And then there are days, recently occurring more than I would like, when I find myself going through the motions. When, I don't think I have done anything different, yet God feels far away. And when I try to draw close to him, I can't feel him or sense him. In my head I know he is there, but my heart misses him.
Like a loved one I haven't seen in far to long, I feel like I have missed the day to day connection with him. I say my prayers, I read my bible and then I start to knock out my list of things I have to get done. And I miss the connection.
Has this ever happened to you? Am I the only one?
This morning I sent 2 of the 3 kids off to a neighborhood church's vacation bible school and I pulled out every trick I know about connecting with God. I listened to worship music; I got down on my knees, forehead to the floor; I wrote in my journal; I read his word; I prayed his word. And guess what? We connected.
Not in the most profound way we ever had, but I felt him, and I felt loved.
But I still couldn't help feeling like it shouldn't be this hard.
Am I allowed to say that?
I love Jesus with my whole heart, with everything I have. But some days it's much harder than others to connect with him. Someone once told me, if you aren't actively paddling toward God then you are drifting away from him. As soon as you stop to rest, as soon as you get lazy, you start to drift away. Maybe that is what has happened to me.
There is a verse in 2 Corinthians that I simply love. It has been in my index of go-to verse for a while now, yet this is a verse I have never fully learned to live.
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
2 Corinthians 10:5
I know there are lots of people who live this. Who live every moment, every thought, every word and every action of every day for Christ. But this is not me. Oh, how I wish it was! How I wish I could say my every thought is obedient to Christ, but alas, I cannot.
This summer I have stopped paddling. It's summer and I started to float, hoping I would float closer to Christ, but that is not how it works. You can't just float down the lazy river and hope all those arguments and pretensions that go against the knowledge of God will simply be demolished on their own! If you don't take your thoughts captive something else will, and it most likely won't honor God.
Unfortunately, demolishing and taking captive are not verbs that are accomplished easily. You can't rest and relax your way into demolishing anything! It's hard work to take something captive!
I made the mistake of thinking since I was taking a semester off of school I could somehow take a semester off of the hard work of drawing closer to God. But I can't. As soon as I stop actively drawing closer to him, I start to drift away. As soon as I stopped paddling, I stopped all those arguments and pretensions stopped being destroyed, and my thoughts were no longer captive and I started to drift away.
This morning God told me to pick the paddle back up. He encouraged me to start paddling again, to find my way back to him. Will it be easy? Nope. It's gonna be hard. But oh, so worth it?
How about you? Will this summer find you floating or will you paddle?
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