The Revolutionary Action

“Why do you need to be spending time with God every day?”

“Because my job is really draining.”

“No,” he replied. 

Crap, I got the wrong answer in front of the pastor, I thought. 

“You need to be spending time with Him because He is your daddy. You need to be spending time with Him because He is your breakfast, your water, your sustenance. If we are only spending time with Him because of our profession, then we have it all wrong. We need to be spending time with Him because He is life.”

Oh yea. Mind. Blown.

“So you are starting tomorrow, right?”

“Oh, uhhh, yea!”

It was a conversation that changed the entire trajectory of my year. It had been a long summer and most of my encounters with our pastor had included some tears, mostly from exhaustion. But what Pastor Ernie made me realize was that my exhaustion, my inability to cope, came not just from the overwhelming nature of our overbooked summer schedule. It came because I was trying to serve a God with whom I was not spending any time.

So the next day I pulled out my Bible and sat in a comfy chair on my porch. I began where I had left off in my ill-fated attempt to read the whole Bible. I sat down with Joshua. And each day I sought out to begin my mornings in the same way. 

And I began to feel the difference. I began to pray more, for people I know and people I don’t. I began to pray with passion and determination, truly believing that God was moving and listening. My perspective on life began to change, and in the places where I had been struggling on my own, I began to see God so clearly.  Opening my mind to the Word opened my life to the movement of the Spirit, and opened my eyes to see that God had been all-around all-along. 

It was as if life came from those pages. It was as if God was sitting down next to me as we took in the truths of His goodness. It was the light of a calm spirit as I watched and experienced His truth come to fruition in my life and ministry. 

Where there was blindness there was now sight. Where there was despair there was an unrelenting hope. And it all came from spending time, intentionally, each morning, with my Creator.

Revolutionary, right? :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Endings and Beginnings

 I've had a lot of endings that are also beginnings.  In fact, I've lived in Jeff's house for 3.5 years and that's the longest I've lived in a single home since I left Virginia at the age of 16. For over half of my life I have been without roots. I've lived in 9 homes in the last 12 years. That is absurd.  And the truth is, I don't want to be rootless anymore. I want to settle in, build something I am proud of, and never have to pack another moving box in my life. This restless, wandering soul wants to plant my feet on the same ground for more years than I can count and raise my daughter like I was raised in Virginia- with lasting friends and mother-daughter book clubs and people you grow up with. I haven't had a single place I've felt was truly my home since I left Richmond as a teenager, and I am ready to change that.  So in one week, we move to Tennessee. It is a place where a lot of our dreams lie. It is where Jeff will continue a career that he
Read more

Faith Within Suffering

 I didn't talk about God for a while.  When I was younger, I never stopped. My oldest friend and I laughed last weekend about how I would pray for her to attend church when we were kids and tell her about my prayers. When I was in college, it was my purpose. On the reservation it was my profession.  When the waves of suffering hit, I still professed God's goodness for a while, but eventually it became too much. The waves kept knocking me down every time I tried to get up. I was sick in a cancer ward. My relationship with church completely upended. My marriage destroyed.  I stopped talking about my God because I couldn't make sense of my suffering or anyone else's pain. I didn't have any of my youthful certainty. I just had a whole bunch of questions and a whole lot of anger.  Until life got better. Until I got perspective. Until I stood in the snow among the Tetons and said to the wind, "Ok, God, I'm ready. Let's do this again. I'm with you." 
Read more

Five Years After the Divorce

Image
It has been five years, this December, since a judge declared my marriage officially over. It was the culmination of the worst season of my whole life. It was the end of something I had believed was forever. It was a season of bitter tears, struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide, and complete and utter hopelessness. Everything I had believed in had been shattered and in the end, I hadn't been chosen by the one who I chose to marry. I believed the false narrative that I hadn't been good enough, strong enough, or healthy enough. I was certain happiness would never find me again.  Over the next five years, I had to rediscover myself. I had to relearn my strength, my worth, my value. I had to heal from what had happened. I had to be angry and learn how to let that anger go. I lost my relationship with church and grew new relationships with a team of doctors when I got a cancer diagnosis just four months after my divorce was finalized. I had to figure out who God was, who
Read more