How to spend time with God

For those who have been following this blog or whom I've had the chance to catch up a little with, you'd know that my spiritual life has been rather dry lately, and that God has been silent. The season of hunger has brought me through all the stages of a child's tantrum... from sheer desperation and deep longing, to bewilderment and anger, to crying and raging, to a numbing of one's spiritual senses (because it hurts less), to a renewed effort to not remain numb but cultivate the discipline to pursue Him nevertheless. The main thing that has plagued me was my incomprehension at His prolonged silence, His distance, despite my giving whatever time I can to hear Him.

Today I had to relearn something simple and significant. All this while, while I've wanted to hear Him, I've actually done very little in the way of preparing myself to receive what He had to say. And God withheld, because I wasn't ready to know His purpose for me. Why?--because the attitude in my heart is looking out only for myself. I wanted purpose, direction, I wanted to meet Him again to know the role model I was following. I have clung rather selfishly to my concerns surrounding how I should live my life so that He would be happy and I would be happy (in a reaction to frustration, more than as an act of worship). I lost sight of the purpose I was made for--to worship Him, even in my time with Him, eager instead just to get without giving. I am fully aware that there is nothing that we can give God that He doesn't already own, but it is the attitude of the heart that He is looking at here. Love needs room for its expression, and the way, and the degree to which we express it sometimes tells us what our motives are. I realise that hunger for God isn't always born out of love for Him, and He is refining my motives. I am dying to hear Him call my name, to reinstate and recommission me, but I have not borne to Him a heart of repentance, and for that reason I have given Him too little to work with.

Instead I gave to Him a heart full of preconceived notions that came from the word based on my own understanding of it, instead of waiting for Him to reveal its significance to me. I have been proud to assume I could be satisfied with my own reading, been impatient to understand, and in being anxious to come to understanding (since that was what i equated with receiving), substituted an intellectual understanding again for an experiential, revelational one. I never made the time to wait on Him to reveal what I needed to learn, and show me exactly where it was in the word. That was how it used to be. Now I've mixed up the whole order. I'd try to understand with my head (and put blinkers over my eyes in the process), then wait on Him, trying to enjoy Him, when I've missed the point altogether.

In short, today is a reminder about what it means to wait on God again and enjoy the fullness of His presence. I am reminded again, that while I was still learning to hear Him 4 years ago, it was about first simply coming into His presence with the humility to know there are issues in my life on which I need correction, with the meekness that made me reverent before my awesome God. It was about the delight in the discovery that He still delighted in me nevertheless, and would take me into His lap and invite me to give to Him an open heart for searching. It was about revelation in prayer that took one to the depths of one's heart and exposed its deceptions and recalled what it had forgotten. It was always a time of healing, and a process of being changed--transformed into His likeness, understanding more of His heart for all mankind.

Now the key is this: a relationship with God takes hard work and discipline. Even with this reminder today, despite having my eyes opened, I am not suddenly zapped and changed. Instead I am called to act upon this "newfound" knowledge in faith, and bring myself daily before Him with a repentant, humble, searchable, cleanable, moldable heart. Only in this way will I come to understand a little more each day. The boredom of doing the same thing everyday only sets in when I begin to lose sight of its cruciality and arrogance sets in when I think I've got it, understood it, been there, done that. The truth is that when it comes to experiencing God, there is no end, no tiring of being in His presence, because He is more than any heart can contain.

I need to trust God for strength to meet Him like that, and act upon it in faith, letting Him come across from His side of the great unknown to reveal more of His very person to me. God knew better than I did--for all my clamouring for a mentor, no man can keep me accountable, if I don't want to take ownership of the motivation to spend time with Him. In my incredible busyness, this means carving out time, and giving Him my time when my daily energies are at their peak (the simple firstfruits principle).