I am about to enter a new season in my life…sabbatical.
I have never been on a sabbatical before, and am fortunate to be given 11 weeks to seek God, do things that restore and refresh, and hopefully come out the other side of those weeks filled up and more eager about the things in life that God has specifically called me to do.
Being we just began a new month, I decided to get a jump start on sabbatical thinking and began doing the 30 day Faith Dare on July 1st. This may seem silly to some of you, as you are probably thinking, didn’t you write that book? The answer is “yes” and “no”. Yes, I wrote the words in the devotional guide. No, the ideas in the book are not mine, they come from the clear basic directional path of God’s Word. I can not change a life, nor can my words, but in this 30 day guided tour of practical daily dares, God is the one who moves in each participants individual heart through the power of His Word.
Proof of this seems clear to me this morning.
The past 5 days of starting my day with the dares has proved to be focus changing. And, focus change, is the beginning of heart and life change. With my focus on truth and the scripture selection for each day, I am daring myself to drill deeply into the basic truth again and again throughout the day. It’s only day 5 and I am seriously being touched by God.
The women at the church I attend, Cornerstone Fellowship, will be doing The Faith Dare, during the summer while I am gone. They will be ivited to join the blog on The Faith Dare that began last summer. I would like to invite you to join in too. It is a good devotional focus. So on this blogspot, if you look to your right, you will see a catagory list, click on The Faith Dare, and then go forward or backward to the day you are on, and join the conversation.
Here are some of the things God has pressed into my heart and mind the past 5 days, so far…
- God wants to give me a new heart, one that is not hard or held captive with hurt and bitterness. With this new heart he will move me to follow his ways and to live as his.
- I am to pay attention to God’s lead and learn to follow hard after Him.
- I am to Live as though I am completely Loved, and safe in that love, because I am loved by God.
- I am to Live as though I belong to God, because I am His, and I do not belong to myself.
Quoting from The Faith Dare…
“As we try to walk down two opposing paths, bitterness and blessing, the human side of us and the spiritual side of us–we will become increasingly unstable as time goes by. Rather than living a full life, we will settle for an empty life and get intot he groove of living for two masters: God and self.”
” This new heart is kept in proper rhythm by the truth found in God’s Word an by daily surrender of self.” ” For faith to be genuine our heart must be centered, focused, and intentionally loyal to God. We must ask God to teach us to walk in his ways.”
” If you are repeating the same cycle over and over stop the insanity and ask yourself these questions: Are you coming to Jesus daily and learning to follow his work in your life? are you listening and taking God’s Word seriously? Are you trying to take the lead in your life and asking God to bless you?”
Yes I am entering a season of rest and seeking God. I have many of these same questions to go back and ask myself. Questions that get glossed over in the busy lives we lead. Heck, for many of us, just taking care of our responsibilities, showing up at work, having food on the family table and ending up with clean clothes for everyone to wear is enough to think about. But, just know this. God does not draw a line between the practical and the spiritual. All of life is spiritual, and God himself, through Jesus Christ and His Spirit in us, desires to teach us how to live. It begins with the basic, oh so basic, invite from Christ himself…Come to Me.
Could it be that the basic things are the deepest?
Join the women of Cornerstone Fellowship as they Dare themselves for the next 30 days to look up in order to live up. You don’t have to be in Northern Ca, just join the conversation on the blogspot.
journeying into the Father’s will for my life,
Debbie
