Full Circle Moment with Jesus

Beautiful Biltmore 🤍

Wrote this over lunch today while literally  cramming chicken down my throat before 12:15 hit and I needed to get the kids. 😅

Today, the topic of my reading (and a lot of podcasts and sermons lately by coincidence) was coming into God's presence. I am a worrier. I try to fix other people's problems and worry day and night about my own without nearly the amount of surety I have for others. I don’t know why it is that way. So my prayers often come out fast, desperate, and many. 

But the scripture Ecclesiastes 5:2 tells us to pause before we come into God's presence and to not be "Rash with our mouth". We are to acknowledge the holiness of God before we acknowledge our own needs in His presence. He is aware of His own magnificence, but are we?

That is why I believe in the consistency and cohesion of scripture. Because is it not later in Matthew when Jesus is teaching the disciples how to approach God in prayer that he states to acknowledge God's holiness first? "Hallowed be Thy name? Thy Kingdom come?" That is an acknowledgement of His power and His promise that He will return. His people acknowledge both His holiness and the grace of His promise in one breath. What other religion in the world has a "deity" of some kind that promises such goodness? 

And in so typing all of this, I am convicted of all I pray over in my life. The needs of family, my paths, future pursuits, possibilities, the general unknown....and I think of how often I pray and repeat the same things as I pray; partly out of desperation. 

It is not that we disregard the holiness of God when we pray in such a way (not that God is in need of our affirmation). But for me it feels like a disconnect. Like something isn't flowing. And then something reconnected in my brain. A thought, if you will. 

Our brains are not wired for the amount of input we have from our culture that is largely centralized in technology. Our attention spans were not designed to be the length of a tiktok, to quickly be bored and scroll away. My prayers were more cohesive in a time in my life when there was less to look at and I spent all my free moments with family and outside in nature. I prayed for more people each time I approached God, lifting up myself less and others more.

So it boils down to what is important to me. Brain and attention span aside. What is my aspiration in life? To distract the mind? To build the self? To seek my own pursuits? Or do I need a dramatic shift with God that centralizes the mind, builds up others and relationships that glorify God, and to seek pursuits that are centered in the will of God?

But in our dramatically different culture, we could say that such a mindset is radical. But I have been convicted lately that if I am to truly live the one life I've been given adventurously and filled with God's plan, I need a radical shift. A rapid handing over of my will for His. And it begins with acknowledging God's holiness and preeminence and surrendering what I want and what distracts me from the building blocks of prayer and life. And finally, not seeing prayer and life as two separate parts of my life, but as one which influences the other in dramatic, daily, constant ways.

Have a beautiful week!