I'm way worse at it than people probably think, simply because I write about God and faith. I'm just as selfish and self-centered as anyone else, if not more. That's why I'm writing this: because I finally did what I should have been doing every day.
It's been said A.W. Tozer would spend about four hours each day, on his knees, in silent prayer.
Can you imagine?!
Four hours!?
On his knees!?
In silence with God!?
I'm literally shaking my head in awe. I even want to believe it isn't true, because, seriously, who does that?!
I don't know I could do any of those things individually, let alone together.
Four hours straight with God, alone!? Not with a small group or at church or anywhehere where someone else could hold you accountable, but alone, in a room, with no one to impress? He's kidding right? Nope.
I can't spend five seconds on my knees, so four hours would probably literally send me straight to the hospital.
And silence? Silence! Goodness. I don't know anyone who personally doesn't run from silence 95% of the day. If not more. They probably don't even realize they are doing it, but they are. We all are. I am.
That was one of the scariest things in the beginning with Stills Disease: the silence. Silence is what just might kill you. Not the pain or the fatigue or the meds, it's that endless successiveness gnawing at you, playing with you, tricking you, making you question everything and everyone, making you play "what if's" and worst case scenarios. It's what makes you doubt everything, especially yourself.
The silence screams both truth and lies, and sifting through all of them will drive you more and more nuts until it finally and eventually, and almost unbelievingly, chisels away to some of your inner sanity.
But who knows how long that will take and you certainly never believe you will make it. Not through. And that is why we distract. The truth is too much and the lies are too sad. So we slide around the silence. We cover it up. We ignore it. We hide from it. We pretty much avoid it at all cost. I do.
Silence is a trap, and to find your way out of those traps for four hours?!
Hours every day on your knees which are screaming in pain so loud it's amazing Tozer heard silence at all.
What discipline!
What devotion!
What worship and true oneness with God!
If only, right? If only...
I long for it, though. We all do, even if you arent yet consciously aware of it.
It's what keeps me up at night. It might be keeping you up at night too.
In the beginning the silence drove me nuts at 2:00 am. And then it slowly gave way to something so... other, so pure. And since it happened slowly (as if to ease my way into the truth and to gradually get me used to it, so as not to overwhelm me with His presence), I didn't notice it of course. I tried to block out the silence even when it started to feel less like stark truth and lies and more like, well, like I got God ALL to myself. I continued to try to block it out almost simply because I was used to it. Simply because it became habbit.
The world stands still at 2 or 3 am. You feel like, if you have been blessed with the Holy Spirit instead of cursed wth frustration, like it's just you and God. It feels like the rest of the world falls away while they sleep. The quiet becomes His dwelling place. He finds rest in it, with you, if you can see it that way. And for the first few years it was something so extraordinary that I began to dread daylight for it felt like that's when the world started to steal God from me. It irrationally felt like I was losing His full attention. The rest of the world was waking up and screaming at Him, yelling for Him, telling Him what to do, and He slowly pulled His presence from me and towards all of them. Sounds crazy. I know that. But that doesn't change how it used to feel.
Yeah, used to. I've lost it. The years and nights now bleed together into a continuous puddle of pain and fatigue and loneliness.
But it's not His fault. It's mine. I forgot to listen to silence's truth and was drowning in the lies again. Different lies than in the beginning, but lies nonetheless. And it's been miserable. Just awful. Just sad. And frustrating. How do you spend time with God when you've got nothing in you?! Nothing!
I've been stuck. Stuck in this, endless cycle of frustration and pain and circumstances seemingly out of my control: How do you worship God when you physically can't?
Or can I?
I just spent the night with God like the old days! The problem? I'm not as young and healthy as I was even just a few years ago. It's even worse now. Now, even watching tv feels too hard, like too much.
You see, worship costs me something, physically. Literally.
An hour of worship may cost me a few days. A few days down, and out, and lost. And this both makes worship more meaningful, like what Tozer did, and it worries me. I'm afraid I physically won't be able to worship the way I want to, some day all too soon. I'm afraid I will shy from worship simply because of the cost...
I just spent three hours learning and tuning a ukulele, a new instrument for me. I barely know guitar, and I thought this would be easier on the nights the guitar is too much, too heavy, too big, too, well, too.
My back hurts. My knees hurt. My fingers, wrists and forearms were broken before I did this, but...BUT!
I spent the night with God like the old days!
I was just talking with my Stephen Minister from church about how I used to LOVE the sleepless nights--thrive off of them really! Nothing was better, or more amazing, or life giving, and alive than being fully cognizant of the fact that all around me, within a few thousand miles either way, when I was awake at 3:00 am, except for a few like me, it was just me and God.
It felt so intimate back when we were courting and first engaged and I've recently in the last couple years grown weary of the sleepless nights with Him, and I'm ashamed of that. I told my StephenMinister that I want to go back, back to how it felt in the beginning, or at least move toward it instead of away from it. And tonight, tonight I did! I took a step toward God and felt like I had Him all to myself!
I'm smiling now. (That's one thing I hate about writing. You all can't see my gentle smile that forms when I'm in awe of God. I'm smiling again.)
I don't think it will break from this pure joyful moment for a while. I mean, I'm in so much pain, soooo much pain, and I couldn't care less. Worshipping God (smile), it's always worth it, or at least it should be, just like Tozer. He really set an amazing example...
But I'm afraid. I don't trust myself. Not with this...
and the saddest part, is that when I was healthy and able to worship God and it didn't cost me anything but time, I worshiped Him even less than I do now. And yet I'm still scared, of choosing to have the next three days to do "whatever" instead of knowing the physical cost and still worshipping God anyway, still choosing Him over me.
I read that somewhere. Something like, worshiping God is often as simple as choosing Him and His desires over mine. Choosing God over self.
We often don't even do that when we go to church. Not fully. Some people do, and my heart is blessed to know a few of them, but we still get so easily distracted by ourselves. How God handles it, I...He is love. That's all I know: He is love.
"Yet self-sufficient as Thou art, Thou dost desire my worthless heart." -Johann Scheffler
And so, no matter how much it costs, and well, it just happens to cost me more than the healthy, I want to truly try to focus remembering there are lies and truth in silence, and we do have the choice which to worship.
And I am not sure if worship needs to cost you something, but I am sure that makes it more meaningful and beautiful when it does. I feel it connects you to the way worship was done in the bible, perhaps the way God intended it. And it connects you to His Son.
It's hard. Trust me; I know that. It's even harder at 3:00 am. And even harder when you're in constant pain and fatigue and you never sleep. And I am not going to be very good at this in the beginning....I'm going to get it wrong a lot of nights. Most nights.
The lies will find their way in, but I'm gonna pray I get more and more ok with that. I can't beat myself up over being human. I am just going to pray I choose to worship truth more than I fester into anger and lies. And I'm gonna pray this worship, no matter how much it ends up costing me, makes me smile more and more, and it makes me grimace or complain less and less.
I am going to pray I choose God more than I choose myself.
What do you think? How do you worship? When and where do you worship? Does it cost you anything? Should it?
When silence falls, do you break? Do you run and hide? How does it make you feel? Trapped by lies or free by truth?
When silence falls at 3:00 am which do you choose to worship: the truth with God or the lies with frustration and anxiety?
Do you think it is a choice?
Can it be our new choice?
Are you willing to pay the cost of worship? Not to gain favor with The Lord, but to show Him you love Him and to show Him you choose Him and His Truth over yourself, no matter what.
We can at least try, can't we? Together?
Thank you, Lord. Thank you. For, well, everything. Especially the nights I get You all to myself. No matter how much I whine and ache and feel frustrated in the heat of the moment, always Lord, always make sure it costs me something. It makes worshipping You a great story. It makes me smile. It cleanses me. It calms me. It connects us. It's pure worship free of self.
I shake my head in awe of You, and Your storytelling, and Your people, and I can't believe You think I'm worthy of being written into Your story.
So ignore my sinful, selfish, wimpy emotions when I am blind and only see the lies, and make me live Your truth. Help me see Your Truth.
Make me aware of You, even if it's physically, if not especially, in my pain.
Just a few hours ago I was telling L how badly I wish you were more tangible. Well, I feel You Father, I feel You. I feel You in my worship. I feel You in my pain. I feel You in Your Truth. Thank You. Thank You.
And please continue to help all of us find You and Your Truth and only You and Your Truth when silence and darkness fall upon us. And when we see You, may we choose You over ourselves no matter what the cost.
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