Just Breathe

Are you ever so invigorated by church that you don't want to leave? That happened to me yesterday and I truly did not want the service to be over. For the first time in a long time, I really got into worship - I felt the Lord's presence there with me and I just wanted to sing my heart out to Him. It was one of those services that spoke to me, you know, more than others and that reminded me what this whole "Christian" thing is about. Ironically, the sermon was entitled "God, why can't I feel your presence?" The main point was that we don't feel God's presence because we don't stop long enough to feel Him. We give and give and go and go and never slow down, when all He wants from us is to slow down and spend a little time with Him, and while it won't happen the first time we spend time with Him, collectively, over time, we'll come to know what it means to be in His presence and to really feel Him there with us. He kept saying how we have a spiritual life rhythm, and that our spiritual lives have a rhythm very much like a heartbeat or our breathing. His thought was that when we spend our lives going and going and giving and doing, we're breathing out - exhaling. We never take time to breathe in....which spiritually kills us. We have to breathe Him in. We have to fill ourselves back up and we have to give ourselves the opportunity to feel His presence. It all just really spoke to me, because I know I'm so horribly guilty of that and I don't slow down and every time I sit down to have quiet time and really spend some quality time with God I get distracted or sleepy and it never happens. Why does it have to be that way? Why can't I make it happen? It's not that I don't want to or don't think it's important, but it's just that I guess I don't think it's important ENOUGH or I would do it. I feel like I need to be held accountable for this....but if I lie to myself about how I'm doing in my spiritual life I know I'll lie to someone else.... I'm such a fake sometimes! I heard that Michael W. Smith song on the radio where he says, "This is the air I breathe....Your holy presence, living in me..." and I just stopped in the middle of getting ready for work to think about what He was saying. I want to be there. I want it. And you know what? My tendency when I start thinking like this is always to go to one of the Christian bookstores and find me a new devotional book or something else to read or some other workbook, like I think that's going to magically make it happen. I know it won't, and what I need is more JESUS...not more busy work to do to get me to him. I need Him, plain and simple. No fluff, no distractions, nothing to make it more complicated than it is..... Just the basics of a relationship with Jesus.