Quality Time: Stay A Little While Series

Quality Time: Stay a little while

Luke 10:38-42

“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.” - Carl Sandburg

Quality time – giving someone your undivided attention.

Quality time involves us:

Being intentional v.39a

Listening intently v.39b

Removing distractions vv.40-41

Choosing Great over good v.42

Am I the only person that is in a hurry? I sit at stop lights, and when it turns green, people don’t move. If they do, they let 2-3-4 car lengths of space happen before they decide to take their slumbering foot off the break and put it on the gas pedal! You know why? More times than not their looking at their phones!

Driving down I-20, cars sitting over in the right hand lane going about 55 mph…I’m thinking, you can drive that fast on the streets! Get off the road and let those of us who have somewhere to go GO! It’s hard to exit I-20 any more because of all these slow pokes in the right lane are creating a blockade—have to force your way through them to get to the exit.

You know what a bunch of them are doing? Looking at their phones! When I see that I just want to RAM right through them!!

Here’s the paradox of our culture right now: we have these devices like smart phones and tablets and computers, but the way we use them, they’re not really saving us time.

Not only are they not necessarily saving us time, they’re also getting in the way of our relationships. That’s another paradox: we have the devices that have apps on them that are to connect us to other people, but we trade real time and real relationships for virtual time and virtual relationships. When we are in the presence of someone, we don’t really give them our attention, right? We think they’re saving us time, we think they’re helping us connect, but truth is for most of us most of the time, they do neither.

When you think about it, time is the basic commodity of life. We exchange our minutes for every other thing, whether it’s valuable or not. We give our minutes to our job to get money. We give our minutes to our hobby to get enjoyment. We give our minutes sleep to get rejuvenated.

“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.” - Carl Sandburg

Turn with me to Luke 10:28-42. If you’re just joining us, we are in week #2 in our series, Lost in Translation. We’re talking about love languages. If you’ve ever traveled to Mexico or China or France, you might have a time expressing yourself or understanding what someone is saying to you. They’re speaking a different language. And if you want to communicate to them, you have to figure out some way to communicate in their language.

Here’s the deal: each of us has a certain language or two that we receive and understand love better in; and learning the love languages of our spouse, our children, and our friends can help us show love to them that they can better FEEL loved.

Each of us has a love tank. One of my love languages is words of affirmation that we talked about last week. And if those who care about me don’t give me words of affirmation, I don’t feel very loved; my love tank runs dry. How many of you think you might have this language?

Now this morning we’re going to examine another love language, and that’s quality time. Many of us here this morning hear love and feel love better when those in our relationships give us quality time. How many of you think you might have this love language?

Quality time – giving someone your undivided attention.

Quality time is a powerful communicator of love. So if you give words of affirmation to your loved one or you give them gifts, but they’re primary love language is quality time, you’re going to hear them say something like: “You don’t ever have time for me. We used to do things together. Now you are always too busy or too tired.” They are telling you that their primary love language is quality time.

Being there for this type of person is critical, but I’m talking really being there—with the TV off, fork and knife down, and all chores and tasks on standby—makes your significant other feel truly special and loved. But if you get Distracted, postponed dates or times with them, or if when they’re talking you’re not paying close attention, all of this can be especially hurtful.

One of the things I know about Pastor Marty is that this is his primary love language. Stephanie his wife can give him gifts, or do some act of service for him, and he’s appreciative, but how he feels most loved by her is quality time with her.