This weekend I’m out on Vancouver Island with a great group of folks who are learning to live and think outside the box. We’re spending the weekend together just exploring this incredible gift of life and how we can live more freely and authentically in the life of the Father. This is one of my favorite kinds of weekends.
Yesterday I got a letter from a sister in Canada, describing their journey. Her observations and questions are ones I hear a lot, so I thought you might enjoy another look over my shoulder at this email exchange…
I’m just not seeing a whole lot of God bringing some direction, or assurance that He’s still working in our lives or maybe just not seeing the fire that is supposed to be experienced by on-fire believers. I am enjoying the rest at this time, time to do things with hubby that we enjoy doing together that seems to have been lost in the pursuit of more “spiritual activities”. Is this a normal thing to experience for someone who is doing nothing (other than the normal, sometimes mundane tasks of the home and family) after being busy with “spiritual activities”? Is this time ordained by God to be a time of rest for hubby and me before our lives take a different turn? (We are in the process of adopting two Haitian toddlers.) How do I get to know Him and deepen my relationship with Him?
Here was my response: To your questions, YES! YES! YES! This is all very normal. Decompressing from our religious ways of seeing God is a process and, yes, sometimes it seems really, really quiet. But obviously your heart desires him and he is gently inviting you into a fresh discovery of how to walk with him beyond all the religious rituals. It’s not that prayer isn’t important, or reading the Scriptures, but God wants them to be part of our life in him, not a substitute for it. So the ongoing conversation with him through the day is a real blessing to him, as is shutting down all the religious noise so that he can begin to show you how to simply live in him no matter what you’re doing on any given day.
And you may not find there’s a different ‘turn’ coming up at all, but a growing life in him that takes you on in ever-increasing tastes of his life and pleasure…
You go, girl! Keep living just the way he puts it on your heart, and not trying to meet the expectations of others, or even your own expectations from the past. This is a life worth savoring!
