mail1Extraordinary in the Ordinary

For this week's blog, I could find another great Bible story to tell or dig out some great illustration that makes me look like a thoughtful and inspired Christian.  However, I feel compelled today to dig a little deeper and reveal what I am going through rather than offering a well-polished sotry.

I think recently I have been avoiding having to admit the fact that in reality, I feel like I have hit a wall.  It is a wall that perhaps I have built for myself to keep me in a bubble; that place of comfortable Christianity.  Where I do just the right things that make it appear that I am at the right place with God, when really I feel this sense of emptiness.  I think it's a familiar wall, one that I've seen before when I reach a certain point of routine and comfort.  It is as though I have nothing left to offer God.  What I love about God though, is that is ok.  He doesn't need anything from me, He's God.  I guess in those times all I can do is receive.  It sounds so easy in theory, but I have never been good at receiving...whether gifts of compliments, I feel like I don't deserve it or I feel guilt or embarrassment.  I guess it's the same with God, I'm not good at accepting the love he gives so freely and so abundtantly.  I think maybe it's because receiving that love means letting go.  My hands won't be able to grasp God's love until they let go of grasping so tightly my insecurities, my fears, my plans, and everything else.

I think its also easy to reach a place where we have to learn that just because we don't feel "moved" every minute, doesn't mean God isn't moving in our lives.  There are just those times in life where its only somewhere down the road when we look back that we can see and understand why we felt this way now.  I guess it's about making a choice to not sit and wait for God to "move," but to have extraordinary faith in all seasons.  Having extraordinary faith not only in the chaotic, difficult times when you have to have faith and you have to trust God with everything you have, but in the quiet, ordinary, routine times of life where it takes more and you have to be intentional about not falling into routine and complacency.  It's the little, day in and day out decisions that accumulate to cement our character one way or another, towards God or away from him.  We need to live intentional lives even in the ordinary, realizing that those little decisions impact our character.  My prayer is that God would give me strnegth in my feeble attempt to live my life in that way.

Submitted by Mikaela Holford