I have recently started to increase my commitment to my quiet time and prayer time. By increase my commitment, I mean I started again. I had been teaching a Bible study several weeks back that lasted 10 weeks and during that time I had clung to the Lord and His Word like they were my only life line. Because they were. I have nothing relevant to say to a group of ladies who are longing for the Lord. I need Jesus to fill me with His presence and His Word for anything I say to matter. And Jesus showed up for those ladies during that time. Afterward, though, I was spent. I went through a hangover that lasted a few weeks, I'm ashamed to say. I didn't read the Bible as frequently as I should. My prayers became all but non-existent. I was tired.
But then, God started to draw me back in. As He did, he started to show me that I was doing quiet time all wrong, anyway. Okay, there really isn't an incorrect way to spend time with God. If your heart is genuine, then He just likes that you are there, willing to hear from Him. But I believe - I know - that the more you spend time with Him, the more He will expose the sin in your heart and mind so that a deeper, more meaningful relationship will begin to blossom between you and He. That is what God has been doing with me - changing the relationship. Showing me ways that I can start to move closer.
But moving closer to God is like moving closer to a mirror that exposes all of your ugly. Like moving really close to a fire that only burns away the faults. To get close to this fire, you have to be ready for the pain that happens when you burn away the flesh of yourself.
God has shown me that all of my prayer time was about me and what I wanted. Through listening to a series of sermons from different pastors and reading different verses, I learned that my prayer time and my quiet time weren't for me to tell God what I wanted Him to do for me that day. These times are a time for me to thank God for the things He has done and also to confess the sin in my heart. As I started to do these things, I've been praying for God to show me what sin is in my heart. I thought I was doing alright. I was wrong.
God exposed a sin that I thought I had dealt with. But I haven't. It has to do with trust and needing to protect and save myself. I don't trust that God's commands are what is best for me and I take matters into my own hands - lying, trying to cover things up. I destroy trust. I obliterate progress. I break things.
There is a limit to what other humans are willing to put up with from me. Their love can only extend so far. If I put too much of who I am into those people, then I hurt them, when I reach the limit of their love I am destroyed. If my identity is in a person and what that person thinks of me, then there is death and decay where their love once was when I have lost it. That is why God commands us, urges us, pleads with us, to put our identity in Him.
His love is limitless. It literally has no limits. And when I am broken - when I screw up again - when I've lost the trust and love of everyone around me - my relationship with God doesn't react the same way. God doesn't retreat. My relationship with God gets stronger. He takes my brokenness and uses it not to push me away, but to draw me closer. He uses it as an opportunity to show me the breadth, the length, the height and the depth of His love. He brings me in and immediately starts to rebuild what I have broken. Just like when Jesus raised people from the dead, or healed the blind, I am immediately restored.
Restoring my other relationships will take time. With God's grace they will recover. Thankfully, I know who I am - and that identity isn't dependent on whether the people in my life can ever really forgive me. I am a Child of the One True King. I am Saved. I am Whole. I am Redeemed. I still sin. But I am Forgiven.
The love of God is limitless.
