My journey with God continues to take interesting new twists and turns all the time. In my last blog, I wrote about the spiritual dryness and frustration I have been experiencing. On Thursday during our morning worship time, I was crying out to God in desperation and praying that He would draw me closer to Him. I asked Him why I was feeling so frustrated in ministry and so distant from Him. The clarity of His reply startled me.
The reason I was frustrated was that I had not been walking fully in God’s will. By nature, I am a doer. I like to keep busy and feel like I’m being productive. One thing that frustrates me most is wasting time. It is because of this that I was fighting God’s will for me. That morning during worship, God told me to stop.
STOP.
Stop trying to do ministry with my own strength. Stop trying to love these people with my own love. Stop trying to be busy all of the time.
Stop doing and simply be. Be in God’s presence. He was calling me to drop absolutely everything and spend time with Him…for an indefinite time period. I have never done that before in my life. It scares me. Sure, I’ve gone away for several hours at a time or occasionally a whole day, but God was not giving me a definite amount of time to pull away with Him. He simply wanted me to spend time with Him for as long as necessary. He asked me, “What will it take to make you stop and spend time with me?” If God had to drive me to a place of spiritual emptiness and frustration to get my attention, that is what He would do.
For the first time in my life, I had reached a point where I truly meant it when I said I would do absolutely anything to get back in God’s presence. Even if the only thing I did for the rest of the month was spend time with God, I had to trust that it would be the best possible use of my time. Spending time with God is never a waste of time. It may be harder than anything else you have done before, especially in the frantic pace of our lives today; but is your walk with Christ and His blessing over your life really worth sacrificing for anything else? To me the answer was clear.
I now have a completely different focus on ministry here in Nicaragua. Every day and before each ministry opportunity, I seek God’s will. If I feel God leading me to minister, then ok. But if I feel God calling me to retreat and spend time with Him, then that is what I will do. Learning to hear and discern God’s voice is not always an easy thing to do, but I would not trade the peace that comes when I am walking in God’s will for anything in the world. Each day is a new day to walk with my Heavenly Daddy and participate in His work. I never know what each day will hold, but I can face anything when I am walking in step with God. When you think about it, that is precisely what Jesus did while He was on Earth. Every day Jesus withdrew to be with God. He said that He did nothing unless He first saw the Father doing it. Today we are called to be Jesus to the world. That means doing what Jesus did. We also are to walk by faith, following the leading of our Heavenly Father.
