With Jesus

Wow, it's 2022. We're only a month in and I can already feel that this year is going to be different. A whole lot of depending on Jesus, a whole lot of mistakes, a whole lot of feelings and a whole lot of faith. One of the biggest lessons I learned last year was having utter dependence on God, even when I felt I didn't need it, especially then. And that remains true today. Last year I shared that my relationship with God was pretty stale, I lacked conviction, I had zero passion and I honestly just floated around purposeless for a bit. This year I began doing a daily devotional (The Purpose Driven Life By Rick Warren) I found the devotional at Bens grans house and she kindly lent it to me. After a couple of successful days of doing the devotional, deciding to read it l became quite difficult, my phone felt way more appealing than reading and I honestly didn't really feel anything, but nevertheless, I picked up the book, read about 3 pages and then had a worship session every day. And on one particular morning I bluntly told God that I felt nothing, I didn't feel his presence, I didn't feel that he was speaking to me, I didn't feel moved and at that moment God challenged me with a thought - "do you think you could continue to worship me without gaining anything from it?" and I was taken back. All this time that I kept on wondering why I felt nothing, I never stopped to realise that we don't praise God because of how we'll feel afterwards, we praise God, because he is God. We don't worship him to get tingles, we don't pray so that we feel better - yes those are all things that happen, but that isn't the single reason why we have a relationship with God. The reason we have a relationship with God is to be with God.

God reminded me that I needed to pursue him even when I couldn't feel him. It would've been easy to have had those feelings, put down the book and go onto youtube because I didn't 'feel God today'. I truly believe that those couple days of not feeling God and still choosing him made a massive difference in my relationship with him. It reminded me that I don't live a life based on feelings, that I don't put my feelings before my God. Following those days, I went into prayer warrior mode. I was reminded of how powerful prayer can be and that God still answers prayers, the more I prayed the more I was reminded of Gods character, the more I prayed, I relied on Gods character and not my feelings to guide my prayers. My prayer for you for 2022, is that you simply spend time with God, without any agenda, whether you get tingles or not, whether you feel something or not.