I just feel a deeper hunger to seek him and who he is...
I remember getting excited hearing one of our speakers at Awakening Teen Camp talk about gathering at a coffee shop with some students that were required by one of their college courses to read the bible all the way through once a month for six months. This group of students would all be in different places in the bible, but it didn't matter. They would all just get together, sit down and read it. Then an hour would go by before they had to attend their college classes and they would just leave and meet back up the next day.
And when they would finally finish, they would weep and praise God. And they would start all over.
Every single time they opened it and read it, they would get a new revelation from a different scripture...
Seriously, how awesome is the word of God?
How awesome is our devotion and hunger for him? How can we literally live off of the word like they did in that time? She told us that that course changed their lives.
I have a let's-be-honest story to share with you. Here Goes.
Through December, all I wanted to do was sleep, and school had consumed me so much that I had no time for spending time with God. I would choose work, sleep and homework over the word. Honestly, it's easy to do that. Most of us do, because homework, studying, work, etc... it's all the things that we have to get done, and when we finally finish with everything else, we're too tired for the word. I admit to it. I might have read a scripture and then I'd go to sleep, but it was not sustaining me, and it sucked. It's easy to forget when consumed with everything else, but I forgot that the word of God is what holds my identity, and it was what I was in desperate need of every single day: not just school, work and people. Those three things are not my life, and I don't want to let them be my life. Where is the fruit in that?
Through that month, being so busy with Christmas, midterms and work that my identity basically became something I was juggling around. I kept asking questions. Insecurity flooded me like a scared, abused puppy, and I found myself scared to talk to people at times and thinking all of these condemning thoughts like once upon a time. I started forgetting things like who I really was and looked at other people to remind me. It wasn't because I was being a "blacksliding Christian" but I was forgetting myself because I was lacking my time in reading the bible, time in my prayer life, and time in worship. To be quite honest, playing a worship song in the morning is a good way to start the day off, but I can't fully rely on it to feed me for the rest of the week.
It's a simple concept, but very seldomly considered because it sounds cliche. Really. What are we going to choose over time with God? That is what sustains us as believers and carriers of the gospel. It's what our very identity is in. Prayer, worship, word, and living it out. It takes time, energy, and sacrifice. But you know what?
IT'S WORTH IT!!!!!!!!
HE'S WORTH IT!
People who need prayer are worth it.
After spending three days straight in the thick presence of the Lord, in worship, in prayer and in the word at this prayer conference (The Ramp), I remembered who I was, and remembered that I didn't have to juggle my identity, and remembered that I wasn't created to look like other people.
My identity is in seeking his face, not in the little zap of energy I get every time I glance back at the word.
So here it is. My consecration to pray and seek him more often in the remaining 17 days, and my consecration to not forget that I find myself in his word.
"One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple."
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple."
-Psalm 27:4
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