Have you ever finished 2nd in something? Maybe a foot race, or poetry reading contest, or a bid on a big corporate project. At the competitive level 2nd place usually falls just behind 1st. So close that there is minimal difference between the two. However, the pride and feeling of victory of 1st place is incomparable to 2nd no matter how close the outcome.
In my time in the Ukraine I took a week in the middle of month and fasted from ministry for a week. I felt the Lord calling me to a week of just sitting before him. No reading, no music, not even praying, just sitting silently before him in my time when I would have been doing ministry. Many of you probably are wondering what this looks like. I asked myself the same question before I started. Honestly it really wasn’t much of anything and I wasn’t really sure why I was doing it only that God wanted me to. I would go off and find a quiet place usually outside somewhere and just sit as the time went by.
I thought maybe the Lord wanted to tell me something about the future, maybe a life calling or a vision of a life partner. But I heard nothing. Nothing. I just sat there wondering why I was investing my time this way. I wanted to pick up my Bible and read or pray to God about my family and friends but I just felt I needed to sit and be quiet. It wasn’t until after the week finished that the reason became clear to me. Slowly God revealed to me that my spiritual disciplines of Bible reading and prayer, and my thoughts of how I might serve God in the future were distractions. They were 2nd place. They were very close to 1st but just behind a little and didn’t enjoy any of the glory of 1st.
It is the things that are so close to God and his heart that can be so easily twisted and distorted by Satan. I realized that my focus of following God was slowly getting askew. I realized that God wanted to take me deeper. My heart for prayer, Bible reading and finding my place in serving God on this earth had become my 1st place prize. But what I soon realized was that they are meant to help to get to 1st place. I had my focus on the wrong thing. God revealed to me that 1st place was simply and profoundly intimacy with him. My 1st and ultimate life calling is intimacy with the Lord. A love relationship that can never be taken away.
I know this may all sound very elementary but for some reason it click in a deep way. I feel like I am merely beginning this journey of intimacy with the Lord. So often I have come to God for peace, comfort, and wisdom, but not solely intimacy. To be honest intimacy with the Lord seems vague and abstract and I am not even sure what it is or how to get. But I know it is there. And I know it is 1st place. To be loved by God and to love God.
“… Love the Lord with all your heart, all your strength, all your soul, and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself…Do this and you will Live!”- Luke 10:27-28
