Closer to God

This morning I was thinking about how my excitement for Christ goes in and out like a bad radio station... what's up with that?  I hate it!!  It's the worst feeling in the world for me these days, feeling disconnected from Jesus and God.  I suppose that is a good sign, but it makes me ask what lies behind my lack of fervor.

I think sometimes it has to be the fact that I get comfortable.  After I go through a rough time which I couldn't have survived without majorly clinging to God, then I feel ok again and that is good enough for me, apparently.  I forget how good it is to feel loved and to hear the words He has just for me.  I forget that the reason I started getting up early to read my Bible was a matter of survival, not just a thing I wanted to do for fun.  I don't feel like I need, for my own health, to do it, so I start to be aimless about it and become lazy again.

I decided two things about this subject:

A) Sometimes I should do things just BECAUSE, and even though, from time to time, they might bore my eyes out.  I'll admit it sometimes when I haven't shaken off the sleepies, I feel like I've already read it all and it just doesn't appeal to me.  God is one hundred million times worth boring my eyes out, and I feel like just doing it to prove that I love Him should be a good enough reason to read my Bible.  So now that I've said that, I have to swallow my own words and my own pride and DO IT!  Disclaimer: not that being religious is good at all, and not that God expects one to be perfect, and not that I will read it every day of my life without missing days, and not that reading my Bible will make God love me more or something... I'm just saying I'd like to be devoted because I think God deserves crazy devotion.  Plus reading the word plants seeds to actually act out deeds of devotion.

B) I have come to the tentative but pretty firm conclusion that in order to stay close to God, I need to be putting myself in situations that challenge the daylights out of me.  That way I will hopefully remember how frail and useless I am without Him.  Either that or I need some sort of big problems in my life... which I don't think God prefers (and He definitely would never CAUSE - see Romans 3:8) but definitely work as a means of driving me straight to Him.

These conclusions hit me as I was reading some archives from Beth Moore's blog.  I so appreciate her openness and honesty in sharing her emotions and her ups and downs with God and within herself.  She is not afraid to tell of her afflictions and how God has and always does pull her out of them.  She is the most fervent and needy (not in a bad way, I mean needy for God and Christ) woman in big ministry that I know of.  Because of her stories I can see that we must always know of our desperation for God and His word and His son so that we can live in their loving abundance.

It makes my heart fiery to hear people just being unafraid to admit their faults and their shortcomings and to acknowledge that God loves them so much and that that love heals their hearts.