Do you ever wake up, have a quiet time and walk away feeling guilty? As if you didn’t spend enough time with the Lord? Am I the only one? I get this feeling a lot. No matter how much time I put in, there is this crazy standard in my head that can’t be met. I mean, it really CAN’T be met. The more I study, the more I feel like I SHOULD study…MORE! And we all know what all that is…good, ol’-fashioned lies and legalism.
God just isn’t sitting up in heaven with the stopwatch app opened on His iPhone, seeing how long I’ve spent in His word today. Nope. But He IS wooing me to love Him more…and to respond with living like Jesus did. Even THAT “living like Jesus did” is such an esoteric phrase…I sometimes just SPIN wondering what that looks like in daily life. He was GOD. He knew how to respond in every circumstance. Don’t get me wrong, a circumstance will come up on occasion and I’ll think “Oh, I know exactly how I should respond to this” or His Holy Spirit will remind me of a Scripture that will guide how I interact with a situation. But othertimes, I’m just left there wondering “WHAT DO I DO?!???”
SO. I have been doing 2 things to combat these feelings of “never enough” and the abstract “like Jesus” model…
1. SOAP. Every day my Dad sends out a Bible Study to the people from his church…he reads a passage of Scripture, writes out his Observations of that passage, thinks of ways to Apply it and then Prays accordingly. These 4 things (Scripture, Observation, Application and Prayer) are how he makes sure to “hide” God’s Word for him that day, in his heart. I’ve started to do this…and WOOO-EEE! I feel like I’ve actually done “enough” Bible study at the end!
2. One of my favorite passages in Psalm 37. I particularly like verse 3, “Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.”
If this was a checklist it would read:
A. Trust the Lord.
B Do Good.
C. Dwell in the Land.
D. Cultivate Faithfulness.
Gosh, if I did those 4 things for the rest of my life (that is, if I did them WELL!) I would be living a life that looks like Jesus. He did all these things. I can clearly see these attributes in His life. So when I start to get stressed about living a life that “looks like Jesus” these days, I just go back to this verse and meditate on one of these things…
Ok. You’ve heard a few of the kinda’ random things I do to combat my craziness….Any tips from YOUR end? Things that you find enhance YOUR walk??
Love you heaps and heaps!
annetta
