nature around me. I connect well with God through nature, and before long, God and I were talking again. Most importantly, I was learning how to sit quietly and listen. The solitude was refreshing and stimulating. During this time, God planted the seed that began to germinate and grow into a desire to spend significant time alone with Him. This time allowed me to step back, look at my world, and see with new eyes the frantic pace at which we live.

So often, doing things for God leaves us little time with God. No wonder we get discouraged, burnt out, and want to drop out. No wonder our spiritual lives seem so ordinary and uninspiring. No wonder the world is unimpressed with our God. I began to see that many of us in this walk of faith are just as stressed and frantic as everyone else around us. The writing of this book is the result of the journey on which God has led me for the last couple of years. I have been learning that I must be intimately connected with God, and the only way to do this is to spend significant time with God.

It has been said, He who would find God will find time. Like most of my contemporaries, for many years, my journey with God consisted of going to church, singing a few songs, tithing a little, having some fun, praying, and perhaps doing a few devotions. The time I spent in devotions, however, was just enough to help me not feel guilty about not spending much time with God in prayer or reading His Word.

Of course, church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights placed me in the really spiritual class. This was good for my ego, and I was certain it made God happy and kept me in His good graces. What more could He want? After becoming a full-time associate pastor I became a little more serious about my walk with the Lord. I began to try to read through the One-Year Bible on a consistent daily basis. Or I would switch to Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest. This usually lasted about three to four months. After all, I had a lot of important work to do for the Lord. I actually did quite a bit of reading, but it was usually to prepare for a lesson or sermon. My prayer life was sporadic, and my prayers usually were composed of my delivering a list of needs and going merrily on my way. The stories of the great men of faith spending four to six hours a day in prayer were incomprehensible to me. How could one possibly be still for that long and do nothing but pray? I could not think of that much to pray about.

The idea of spending time with God just to listen and be with Him did not appeal to me. I had not grasped the simple concept that if you want to build an intimate relationship with God, you must spend time with Him. I was deluded in thinking that since I was doing all these great things for God, we had a good, close relationship. Along the way, there were times when I felt caught up into the presence of God and did not want to leave. But after coming down from these mountaintop experiences, the daily grind of life would pull me back to reality and I would become caught up in the works mentality once again.

I viewed prayer and solitude with God as a waste of valuable time. I did not look forward to my prayer time with anticipation or excitement. Rather, it was with a sense of duty that I had to perform in order to remain on good terms with God. I could not understand why my walk with God seemed so ordinary. I thought I knew God, but found out later that I only knew about God, for only in the last few years have I begun to truly know God.

The journey that has brought me to where I am now began with music. I connect easily with God through worship music. I would often lie in bed at night listening to worship music. I found it relaxing and refreshing. For me, this was emotionally, intimately connecting with God. I would grab my iPod, go back to the bedroom, close the door, put on my headphones, and begin to sing along with the music.

Another part of this journey was intentionally finding a place to be alone where I could talk to God and pray without interruption. That is where my river came in. I would sneak off in the middle of the day to go up to this river sometimes just to get away from people and have some downtime. I loved to sit by this river for hours. At first, my priority was to rest, but then I found it to be a place where I could spend time with God. The solitude was not simply restful; it was renewing.

The biggest obstacle was feeling guilty because I was not doing something. I felt like I was wasting valuable time. We are so driven in our culture, and especially in our church culture, that we must be doing something in order for God to be pleased with us. The idea of simply being with Him—doing absolutely nothing but being with Him—was a tough one to overcome. Now, I cannot imagine not doing it. Some would say I am wasting time, but I have come to see it as crucial for survival. I now look forward with anticipation to our time together.

What started me on writing this book was a talk I gave on time we spend with God. Through preparation for that teaching, I began to really understand the superficial relationship I had with Him and how much of the Church is very superficial in its relationship. I wanted to explore how we as believers typically relate to our God and how to delve into a deeper relationship with Him. I wanted to know the benefits of going deeper with God. I realized that my own prayer life needed a lot of work and that my understanding of who I am and how much He loves me needed to grow.

Through this process, God has communicated His message to me: Michael, I really love you. You do not have to prove anything to Me. I want you to trust Me. I have started you on this journey. I am pleased with how far you have come, but there is more I want to share with you. As you spend time with Me, I will show you parts of Me that you have never seen before and take you deeper than you have ever dreamed of going. I will restore your passion and joy. I want more time with you.

Now He wants me to get