I haven’t been able to write or do anything worthwhile for the past week because my spirit has been in a state of confusion. I felt like I was in the middle of a battle and the only way towards victory was to suppress the ‘godliness’ in me.
When I encountered God in a dream earlier this year, my heart was on fire for all the things of God. One of my closest friends actually started addressing me as ‘a freak’ for Jesus. Truthfully, she couldn’t have been more accurate because as the name implies, my excitement for God and activities related to Him were seemingly unusual. Going to church became my favourite outing activity and I looked forward to fellowshipping with God more than I did going out with my friends. I was sold out, in love, obsessed, taken; I was truly passionate about my Lord.
But at some point, between then and now, something changed.
At the age of 21, I would have assumed that I had long overgrown peer pressure; Turns out I haven’t. Human nature, unfortunately, welcomes the act of comparison; this, in turn, gives rise to feelings of insecurity.
Comparison and Insecurity; - these two things drove me to a near state of complacency within my Christian life. The phrases 'please relax', 'you need to chill', 'don’t put yourself under pressure', 'it's not that serious' and the occasional, 'take it easy', made me feel like my actions were unusually intense.
I never once questioned my faith in God, but I did doubt my ability to represent Him appropriately. Being a Christian became unorthodox for a couple days. I started to question everything; am I showing enough love? am I saying this the right way? am I being too harsh?
These thoughts harboured actions of complacency in my Christian journey. I had to think twice before saying certain things to the people around me for fear of not sounding too stern. I became more relaxed with the things of God because I thought; If everyone is telling me I need to relax, then perhaps I should? I went from reading my bible countless times a day to fellowshipping with my Heavenly father once or twice a day.
Of course, I suffered no consequences, all was still well and good in my life because the love of God is constant over me. But something did happen, my love for God reduced. I still loved Him, but that love wasn’t setting my heart on fire. It wasn’t burning inside of me the way it used to. That familiar feeling of unexplainable joy and sound peace started to be replaced with feelings of worry and guilt.
I stopped over-flowing with the love of God and began to just flow in the things of the Lord.
You see, I never want to just flow in the things of God, I want to over-flow constantly.
So I’m making a decision, I’m going into the secret place; that is a place of fellowship between me and my heavenly father. I’m going to seek God wholeheartedly. I will consecrate myself, separate myself from worldly engagements for a short time to gain spiritual wholeness.
The thing is even though as Christians we are constantly filled with the Holy Spirit, our flesh is still prevalent. There is and will always be a constant battle between the flesh and the spirit. Unfortunately, the need to please people still prevails through my flesh as a weakness and in order to fight that off, I need to strengthen myself within the word and Spirit of God.
If you can relate to anything I’ve written in this post, you’re not alone. Make this decision with me.