Silence...

...it can be frightening, intimidating, and lonely. Silence can also be enlightening, thought provoking, an opening for God to really speak to our hearts, a time that we can for once just hear His voice.

This past Sunday evening, I attending our Single's Prayer and Praise time of fellowship. I wasn't really sure what to expect at first. The typical prayer and praise I've been to in the past have always been good to some degree, but this one was special for me. I guess I don't take the time very often to think about how much I don't take time in silence to just be with the Lord. Sunday night this became very clear to me and I think if I took anything away from that time of worship and fellowship, it was that taking time to just be in silence is crucial to my spiritual life.

I spend so much time hanging with my friends, working, cycling, and doing other things that I rob myself of some of the best intimacy with Christ that I can have, that He wants me to have. I had the time that evening to really stop my busy life and my busy mind to just think about Him, to gaze upon His greatness and His glory, to be reminded of His great sacrifice for my life, to see and know how He has pulled me from the depths of hell in times of my life, to see His unconditional grace for my sins and how my sins do hurt him. I was able to feel my heart wrench with agony over my sin and plead with him to pluck it from me, to weed the depths of my mind and heart and to heal me. I realized too that often when I can't hear Him, its only because I'm just too busy, or that I think I know better about how my life should be lived. I am a sinner, I am not worthy of nothing but death, but oh how it is so enlightening to truly feel His loving arms wrapped around me as I cry and have sorrow about my sin.

Sometime ago, I don't know that I could have even tried to feel the arms of the Lord around me, much less know that He loves me as He does, heck I still don't really understand the depth of His love for me, but I do know this and I come to believe it more and more everyday...that God loves me, that He does desire His best for me, and that His love for apparently has never changed since He first called, no..., since He first loved me because I know in my heart that He was there protecting me and taking care of me well before I felt His calling in my life. I am still discovering His love and His grace. I still struggle with sin, I still mess up, I still try to take control, I still try to reason with Him or compromise as if I know better, I still wrestle with Him over things...and I know this will continue, as my life is in a process of sanctification that Christ is working in and through me. I am thankful though, in the midst of the mess of this world, that I have Him. He picks me up after every fall, He has never left me, He has never betrayed or tricked me, He has always been the only "Truth" in my life, not that I deserved it by any means, but rather that He just is my Jesus.