Repentant Heart

I have not spent enough time with God since I started working.  It's not that I have stopped reading my bible or praying altogether, it is just that the quality as well as the quantity of my time with God has been diminished.  Even though my "job" is actually a ministry, I am now feeling the result of the last six months spent head over heals overwhelmed and choosing to prepare for my responsibilities rather than choosing to sit with my Creator.  I am feeling the last six months of looking to horizontal relationships for my identity rather than to my Redeemer.  I feel burnt out, frustrated, and weak.

This seems a crazy place to be in, considering it was just last October that I wrote a post called Walking with God, at the height of my connectedness to Him.  Back then, I was hearing from Him regularly.  Now I rarely hear from Him, and I don't believe it's because He's stopped talking.  I believe I have stopped listening.  Understandably, the last thing I recall God clearly speaking to me was through this passage:

Deuteronomy 7:7-9

⁷ It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, ⁸ but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 

It is His words to His people Israel just before they enter into the promised land.  He tells them that He didn't choose them because they earned it; He chose them just because he loves them.  And then He goes on to warn them over and over again not to forget Him when they enter the promised land.

So many times God has spoken to me through His word, and even in this unlikely book of Deuteronomy, as I read this passage, I got the Holy Spirit nudge that let me know that, though God was speaking to His people Israel, He was also speaking to me.  I read this passage very soon after I started my job and I knew that God was giving me a similar warning.

Oh, how many times I have read about those "stiff-necked" Israelites and judged them for their inability to remain faithful to God.  It's so OBVIOUS, people!  And yet, here I find myself having done the exact same thing.

Today, God used a passage in Romans to remind me of that message in Deuteronomy and how I am in just as much need of a Savior as they are:


Romans 10:1-3

10 Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. ² For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. ³ For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

God, I repent of my proud, hard heart, of behaving in such a way that my righteousness would appear to be enough, so much that I no longer need You.  I repent of choosing anything at all, even the busyness of ministry, over You.  I am ready to stop making excuses and to set aside quality time again to be in Your word, and listening for your word to me. I have a plan to move forward in a way that helps me have better quality time with God and establishes better boundaries with other commitments.  This weekend I am going to a church retreat, and I pray that it will be a time of renewal for me, a time when I can soak in God's wisdom, love, and strength.  Amen!