Lately I’ve been feeling vapid in my soul. I have no desire or interest in life in general. I have my songs, my guitar, and a book I am working on and have been trying to edit for almost a year now. I started on this book two years ago and gradually the Lord led me to add chapters to it. Then finally I felt after the ten chapters I needed to go back and thicken the chapters out. A friend had been interested in reading my chapters and wanted the rest of them. I was able to work on eight, nine, and ten because she was missing them and the Lord used her to get me back to editing. So I went back to editing and continued back to the first chapter up to three chapters then stopped. I don’t know what happened then. I think I got interested back into my card making and everything basically took a back seat. Then my brother in law Rich died and currently I don’t know what else to feel.
Recently the Lord was asking me, “What do you want?” I don’t know what I want. I am in limbo. I want my songs recorded in an album, my book finished and published and finally doing what He has called for me to do: His work. Yet at the same time I am scared to death that if these projects are completed I am not prepared to do His work. I am not qualified enough. So I am back to my safe zone tendency – stay where I am and don’t do anything. I don’t desire for anything and I don’t pray for God to do something for me. I just stay in my safe zone and end up feeling vapid.
I have found again and again that when I have no desire for anything and I feel unsure about life, I just need to take a couple of days off from everything and spend time communing again with the Lord. I just need to find His Presence, find His joy, and find my reason for living in Him again. I can’t do His work without His presence anyway. I can’t do His work without His voice leading me. That would be like me walking into a room without any lights on in the middle of the night. I will definitely stumble. The best thing for me to do is spend time with God and seek His face and His strength, so I can find the courage I need for the next step in my life.
I don’t trust too much in my own strength. I have experienced again and again that when I do I just turn around and cringe later, embarrassed at what I’ve done. I have done foolish things, which was the result of being too confident with myself. It is easy to assume God wants us to do something when we haven’t even sought Him out for directions, or we haven’t even spent enough time in His presence. I have in time past assumed God wanted me to be in this or that church, or be a worker in another church. I even thought I sought Him and yet realized I didn’t wait long enough for Him to direct me. I just assumed that’s where He wanted me. After all, the church needed my help! Surely that is good in His eyes. Although He is so merciful and so gracious and has often again and again worked things out for my good, it is so much better to do it right at the get go. I save myself from a lot of heartaches.
It’s tempting to find interests outside of God. But when you feel you have a calling in your life and He has chosen you for a work, whatever interest you find yourself immersed in will soon become a stumbling block in your life. I remember watching one of my favorite A&E movies and getting these impressions that I should turn it off and spend some time with the Lord. I continued to watch and ignored the impressions. After the movie I checked my phone and I got a text that sent me crying on my knees and wishing that I had listened and had turned off my movie. It was a text from my sister telling me that they had rushed my two-year old niece to Presbyterian Hospital because of a collapsed lung. (I had related her miracle story in another blog post, Finding God’s Help.) That day I had decided to stop watching my movies and surrender my life to the Lord again. I am thankful it was just a movie I had to give up. I am thankful that God was merciful enough to hear my prayer despite my stubbornness in refusing to listen to His nudging for me to pray. Thank God my niece lives and I don’t have to live with that guilt for the rest of my life because I didn’t listen to Him.
It is so easy to lapse to the world for distractions and entertainment when we don’t want to do something, especially prayer. It is so easy to just take a back seat and let God choose someone else to do the work He desires for us to do. But then a day is going to come and you are going to find yourself empty. Empty because the world can never fill the calling and the longing that you have in your heart. Sooner or later you’re going to have to make a hard choice to take up your cross and follow Him. It’s better now than later. The sooner we find ourselves in His presence, the sooner we will find His peace that passes man’s understanding, His joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.
Finding contentment in God is easier than we imagine it to be. Like anything in life, practice makes it perfect. If we practice coming to the Lord, approaching our time with Him as something that is so beneficial to our well being (not something that we must deny ourselves pleasure), but rather we find pleasure in His presence, we will find it is easy. Soon it will be something we want to do all the time. Soon, not taking the time to be with Him will seem abnormal, something we hate to miss. When we start to see a glimpse of Him in our lives, our prayers being granted to us no matter how small and insignificant, our questions answered, our emptiness being filled by His presence, we soon would not want to part with Him. When our soul is being filled by His joy and love, experiencing His peace we have not known before, and everyday becomes an adventure, spending time with Him becomes something we look forward to.
So much so we start to find that many things in this life are superficial. The things we used to think are a big deal becomes meaningless, something we don’t value anymore, and they have lost their attraction. We have found something so meaningful now and it’s simply God’s presence. He is more than enough. We don’t need to have our dreams fulfilled or our goals completed because His presence alone fills us and it is enough to content us. If He desires for me to go forward and do His work, (whether to sing or to write my book or whatever else He has in mind), I’m all for it because I have found again and again that in my weakness He is my strength. He will be my reason for going forward. He will give me the desire to do His work. I don’t have to drum up strength and pretend I am brave. I have found that when life throws me a curve ball and I have decided to cower in a corner and go into my safe zone, I can just reach out to Him in my heart and in my spirit and find Him. He will take me in His arms. He will lift me up again. He will give me the strength I need to go on and move forward to the work He has for me. I have found again and again that in my quiet moments with Him, being content in His presence is my purpose. I don’t need to do any thing else. I don’t need to be some great preacher or prophet to feel special. His presence alone fills me and satisfies me. He gives me worth. He makes me feel special. I just need to find Him and He alone will fill my life with meaning. Whatever work He desires in my life to accomplish He will get it done if I simply find my contentment in Him.
“For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” {Philippians 1:21}
“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” {Psalm 16:11}
