I want to introduce you all to a new series I’ll be doing on my blog called Monday Morning Meditation.
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14 (NLT)
I want to introduce you all to a new series I’ll be doing on my blog called Monday Morning Meditation.
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14 (NLT)
“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” John 14:27
The world was heartbroken this week by another star, taken too soon.
Amazing inventor.
Here’s the thing.
“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my bodyand knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.” Psalm 139:13-14
We can gather folks around us to pray for us and help us discern God’s voice.
“The LORD will work out his plans for my life—
for your faithful love, O LORD, endures forever.
Don’t abandon me, for you made me.” Psalm 138:8
Amen.
Ask God today to prepare you to find your amazing, if you haven’t already. Ask Him to show you your blind spots and how to use His strength in those areas. And get ready. It’s a wild ride; prepare to be amazed.
There is also a place for silence and solitude.
“Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.” Mark 1:35
“But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.” Luke 5:16
I have a deep sense of reverence these days. That I just want to get down on my knees and stay there. I did just that for a while today.
“Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.” Psalm 62:5 (NLT)
This verse has been the pulse of my heart for this current season and prior.
Quietly, in other Bible translations of the above verse, is also translated “silent” or “still”, so I wanted to see what light the Hebrew word had to add to the passage.
Other possible meanings are:
to be struck dumb
to be silenced, be made silent, destroyed
to make quiet
to rest
to be still, die
Let me tell you – there is certainly a dying involved in the call to silence.
I’m a talker. In fact, I’m a loud talker. I’m also a loud laugher. People will often say to me, “Brenna, I knew you arrived because I heard you laugh.” Ask any of my good friends. They have likely said this to me.Silent? Reserved? Uh, not so much. Struck dumb? Never.Yet God is calling me to silent spaces.
There is a tearing apart, a preparation, a refining of sorts. An awe of the jealousy of God’s heart, that there are times when He asks me to pause, to be still before Him. To go straight to Him before anyone else.
A call to silence. A drawing into His heart.
Have you experienced this? What did you learn in that time?
Here’s a bit of what I’m learning in my process.
When God calls for silence
1. Pray
If we look at Jesus’ example, this seems obvious. But not necessarily natural. When God asks me to be quiet, my natural tendency is to pout! A call to silence is a call to prayer. It’s a call to seek. It’s a call to rest and trust. And ask. It’s not necessarily a call to ask for specific things you want for yourself (a new job, a new car, or a specific outcome), but rather a call to ask for openness, general direction and sovereign guidance.
It doesn’t have to be about food. You can fast from TV, movies, or Facebook. The time that would normally be spent in food prep, eating, or sitting at a computer is now used for prayer and seeking the Lord.
Isaiah 58 is an excellent explanation of why & how to fast.
3. Wait.
Waiting is about slowing down. It’s about pausing. It’s a reminder that there’s more to life than jumping from one activity to the next. It can also be a place of preparation.
Oh, how I used to hate waiting.
I don’t love it now, but I’ve learned to, as David talks about in Psalm 5, wait in expectation. Waiting is not passive. But I believe the call for silence is more for a waiting as described in Psalm 130:
“My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.”
We watch and wait. Watch for the first sunshine of morning, or hope, to peer into our silence. We are being prepared.
4. Listen.
Something I said in that conversation back in December about being muted was this: maybe those times when we feel most alone, or during the calls to silence, are really the times when God wants us to reach out to Him. He wants to be heard by us. What a powerful thought.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” Jesus in John 10:27“I will bless the LORD who guides me; even at night my heart instructs me.” Psalm 16:7
5. Obey.
What you do hear, even what you think you hear, obey. Take a step. Pray about it first. Fast about it. Remember that God will not ask you to do something that goes against His Word. Ask 2-3 others to pray if it’s a particularly radical step. (Despite the call to silence, I do believe that asking for assistance and confirmation through the prayers of a few trusted friends is wise.) God will not punish you for trying to obey what you think is His prompting, even if you sometimes make a mistake.
6. Rejoice.
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4
Enjoy the process. Honestly, this call to silence is not a happy place for me. Neither is it exactly sad. It’s sort of a heavy place, a solemn, holy pause. At the same time, if I stop and wait, I can occasionally feel a little firework of joy going off in my heart. Since joy is often a choice, I will not choose sackcloth for this call to silence. I will choose to rejoice.If God is calling you to silence, there is much to learn and experience in this process.
Pray. Fast, Wait. Listen. Obey. And rejoice.
I want to use today’s post to check in about your focus roles and priorities for 2012.
I will share at the end of this post how some of my 2012 goals are progressing. How about you?
As I’ve reflected on past goals I’ve achieved, I’ve been asking myself: why? Why did some goals get ignored? Why were others achieved?
One goal I made back in 2005 was to take a ballet class. I had always wanted to take ballet as a child. I did take some jazz & modern dance, as well as theater dance (tap & jazz) in college. But I just always wanted to see what a ballet class was like.
This was a goal in 2004 as well. I did not achieve it that year. Why? I did not make time for it. Carving out time in an evening when you are a campus missionary and a leader of a non-profit is not easy! But in 2005, I decided it was a priority, and after years of hoping to do this, I made the time. It was a fantastic and affirming experience.
In the book Getting Things Done (one of the books I’m reading this year), author David Allen says “you don’t manage priorities; you have them.”
Those things that are priorities for us, we will make time for.
If you’re a football fan, I bet you had no trouble fitting the past play-off games and this Sunday’s Superbowl into your schedule! If you love to eat, you don’t have any challenges fitting in 3 meals a day, or finding the time to get to your favorite restaurant.
I never really committed to running until two things happened. First, I learned the major exhaustion I was experiencing (that was likely due to something called “adrenal fatigue”) could be greatly helped by regular, vigorous exercise. Second, I needed to maintain a 50 pound weight loss that I had worked hard to achieve.
I made the time for running because I needed to.
My fatigue issues have improved by about 90%. I barely notice it anymore, above and beyond the normal fatigue of a mom whose kids don’t sleep through the night! It is now normal for me to get up at 5 or earlier (today, I was up at 4:36) to meet folks for a run or go solo. I have found I need less sleep when I run regularly. I also not only maintained my weight loss and lost 10 more pounds.
I made the time for running because I decided it was important for me to do so.
“LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
Remind me that my days are numbered—
how fleeting my life is.” Psalm 39:4
Here are some tips on how to make the time you need to achieve your goals.
1. Analyze your current use of time. We all have the same number of hours in the day. All those hours have the same 60 minutes. God calls us to be good stewards of the time He gives us. Try carrying around a notebook for a day. Note what time you get up, and what you do for each 15 minute increment from that point on. Yes, that sounds a bit anal, but just try it. I remember how eye-opening it was when my husband & I started using a virtual envelope system, and I realized how much money we were spending in certain categories. 15 minutes 3 times a day on Facebook is 45 minutes. This exercise will likely be quite enlightening.
2. Prioritize your free time. What did the exercise above show you about your free time? I read recently that most Americans have 3-5 hours of free time a day. It likely doesn’t feel that way to you! Ask yourself from the exercise above: how much time do you spend putzing? On Facebook? Twitter? Your smart phone? Watching TV? Is there forced down time (like your commute) that could be used to accomplish your goals? Some examples of my forced down time is when I’m getting my kids to sleep or hanging out with them on the couch. I can write on my laptop or read a book while they watch a movie. We do not need to schedule every minute. That said, I know I feel better emotionally when I have stopped myself from getting drawn into a black hole of time wasted.
3. Create more time. Get up earlier. Go to bed earlier. Say no to things that you don’t have to say yes to and would rather not be doing. Be careful not to overbook yourself or your kids.
Here’s the status of some of my 2012 goals.
1. Keep my iPhone inbox below 50 emails (that’s 50 total for 5 email addresses).
Check. I have been able to do this every day, including when I was out of town and only had internet access on my phone.
2. Cut out food dyes, corn syrup, dairy & wheat, as well as most pre-packaged, processed foods. Cut down on grains.
Making slow progress here. I brought the boys a treat from my trip: green apple gummy bears! Definitely not food-dye free! I’m doing more cooking and baking grain-free.
3. Run 100 miles per month through the winter. Consider what other races I should do.
4. Run a half marathon at a :30/mile faster pace than my 1st half marathon, which I ran with a 10:08 pace.
I did 120.54 miles in January. Looking into some races. I also ran 13.46 miles (slightly longer than a half marathon) at a 9:19 pace, which is faster than my goal for my next half marathon.
7. Create a 4 week meal plan every month and follow it.
Check.
9. Continue daily Bible reading. 2 days a week, get up at running time to read the Bible, pray, journal & be silent.
Check.
12. Read & finish 25-30 books in 2012. That’s just over 2 books a month. This includes books I’ve started and not yet finished.
2 books done in January. Check.
I only commented on the goals that I made significant progress on. You can go to my original post to see the ones I’m still working on.
What do you need to make the time for today? What can you make the time for right now, in the next 5 minutes? What is draining time from your day?