I once was lost, but now I’m…still lost.

At Winter Conference, a friend challenged me to take a half day with God and not bring a Bible.  I initially wanted to talk to him about where I should spend the next year of my life, and I ended up talking about where I was at with God.  I said I felt tired.  Sometimes, it feels like I am chasing after God for long periods of time and eventually I just get…tired.  My friend prayed for me and God gave him a picture of a rocket ship.  When the rocket ship launches and leaves the earth’s atmosphere, it coasts.  The parts of the rocket that helped it get there fall off.  Although the other parts of the rocket were necessary, it still was just extra weight that assisted the rocket through the hard work to blast off.

“Rest.”  This is what my friend urged me to do.   The rocket blasting off characterizes my walk so much of the time.  I feel like I work so hard to get to God with my intellect.  I hold on to my efforts because I’m used to it and prefer to only believe in things I can prove.  Although my intellect makes my faith genuine, it also inhibits me from believing God can do anything miraculous.  Thus spurred on my half day with God.  It was time to ask Him about the miraculous.

I was afraid that I would search for God and not find anything.  My friend assured me that sometimes that will happen.  I was like…oh ok…and then decided that on my way from Valencia to San Luis Obispo, I would stop by the beach somewhere and find some special spot where I would try to meet God.  I set aside 2-3 hours for this.  I got to Ventura and proceeded to drive around the coast for another hour, looking for the perfect place.

I came to this random street that had a random hill and found a random hiking trail.  I decided park my car and hike up the hill.  I didn’t like where my car was parked so I reparked it.  I then went up the trail and looked for a place that had a good place to sit.  When I found good sitting places, I didn’t like the view.  When I found a spot with a nice view, it was way too hot to sit there.  ”Am I even going to meet with God when I do this?  Even if I found the perfect place, do I have faith that I will find Him with my spirit?” I spend about 45 minutes of trying to find a place to sit and spend time with God.  ”What can I possibly learn from this?”

As I was traveling off the path and hiking up some mud, it hit me that I was working SO hard to just spend some time with God.    Wow.  All I wanted to do was spend time with God, and ended up spending ALL of my time trying to make things perfect.  This is my walk with God.  Maybe God was showing me once again that I do not know how to rest in Him.

What an adventure in my Toms!