God Does Not Want Our Time. God Wants Our Attention.

My wife loves to debrief her day with me and I truly love it too. Even though we work together at the church, I don’t always know what she’s gone through in a particular day, and for that reason I enjoy our debrief. But I am ashamed to say that sometimes I sit down with her while she shares and I HEAR her talking but I am not LISTENING to what she’s saying. I know there are words coming out of her mouth because I can audibly hear them, but I cannot comprehend those words or process them. Why? In those moments I have committed to giving my wife my time, but not my attention.

I know this example resonates with married men as it always seem to be the running joke on sitcoms with the laugh sign style audience. But I think everyone deals with this in one way or another.

Maybe you’ve been accused of not being fully engaged in a conversation while on a car ride, at dinner, or watching a movie. You sit with your phone in your hand and you hear the sounds of the movie in the background but your eyes are glued to whatever is on your phone screen.

When we do things like this, we are giving others our time, but not our attention. Sometimes we see them as one in the same, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are vastly different and to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate the difference between the two until I read and broke down Hosea 6:6.

For context, Hosea’s life as a prophet is one of the most heartbreaking in the Bible. He is a faithful man that God communicates with and through. But God takes his connection to Hosea a step further by giving him a life where he will experience the same feelings that God has.

What do I mean by that? In Hosea 1:2-3, God commands Hosea to a wife that will be unfaithful to him. Yes, God commands Hosea to live a life of agony and heartache due to the unfaithfulness of his wife. This way Hosea will experience the same agony and heartache that God feels as He sees the people of Israel pursue other gods when things are good and only return back to the one true God when things fall apart.

It is because of this experience that Hosea can call the people of Israel to repent and the anguish in his words are real because he experiences it everyday when he goes home. So with those thoughts in mind, let’s read Hosea 6:6.

“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” – Hosea 6:6

For us, the words in this verse don’t really mean much on the surface, but remember the context. This is what he is encouraging people to do in their relationship with God. But what would this look like if he was speaking to his wife? My guess is it would look a little something like this:

***Disclaimer: Not a valid retranslation of the verse. This is just used as an example.

“For I desire true, unwavering, steadfast love and not going through the motions pretending we have a relationship. I want to get to know you more intimately rather than just sit here pretending that we are present in each other’s lives.”

Quite simply, I don’t want to give you time. I want you to give you attention. I want to be laser focused. I don’t want to pretend for the outside world. I want this to be real between the two of us.

Just thinking about that in the terms of Hosea’s marriage to his wife, Gomer, is painful. I cannot imagine the anguish, devastation and longing for relief he felt every day coming home knowing his wife had been unfaithful to him and yet because of his commitment to marriage, he endured it.

Now let’s bring it home.

How do you think God feels when we give him our time, just going through the motions with no real loving desire behind it? How do you think God feels when we sit with him, but have no desire to learn more about him? How do you think God feels when we do things that make us look religious and righteous on the outside but not caring about the actual relationship we have with him?

God does not want our time. God wants our attention.

Time is given out of duty.

Attention is given out of love, respect and honor.

So how do we give God our attention in the way that this passage calls us to? In two main ways outlined in the verse:

1. Let Your Public Love for God Overflow from Your Private Love for God

If I am honest with you, it can be really easy to see which relationships are struggling because of what people post on social media. As a millennial, I see people attempting to cover their crumbling relationship by constantly posting about how great it is. It’s an attempt to convince others and themselves that everything is okay even when it’s not.

The best relationships aren’t grounded in how often they publicly profess their love. Instead, how they publicly profess their love overflows from how they privately profess their love. You know the difference by how subtle the public displays are. Their laughter, their willingness to serve one another, their desire to check in on each other during the day, etc. Those things aren’t done to convince themselves or other people how they feel. It’s just how they are.

As Christians, we have the tendency to do the same things. When we are feeling like we are slipping in our relationship with God, rather than address it internally, we try to project something different externally. But that isn’t the cure. Your private intentionality in your relationship with Jesus is the cure. When you’re intentional in private, you don’t have to prove or fake anything in public.

2. Learn About Who Jesus Is, Not Just Who He Was

Why do some relationships fail? Because eventually the honeymoon phase ends and the good times are a distant memory instead of a present reality.

With Jesus, we tend to do the same thing. We get so caught up in the very real historical Jesus that we forget He is still that person today. We view Him as a historical figure to learn about rather than a person with a depth to be known.

It’s like my relationship with my wife. Yes, I have fond memories of when we dated and first got married, but what about now? Life has changed, circumstances and challenges have changed. Who she is at her core remains consistent, but the way she tackles challenges and views situations changes as well. If don’t take the time to know her, I will grow far from her. That’s why me sitting down with her and listening to what she says is so important.

That’s why it’s so important to learn the depth of who Jesus is. We will never be able to grasp the fullness of who He is on this side of eternity. But we can take the time to dive and learn more and more about Him.

Here is the ultimate truth:

Even as we cheat the Creator of the universe and run towards idols in our own foolishness, Jesus still waits at the door. Even though He has been with mankind since the very beginning, it is not His time with us that made the difference, it is His attention and intentionality with us that separates Christianity from the rest of the world. He could have let us rot while He sat there waiting for us to change. Instead, He did the unthinkable.

While we have been unfaithful, He has been the most faithful. Faithful to His death on the cross and faithful to His resurrection three days later.

He has paid attention to us, so it is our turn to pay attention to Him.

Give God your attention because in doing so you are giving Him more of your time.