This weekend I attended your church’s yearly women’s retreat. We had an amazing speaker who focused on our desire and need for transformation. One thing that she stressed was the importance of getting back to the spiritual disciplines (prayer, confession, silence, fasting, etc.), which involves forcing ourselves to slow down long enough to hear God’s voice.
I walked away determined to practice what she called “slowing”—to stop hurrying through my day and allow God to order it—and to work in more time of solitude with God. I’ve been moving at a frenzied pace for a long time. So long in fact that when I woke up this morning, determined to take time with my Bible study and prayer before heading into my day, I found myself struggling to focus. When I finished I felt an intense urgency to dive into my to-do list.
Now I see that this slowing down for solitude thing is going to take some work. Maybe that’s why they call praying, silence, solitude and the other disciplines that we learned about “disciplines”—because they don’t come easily.
In this fast paced society do you find it difficult to practice prayer, solitude, and time for hearing from God? Join me in the challenge of slowing God so you can hear His voice. If you have methods for doing this please share?
1 comment:
Hi Jeanette! Good to read one of your blog posts! I was surprised and excited to see your by-line! I just recently finished reading Joanna Weaver's, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. Awesome book dealing with finding the balance between spending quality time at the feet of the Master and serving Him with the talents He's given us.
I can totally relate to the difficulty you sometimes experience when trying to focus when you've got a million things to accomplish. What's helped me tremendously is slipping to my knees when I get up in the morning and spending a few minutes praising God, praying the armor of God on my life and that the "words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart" would be pleasing to Him that day.
I move on to my exercise which is a concentrated prayer/scripture memory time for me. It's amazing how much He allows me to accomplish when I give Him His rightful place!!
Great post! :)
BTW - The word that I had to type in to publish my comment was 'restr' Hmmmmm. Psalm 37:7a comes to mind: Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him! Not a coincidence I'm sure!!
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