Spiritual thoughts from today

Oh, how I want to know God.  There have been plenty of times that I have allowed myself to be overpowered by other desires but I still want to know Him.  I lay in bed at night knowing that there is more to life than this; that there is more of this God-infused life to live than what others may believe or speak of.  I have been praying over the last several months for God to give me a passion for Him; to ignite my heart on fire for all that He is; to illumine me with His Holy Spirit and reveal Himself to me in all His glory in a way that will not leave me unchanged.  In the quietness of my own soul, I have to wonder how much of God I really know and how much is simply what I have been taught to believe.

I hunger for a true and pure relationship with the king of kings.  I think we all, to some extent, have these preconceived notions, thoughts, and biases when it comes to God.  We all tend to favor certain portions of Scripture over others and having grown up in the church and around Christianity I know at times I have allowed myself to read His Word with a ‘been there, done that’ kind of attitude denying God the opportunity to speak new truths to me through it once again.  We make God into who we want Him to be; a God that is convenient for us and doesn’t require more than we are willing to give.  This I am convinced is nothing short of idolatry and we are missing out on discovering the enormity and awesomeness of all that God is. 

I want my soul to not only be renewed and restored by Him but I want it to become a source of refreshment for others as I seek to share what He has given me.  I want to know God in a new and fresh way, to fall in love with Him all over again and deeper than ever before so that my heart dances at the very thought of Him.  I want a relationship that is real, authentic, and life giving even when it hurts.  I want to know God stripped of as many false perceptions as possible but I also know that this kind of journey, this kind of desire, this kind of seeking after God is a journey that risks exposure, total honesty, pain, sacrifice, and even a stripping of my own identity, the identity that I have built for myself, the false selves that I let others see, the identity I think they want me to have in hopes that I’ll be accepted and loved.  But I must learn to allow God to be the only source of my identity and this I believe, while it is no easy task will bring true joy and peace like never before experienced.  I pray that He will continue to make me hungry and desperate enough to go there trusting His Spirit to give me the strength.  

When you begin to look closely you notice that scrawled out on almost every page of Scripture and displayed throughout creation is an invitation to know the author and creator of it all.  If we allow ourselves to be still long enough, we can begin to hear His faint yet constant whisper for us to come, to know Him and be known by Him, to experience a love beyond our wildest imagination, to be lost in the wonder and beauty of all that He is and all that He has given us to enjoy!  God glows.  It says the very heavens are filled with the light of His glory and Jesus, being His Son, by His very nature is brilliance.  The One that is described as the light of the world does not contain one shadow of darkness and the Holy Spirit ushers the spiritual dawn into our own hearts dispersing the shadows that seek to hide and distract us from His radiance.   God is inviting us to embrace the fullness of the life we were meant to live.  The vastness, the beauty, the power, the splendor, the glory.  Oh, that I may find this life and never settle for anything less.