“Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain.” Exodus 34:2
There was a piece of advice that a former Racer gave to me before I left for this trip. “Stay in the Word,” he said, “nobody is going to force you to. It has to be your conscious choice to dig in.” He was not wrong.
What did it look like for me to “dig in” back home? Well most days it looked like reading a chapter of the Bible at night before bed. That is only if I was not completely exhausted and used that as an excuse not to. Sundays I might try a little harder. Either before or after church I would try to find a quiet place to park my car in a park with a view. Maybe I would go to a coffee shop after church and that is where I would read a chapter or two of my Bible and journal a bit if I was feeling up to it. My overall spiritual life reflected this attitude toward scripture.
“The Bible is a table. You can come to it and be fed. You can invite others to eat with you. Come to the table and be fully present for the feast before you and you will never walk away feeling empty.” These words I heard back in October of 2014 at the Multiply conference at church. To me, back home, the Bible was like a table, but I never went to it for a meal. I passed by and grabbed a cookie off of it every now and then. A quick fix for the hunger that I felt.
This morning our team had devotional time together. Kate shared the verse from Exodus that is at the beginning of this post. She talked about how waking up early and greeting God to start the day changes things for her. That is when everything made a little more sense.
I switched things up at launch. My day would start with scripture. My day would start with God. What a difference it makes! Invite God into your day and He will be glad to join you in it. Come to Him as an afterthought and you will only be disappointed in yourself at gleaning a cookie and missing the feast. Present yourself to the Lord at the table. Tuck in and fill yourself with the words He has prepared for you. Here in the Dominican Republic I have the pleasure of joining in that meal on a rooftop surrounded by lovely scenery. Admittedly that makes it easier, but God is inviting you wherever you are. Present yourself to Him and He will fill you with what you need.
