A recent study finds that the average American spends about ten minutes per day in religious or spiritual activities.[i] On the one hand, this is bad news. It can be difficult to experience authentic personal transformation or genuine spiritual intimacy if all you have is ten minutes a day. It can seem impossible to affect world-change through spiritual actions done ten minutes at a time.
But on the other hand—could these ten minutes be leveraged? Given the way our God does the massive with the miniscule, could God do tremendous things with just ten minutes? Could these tiny amounts of time be a mustard seed that God grows into something amazing?
I believe they can. Why? Because it’s consistent with God’s standard operating procedure. He tends to take the humble and do the heavenly.
I’m not saying that ten minutes is all God wants. What he wants is every minute of every day.
And I’m not saying that ten minutes is all you’ll ever need to join God in changing you and your world. In the end, it takes every second on the clock and every cell in our body.
But I am saying that ten minutes is a great place to start. God is the kind of God who can do more with ten minutes than you ever thought possible.
So here’s my challenge: give God ten minutes a day. Be consistent. Be disciplined. Spend ten minutes every day in focused and intense spiritual activity. I think you’ll be surpised at what happens.
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[i] Average includes those who spend no time at all; Ted Olsen, Go Figure, Christianity Today (August 2010), 13; based on a report from Bureau of Labor Statistics; http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm.
