A few months ago, I was in a rough patch with my relationship with God. One of those times when it's hard to pick up my bible and His voice is so quiet and He seems so far away.
During my first few weeks in Vancouver I went to church with the family we were living with. On my second or third visit to Cap Church, the lady giving the teaching that morning spoke on the exact issue that I had been struggling with. So after her teaching I asked her for some prayer on that issue. She looked a little taken aback by my request, since she had just met me a few weeks before and I was now standing before her asking for her prayers with tears in my eyes.
So she prayed with me. And then she said something about how it's okay when our walk with God gets less intense and we don't hear Him as much as we used to. And how its usually only like that in the beginning. And I really accepted that idea. I really let it in and lived it out. I let things with God be quiet and I was okay with it. And it took me until tonight to shake myself out of that mindset.
Why should we ever learn to feel comfortable in a time when we are distant from God. He is closer than our skin, and we are meant to live in constant communion with Him. Where did we pick up the idea that its alright to let things stay quiet between us.
I'm sure that this lady was just trying to reassure me that God wasn't far away and that He still loved me. But my issue was that things were stagnant between Him and I, not that I was afraid He was gone.
I worry that we are being trained and counseled to be comfortable with this feeling. That when our faith is standing still and our walk with God is slowing down, that we are simply told that its okay and its normal and it happens to all of us. We are not called to be normal. We are not called to be comfortable and to live quiet lives with a boring relationship with God.
It's not okay to let that be. Of course there are seasons where God seems quiet or distant, but we should never lay down and accept that feeling. We should be fighting for intimacy, we should be pressing on for new depths, for breakthrough.
My hope in saying all of this is to encourage you that God is a loud, excited God who raises people from the dead and shakes the mountains and turns entire cities of people into pillars of salt. He is not mundane or boring in the least and as such, our relationships with Him cannot be either. Press forward. Run harder. Breakthrough is just around the corner.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
New Years
I've never really been a fan of New Years Day. It's never really meant much to me. I had a few sweet evenings with my mom and brother when we were kids, but since I've been an adult, I've never really understood the fuss.
This year is one of the first that I've decided to let the New Year coincide with a new chapter in my life. I've spent the last few months in a season of loneliness and hardship. I've found my self on more than one occasion feeling completely lost and without hope for my life. It's hard to wait so long and have no answers, and without a community or any family around me, it was easy to get swallowed up in complete despair.
Being here, in Ontario, for the last two weeks has been amazing.
It started out really rough. I had foolishly aloud myself to believe that when my feet touch Ontario ground everything I had been struggling with would instantly disappear. I would instantly feel satisfied and alive, but it didn't happen right away.
There was, of course, the initial excitement of being in a 'new' place and seeing how excited everyone was to see me. It felt great for the first couple of days. And then the excitement settled and everything seemed to go right back to the way it had been before I had left for Vancouver. And the same feeling I had been fighting with over there started to show up here.
It's hard to describe but sometimes in those moments, it feels really good to feel sorry for yourself, to indulge every little doubt and fear that you have about your life. I let myself go there really hard. Nothing seemed to be the way I thought it was going to be. My first appearance back at my church was interrupted by an ex boyfriend suddenly showing up. Seeing the kids was great but soon became extremely draining. My mom doesn't have a great deal of patience for self pity, so we ended up fighting quite a bit. All the things I had missed the most about Ontario really weren't living up to the expectations I had had for them.
It was really hard for a couple of weeks.
In the last few days I made more of an effort to spend time with people I care about. I worshipped in a corporate setting for the first time in months. I connected with God in the kind of intense way that I used to. He's teaching me slowly, because I just don't seem to get it, that spending time with people who I care about and who care about me is good and I did start to feel better when I was, but spending time with Him is so much more incredible. His words are like honey, like fresh water to someone who's been wandering the desert, like gold. That 5 minutes in intimate worship with God can wipe away 3 months of loneliness, or start to at least.
So this New Years, I've decided to leave behind the time of despair and seek out a season of joy and peace. I once heard someone say that they wanted peace so powerful and strong that it shook the unseen world. Peace so great that it was violent to the enemy. That's what I'm asking God for in this season, dangerous peace.
This year is one of the first that I've decided to let the New Year coincide with a new chapter in my life. I've spent the last few months in a season of loneliness and hardship. I've found my self on more than one occasion feeling completely lost and without hope for my life. It's hard to wait so long and have no answers, and without a community or any family around me, it was easy to get swallowed up in complete despair.
Being here, in Ontario, for the last two weeks has been amazing.
It started out really rough. I had foolishly aloud myself to believe that when my feet touch Ontario ground everything I had been struggling with would instantly disappear. I would instantly feel satisfied and alive, but it didn't happen right away.
There was, of course, the initial excitement of being in a 'new' place and seeing how excited everyone was to see me. It felt great for the first couple of days. And then the excitement settled and everything seemed to go right back to the way it had been before I had left for Vancouver. And the same feeling I had been fighting with over there started to show up here.
It's hard to describe but sometimes in those moments, it feels really good to feel sorry for yourself, to indulge every little doubt and fear that you have about your life. I let myself go there really hard. Nothing seemed to be the way I thought it was going to be. My first appearance back at my church was interrupted by an ex boyfriend suddenly showing up. Seeing the kids was great but soon became extremely draining. My mom doesn't have a great deal of patience for self pity, so we ended up fighting quite a bit. All the things I had missed the most about Ontario really weren't living up to the expectations I had had for them.
It was really hard for a couple of weeks.
In the last few days I made more of an effort to spend time with people I care about. I worshipped in a corporate setting for the first time in months. I connected with God in the kind of intense way that I used to. He's teaching me slowly, because I just don't seem to get it, that spending time with people who I care about and who care about me is good and I did start to feel better when I was, but spending time with Him is so much more incredible. His words are like honey, like fresh water to someone who's been wandering the desert, like gold. That 5 minutes in intimate worship with God can wipe away 3 months of loneliness, or start to at least.
So this New Years, I've decided to leave behind the time of despair and seek out a season of joy and peace. I once heard someone say that they wanted peace so powerful and strong that it shook the unseen world. Peace so great that it was violent to the enemy. That's what I'm asking God for in this season, dangerous peace.
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