Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Encouragement through Irony

I haven't been to service at our church in a while and today I took some time to catch up a sermon that I had missed.  It was titled Caution: Expectations They Change Everything.

Ironically, everything in my life lately has been based on expectancy or the hope of expectancy or pregnancy but that is not what this was about.  The pastor spoke about change and how we need to be open to change and let God work through our lives.  We should expect God to use us every day.

The main portion of this sermon that stuck out at me was the line (or something similar to this) "God doesn't change but our expectation of His spirit and His presence does."  He referred to the fact that when people go on mission trips and church camps that they always come back with this incredible spiritual awakening and noted that it makes you wonder why it isn't like that all the time.

He then asked, "when do you have a heightened sensitivity to God's spirit?"  My alternative to this question would be, when do you try to block God's spirit?  For a few months I had been thinking, poor me, woe is me, because I am not getting what I want or Jake and I aren't getting what we want.  I fill my head with so many thoughts of my own that I can't hear the Words of God.  Then I think about how God feels so far away and He probably isn't too worried about what I am going through right now so He is just being silent.  The fact of the matter is, I am just making too much noise myself that even if God tries to speak to me, I drown Him out.

There are days or weeks when I feel incredibly close to God and those times are because I am seeking him continually.  If I have a spare moment, I pray in it rather than check facebook or go on pinterest.  Yes, I'm guilty.  Or, I look up devotionals or spend more time searching God's word or looking for meaning in my life.  The truth is that sometimes I am just more interested in my faith than others.  How does that sound?  Awful.  How would I feel if my husband said to me, "sometimes I'm just more interested in you than others."  I've recently thought about how that makes God feel?

I mean, this is the God that pursues me 24/7.  He wants me all the time.  He loves me all the time.  He cares about my well-being all the time.  It's time for me to stop blocking God's pursuit of me and to keep up that heightened level of sensitivity.  I want to begin to expect to meet him on a daily or even hourly basis.  

I challenge you to have a heightened sensitivity to God's presence for an entire day and see how it affects your demeanor, your mood, your entire day.

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