Triflers and the trivial

"Do nothing on which you cannot pray for a blessing. Every action of a Christian that is good is sanctified by the Word and prayer. It becomes not a Christian to do anything so trivial that he cannot pray over it."

-Random John Wesley quote (meaning, I don't know where it's from)

“May it not be one of the consequences of this, that so many of you are a generation of triflers; triflers with God, with one another, and with your own souls?”

-Sermon 4 “Scriptural Christianity” (1744)

A generation of triflers; ouch.

I read this last week while I was preparing to preach and while I didn't bring in up from the pulpit, it has been stuck in my head ever since. John Wesley was definitely not a man who wasted time on anything that he considered trivial. He was a man driven by urgency, the urgency of the gospel.

We talked about this last week as we discussed the Gospel of Mark as a whole. The word "immediately" is characteristic in Mark, occurring over and over again, and this makes the gospel feel urgent, pressing.

I wonder if we truly grasp the urgency of the gospel, the drive that God has to make all things new, the overwhelming passion of God to complete the work that God has begun in us and in the world that God has created.

There are many days that I look back and think, where did the day go? How is it 5:00 already? or 11:00 already? What have I been doing? And I wonder if I am really using the time that God has blessed me with to the greatest extent that it can be used.

I know this: I do not want to be a part of a generation of triflers. I don't want to waste my time on the unimportant, the petty arguments, the pointless discussions. I don't want to waste my time surfing the web or channel surfing. There is no time to waste! If I can't pray for God's blessing in it, maybe I shouldn't do it, no matter how small it is.

What would it be to live like this?