God Thought #1: Time

A lot has been on my mind lately and I feel like there's not enough time to ever process it all. I process through talking to people or talking through blogs. Since life is crazy all the time, this seems to be the best resource for me at the moment. I think I'm going to try and blog about each thing individually so that my mind and heart can sort through each issue solely. Does that make sense? Well anyway, here goes...

For the past few months, or maybe even years, I've struggled with feeling the Lord's presence and hearing Him speak to me. I bought into the lies that the enemy fed me...you know them. Here's how it went for me: "You're a preacher's wife. You don't hear God and you don't feel God. You're just a fake!" And for the longest I believed that, until I started seeking some godly counsel from my wonderful pastor. :) Jared and I talked a lot about putting time into a relationship with God. Even though these were things I had learned so long ago, I felt like I was falling through the same traps over and over. I began to pray HARD. I began to beg and plead with God. I wanted to hear His voice. I wanted to feel His presence. And do you know what happened? NOTHING. Yes, you heard me. NOTHING. At first, I was angry. God, don't you hear me? I'm trying to do the right thing. I don't understand. It must have been months that I prayed to feel God's presence with me, or to hear Him speak to me. BUT....I kept praying and kept seeking. And one day, it was like the flood gates of heaven poured out. And now, I have all these convictions and emotions and things that God is teaching me and dealing with me about. One of them is my time. My time on this earth is so very precious. My time with my family is so very precious. And my time with the Lord is so very precious. What am I spending my time doing? It would be easy to fill up my schedule with things to do...good things mind you. Church things even. But would that necessarily be the best thing for me? Not always. I used to feel like I had to be everywhere and do everything. Now I'm realizing that sometimes, my time is better spent at home with Sam or with just me spending time with the Lord quietly. I realized this first when I had to stay at home with Sam one Sunday morning. He was just getting over being sick and I decided it would be best to keep him home since he had had fever over the weekend. He slept most of the day away and I spent most of the day listening to sermons on tv, praying, and reading my Bible. I told Jared that I wished every Sunday was like that. Not that his sermons aren't amazing, but I was in my pjs drinking coffee with not a care in the world. And God taught me so much that day.

I guess to try and put this lesson into concluding terms...I would say that I'm having to make the conscious effort to be aware of where my time and attention is going. My priorities are God and family then everything else. If I want my life to be all that it can be for God and my family then I have to make sure that I'm putting my efforts there first. Then all else can come.

More God thoughts to come,
~Elizabeth