I have wasted these times in my life so often, by not listening.

I am also reminded of Psalm 23:2, “He makes me lie down in green pastures…”  I remember a preacher saying once that shepherds will sometimes break the leg of a sheep if it keeps running off.  In this passage, it’s very possible that that is what is meant by “making” me lie down.  It can be painful, both the breaking and the healing, sometimes excruciatingly so, but because of the process, we live.  I wonder how much further ahead I would be if I had just been still and listened willingly instead of requiring God to break me?  I can learn from that though and try to pay closer attention as I walk purposefully though His plan for me.

Things are very quiet right now.  He really is restoring my soul (mind, will, and emotions.)  I feel distracted by school even.  I wonder how long the quiet will last, but I’m excited about hearing my Father’s voice.   He is so wise, and always imparts that wisdom to me.  I think it’s more that I’m becoming a part of Him so I can rely on Him and His wisdom, not that He is actually giving me anything.

It’s really cool how fast He works too.  Sometimes I think my heart will break, but all I have to do is remember He is there and start visiting with him, and He soothes me.  Honestly, how do people live without this comfort in their lives?  I don’t believe I could do it.

TGIF Today God Is First Volume 2 by Os Hillman
Tuesday, May 25 2010

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) .

Do you find yourself in a place of nothingness? There is a time and place in our walk with God in which He sets us in a place of isolation and waiting. It is a place in which all past experiences are of no value. It is a time of such stillness that it can disturb the most faithful if we do not understand that He is the one who has brought us to this place for only a season. It is as if God has placed a wall around us. No new opportunities – simply inactivity.

During these times, God is calling us aside to fashion something new in us. It is a place of nothingness designed to call us to deeper roots of prayer and faith. It is not a comfortable place, especially for a task-driven workplace believer. Our nature cries out, “You must do something” while God is saying, “Be still and know that I am God.” You know the signs that you have been brought into this place when He has removed many things from your life and you can’t seem to change anything. Perhaps you are unemployed. Perhaps you are laid up with an illness.

Many people live a very planned and orchestrated life where they know almost everything that will happen. But for people in whom God is performing a deeper work, He brings them into a time of quietness that seems almost eerie. They cannot see what God is doing. They just know that He is doing a work that cannot be explained to themselves or to others.

Has God brought you to a place of nothingness? Be still and know that He really is God. When this happens, your nothingness will be turned into something you will value for the rest of your life.

TGIF Today God Is First Volume 2 daily devotionals are a service of Marketplace Leaders Ministries

Consciousness can be elusive.  I have to push back intense feelings of regret as I think of all the years I have been sleeping through my life.  But here I am, awake finally (I hope), and desperately trying to maintain that state.  Desperation sounds drastically emotional, but that is where I am at this point, desperate and intent on never going back.

With everything that has been going on with me lately and all that I have been learning, I have been constantly burdened by the nagging feeling that somehow I will lose it all.  The lessons are emotional (= superficial in my perception, but not, thankfully in reality), psychological, intellectual, nothing I can really put my finger on, or cling to for dear life as I prefer to do with things that are important to me.  My lessons are like a balloon.  I see myself trying to catch it as it keeps blowing away from me with every swift hand movement I make.  My struggles create a wave of activity that cause the balloon to move just as swiftly away from me, when all I need to do to catch it is to be still, let it rest, and gently bring it to me.  Sometimes relaxing, breathing, and just being, is much more difficult that struggling.  Acceptance does not always equal defeat.

But the fight continues, whether it be active or passive.  My new reality contains a constant, sometimes very intense, fear that I will one day go back to sleep and it will all be gone; for some reason I won’t be able to stay in this exciting and liberating place.  I keep saying that I have woken up, so I suppose I am just trying to stay awake.  I keep trying to gauge at what level of consciousness I am so that I will remain aware and not slip back into slumber.  I have to keep moving forward, keep waking up, continue the evolution.  I get sleepy, groggy, sometimes, and forget, but so far I have not fallen back asleep.  I have little voices, tiny irritations (I’m grateful that they are tiny, cause they used to be very loud), telling me that It would be easier to go back to walking selfishly through life.  But through my newly found strength I reject them daily.  With each push I get stronger and they get weaker, more foolish really; I get more awake, as they fade into memories of a dream.

So I suppose the main reason that I am here writing this now is to try to hold on to what I am learning about myself and how outside influences and past experiences affect the person I am now and the person into which I want to evolve.  I don’t like to use the word “fear” but that is what it feels like.  I am fearful that I will one day go back to sleep, and all will be lost.  If I can somehow record my “lessons” I will not lose them.

Maybe it isn’t fear at all though.  I have often told others that their feelings of fear and anxiousness are only promptings of the Holy Spirit to pray.  We have to pray and stay in tune with God to have any sort of active wisdom.  So I believe that as we feel fear and anxiety, it is simply the Holy Spirit reminding us where our source of strength, joy, and love (God) come from.

*deep breath*  Thank you God.  I love you.

Only a few short months ago, I thought that people wrote – magazine articles, books, even blogs – because they had something to say, something that they felt was important enough or original enough that others needed or wanted to be a part of it.

I am realizing, as I read more and as I write considerably more, that the reverse is true.  In writing – actually taking the time to compose our thoughts, conducting research to either back up our theories or just to find better ways of saying things, and then “penning” it – builds our capacity for understanding the world that we are a part of and how we affect it, and our own inward parts as well.  As we write, yes, we make a point to others, but more than that, we learn to understand ourselves and our purpose.  It is like maps.  We know where we live and know the routes to places, but when we pull up the satellite view of our “world” we understand it so much better.  That’s what writing does. It creates a map, a changeable one, that allows us to see our existence, understand it, and tweak it.

So, now that I am tearing myself out of the box that I have lived in all my life, I am realizing that things are not as I thought they were.  The whole world is inside out, chaotic if you will, and I am attempting to define myself apart from it and also to see my part in it.

Anyway, that is why I am here.  I want to write more because it is helping me to develop the real me, finally, at age 43!  I hope that some will join me here and take something away and give something back.  But, if it is only me, I will still be successful in my walk of self-examination and self-awareness, and the empowering realization that I can better the lives of others without losing myself in the process.