Drifting Away from God

 Sometimes I get into these really bad patterns that end up with me becoming distant from God. The Christian life is not the easiest thing to live out. It is so much more easy to skip church, not read the Bible, listen to mainstream music, and not pray, than to participate in things that are designed to bring us closer to God. And not only that, those things can quickly turn into just motions that we go through without having any heart in it. It's tough being a Christian, it's tough making God your number one focus. But I'm so thankfully that when I start to drift away and start treading down the easy path, God there to bring me back to Him, and not only that, but to guide me in the lifestyle that I should be pursuing.

I'll be the first to admit, somethings I fall off the path a little bit. It's not like I am blatantly trying to get away from God, or disobey Him, it just becomes the outcome. No, even in periods of disconnection from God, I always believe that God is real, love Him in some sense, know He's there, know He loves me. I just have a hard time putting that into heart knowledge, something that I feel in my heart and not just facts that are stuck in my head. But how do I even get to this way? Simple, it starts with just losing focus, going through the motions, and eventually stopping all the motions at all.

Focus.

Anyone can tell you that my focus has definitely not been on God lately. My priorities have been sleeping, eating, watching Smallville, and thinking about my so-called Prince Charming, and anything that stood between me and those things, well God help them. But then when my priorities are those silly things, God gets knocked down a bit, and that is the beginning of all downhill spirals. My focus became not on God, trying to live for Him, trying to serve Him, loving Him, and so naturally, I began to not really be as involved in my devotional practices, and that leads to going through the motions.

Going through the motions.

I prayed every once and a while, picked up the Bible a few times, went to church, went to chapel, talked about God a little bit, sung worship songs, but I did all of this without my heart being into it. It was like doing Christian chores, I knew I should do them, but I wasn't really getting much out of it. When you don't have God in the number one seat in your life, your heart just isn't going to be in your devotional practices, and that's what happened to me. Eventually because you aren't getting anything out of the practices, you eventually stop doing them at all, and that my friends is a really bad spot to be.

No Devotions

When you eliminate the things in your life that are designed to bring you closer to God, then you don't get closer to God, it's as simple as that. And unfortunately I was definitely treading down that path. I honestly cannot even tell you when was the last time that I read the Bible because I wanted to, because I wanted to feel closer to God, because I wanted to learn more about Him. I cannot remember the last time that a worship song has really convicted me and touched my heart. I cannot remember the last time that I went to church and was really invested in the message instead of thinking about the next time I get to see my golden haired man of mystery. It's really sad and disgusting for me to say, but I am definitely a little disconnected from God.

The great thing about having a God who loves us so much is that when we get disconnected from Him, He searches for us. Not only that, but He also welcomes us back into His arms, and I am so grateful and thankful for that. I want to be close to God, I want to feel His presence in my life, I want Him to guide and protect me, and I'm so thankful that He wants those things as well, even enough so to go out and do any and everything He can to bring us back to Him.

God brought me back to Him using the lure of a speaker we had in chapel today. Her story touched me as it was oddly similar to some of the situations in my life. People's life stories are probably one of the most effective ways that God uses to really touch my heart. Especially impacting are stories that talk about brokenness, cause God knows there's definitely a lot of that in my life.

Now I'm back on the road towards God. It feels SO much better. I need to really work on keeping Him as my number one focus so that I don't go down this road yet again.