Anyway, for the last couple of weeks I've felt led to share this. Maybe some of you can relate. Possibly it's only meant for one person. And that's okay. At our moms group, a friend spoke on platforms, specifically on using your platforms wisely. She referred to it as being "salty" (Matt. 5:13-16). That really moved me into action, because this post was already swirling around in my head. And social media is the largest platform that I have.
A sweet friend once blogged something that really shook me. It was a perfectly simple and direct statement: "I have loved the Lord for a long time." And all of a sudden it hit me — I hadn't. Don't get me wrong. I grew up in a wonderful Christian home and gave my heart to Jesus at eight on my grandmother's front porch. At eleven, I was baptized. I was active in youth group, choir, and just about everything else in our small-town church. My sister and I had the best, godliest parents anyone could ever want.
I respected the Lord (mostly, minus a slightly rebellious phase as a young adult). I followed His commands (again, mostly). But I didn't love Him, at least not the way I was supposed to. There was nothing relational about it. My Christian walk felt boring, uninspired, and one-way.
I found myself jealous of people around me who were more spiritual. This included my husband for several years! You see, he came to his faith as an adult. So everything was new and exciting for him. Soon his Biblical knowledge surpassed mine. I heard the way he talked about his newfound Christianity and I was irritated. He was having fun with it! And I still felt disconnected from God.
I wanted to feel more. I've always known I would raise my children in faith. Our girls have been in church since infancy, dedicated to the Lord, the whole bit. We have talked to them about spiritual things since they could string words together. They can spout off several Bible verses and sing sweet songs about faith and Jesus. I prayed for each of them before they were even conceived.
My heart started to change after the traumatic birth of our youngest, who is now 18 months. In a horrific turn of events, I hemorrhaged right after she was delivered. I will never forget the look on my husband's face as he held that sweet newborn and I tried to stay conscious. They shooed Steve and the baby out, and I honestly thought it would be the last time I ever saw them. (Some other things I thought about — no more Sofia the First, or chances to say goodbye, or future weddings. It was a very dark hour.) I had to have four units of blood. There were at least a dozen doctors and nurses running around my room, though it felt like the whole floor. Thankfully I managed to keep both my uterus and my life, but it was a scary situation and I started questioning everything about the way I was living.
Fast forward to today: I am so blessed and happy to say, a year and a half later, that I have a totally different faith. My love for God the Father is a reverent, constantly amazed love that is deepened by the gift of my children. I appreciate Him so much more now that I can look at Him through a parent's eyes. As for Jesus the Son, I am actually in the middle of reading the Gospels with fresh eyes, and I fall more in love with them all the time. Most surprising of all has been my relationship with the Holy Spirit, but more on that in a minute.
If you've managed to get through all of that background — I know! I'm nothing if not wordy — first, congratulations. Second, the Spirit specifically laid it on my heart to spell out exactly how I deepened my relationship and found a new love for the Lord. When I was pondering this, I was able to separate my journey into a process.
So, sweet friends, this is exactly what I would tell someone to do if they wanted to seek the Lord as the love of their life.
1. Pray to be other-oriented.
Following Isla's birth, I had some scary medical problems that turned out to be an excess of spinal fluid, due to narrowing of blood vessels in one side of my brain, due to (we think) a clotting agent that I received in my IV to stop the hemorrhaging. Whew. Not fun, but not life-changing. However, it took us two months to find out what was going on. And in that time, one of the biggest things my doctors were ruling out was multiple sclerosis.
Y'all, I was terrified. My childhood OCD came back with a vengeance (that's a story for another day), and I suffered a horrible panic attack. I constantly felt sick to my stomach. That was around Christmastime, and I didn't even feel festive. At the time, I thought, "If this is a test from God, I'm failing miserably." But you know what? I sure prayed a lot. Praise songs sure hit a lot closer to home. I worshiped silently in the car, so many times, with tears streaming down my face. And I use that word "worship" because I know now that's what it was. Back then I didn't. I only felt fear.
After all of that happened, I was listening to an amazing friend teach in our Bible study one Sunday morning. As she spoke, I had a lightbulb moment. I needed to get out of my own head. There is a wonderful Casting Crowns song that used to play on the radio around that time, and I specifically prayed the lyrics over my life. "Break my heart for what breaks yours." And God did just that.
Suddenly, I started feeling things deeper. I wept for the problems of others. I stopped and prayed for friends and strangers anytime I felt led. When I said I would pray for someone, I actually did. And just like that, my heart began to soften.
2. Seek out godly friends.
When I began this process, I had only one good friend who was local. This post wouldn't be complete without mentioning my parents, who have been there for me through EVERYTHING. But I needed to be more plugged in. As fate would have it, Steve and I joined a new Bible study shortly before Isla was born and started a small group. Our neighbors, who go to our church, became good friends as well. And one by one, our circle grew bigger.
This growing group of friends held us accountable. They prayed for us, probably even when they didn't know that anything was wrong. My girlfriends would call me, text, drop in to check on me. They requested coffee dates, playdates, and outings. They invited me to church events.
They refused to let me drop off the face of the earth, like I wanted to at my darkest point.
And I loved them back. I loved them fiercely. They made me want to be worthy of that love. They inspired that in me. So another piece of my heart fell into place.
3. Read the Bible. Just start reading it, and do it every day.
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to read the Bible straight through. I've tried starting in Genesis. I've tried starting in Matthew. I've tried starting chronologically. Each time, I failed miserably.
Once my soul began to stir and I grew closer to God, I found that this love seemed fleeting. It would flicker like a candle, then abruptly burn out again. Have you ever listened to a teacher explain a math equation and had an aha moment, just to lose the moment as quickly as it came? That's how I felt at that point in my walk with the Lord.
Also at that time, I was struggling a great deal with guilt. I desperately wanted a relationship by then, but it kept eluding me. I just wasn't feeling it, at least not for any steady amount of time. And as a parent, I thought about my girls. How would I feel if they only communicated with me when they felt like it? Wouldn't I be sad? Of course that's how the Father feels about us. We know that.
But I felt a little hopeless about my spiritual life. I had a headstrong four-year-old, a two-year-old who was still practically a baby herself, and an infant. None of them slept through the night on a regular basis. I even started getting up at 5:30 to start my day with coffee and devotions, but it seemed like they only got up earlier. Sometimes I felt like my own children were detrimental to my spiritual life! And that was a horrible feeling.
However, I'd made one giant mistake, and that was assuming that daily devotions had to look a certain way. God doesn't care about my routine. He doesn't care that I want to wake up to my sparkly clean house in the morning, use my cute turquoise kettle and French press to make my coffee just so, get out my special highlighters and complete an entire Beth Moore lesson before my children have awakened. He just wants me in the Word!
So you know what? I started reading a chapter or two a day on my phone, which I used to hate. At night in my bed, which I also used to hate. But this is the season of life for many of us right now, and He's just so happy that we come to Him and seek His words. Some days I can even sneak in a little bit of prayer journaling, with some creative scheduling. And y'all, it has changed my life. I read a chapter or two every night until I've finished a book, then I move on to the next. And it has changed. My. Life.
I actually really miss reading when I skip a day. Skipping is a pretty rare occurrence now, but it makes me feel kinda creepy when it happens. I find myself meditating on Scripture. Every now and again, a verse just pops into my head, or I can apply it to a certain situation. Just like I always heard it would — even though I was raised on Scripture, I hadn't given the daily study of Scripture a fair chance to work its magic.
4. Learn to listen for the Holy Spirit.
Make no mistake. Our relationship with the Holy Spirit is one of the most fascinating aspects of Christianity. I LOVE this part of it, and I firmly believe that not enough of us are utilizing this gift. Read about it in the Gospels after Jesus' resurrection. It's just crazy cool.
Anyway, I believe that cultivating a powerful relationship with the Holy Spirit is like learning to use a new muscle. You have to be intentional about it. You have to start by doing. And doing, and doing, and doing.
It's like this: When I started on this journey a year and a half ago, I was reading a series that I really loved. First of all, I'm an avid reader. Second, I was super attached to the main characters. Like a crazy person. (Heavily under the influence of pregnancy hormones, I once cried to my mom about how I couldn't read the series for a while because what if one of my beloved characters was killed off? Like I said, crazy person.) And one day, I felt strongly that I shouldn't be reading them, that they weren't proper for me to be devouring. Maybe they really weren't proper, maybe I was spending too much time and emotion on them, or maybe a little of both. Whatever the case, although putting them away felt awful at the time, I knew that instruction came from the Holy Spirit and I listened.
After that, I heard that still small voice a little more often, and a little more often. More so if I obeyed Him. So I learned how to recognize the Holy Spirit moving, and eventually how to seek Him out. That relationship has been one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed. The harmony of the Trinity, when each aspect of God plays a significant part in your story, is simply life-changing.
And that's it! That's my story, and I hope it encourages someone out there. You don't have to go through life in despair, sure that a deep love of God isn't part of your story. Because it can be.
If you're struggling in your spiritual journey as you learn to really love the Lord and seek after Him, I hope you'll reach out. I've been there. And I would love to pray and talk with you.
Blessings!
Rachel
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