"Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto thee thy mercies, whereby thou hast saved me from all my most wicked ways till thou shouldst become sweet to me beyond all the allurements that I used to follow. Let me come to love thee wholly, and grasp thy hand with my whole heart that thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the last. And thus, O Lord, my King and my God, may all things useful that I learned as a boy now be offered in thy service--let it be that for thy service I now speak and write and reckon. For when I was learning vain things, thou didst impose thy discipline upon me: and thou hast forgiven me my sin of delighting in those vanities. In those studies I learned many a useful word, but these might have been learned in matters not so vain; and surely that is the safe way for youths to walk in."~St. Augustine's Confessions

The Narrow Road

Posted by Naomi / at 2:21 AM / /

I received a letter today from my dear friend Lydia in which she enclosed a quote that really struck me.

For many years we may have had love for God in general and never known Him. He is only known when love for Him takes on a personal character; when we meet Him in the pathway of life; when He becomes a person in contrast with our own; when we enter into conscious, vital, and personal relation with him, so that He is our Father and we His children; not merely one of His children, but His child in a special way, in a personal relation different from that of His other children, even the closest relation conceivable in heaven and on earth: He our Father, our Shepherd, our bosom friend, and our God. ~To Be Near Unto God by Abraham Kuyper

I envy Enoch. He walked with God so closely that one day God just took away to be with Him forever. Enoch never died. He experienced a one-on-one, completely personal walk with God. They were friends...bosom friends.

I want my walk with God to be that close. The truth is that so often I pile on the excuses as to why I can't spend time with Him. I say a grocery list prayer before I go to sleep and ask Him to keep His promise to "give His beloved sleep." I sing Christian songs with great gusto and fool myself into believing that that is a relationship while the thought "I should be spending time in His presence" lurks in the back of my head.

Why is it so hard to walk with God personally on that narrow road?

As Americans, I think we have this sense of entitlement to personal space. We schedule our time down to the last minute and are angry when someone encroaches upon it. We have this fear that if we are too open and intimate with someone they will betray us or let us down. Committing to something or someone is definitely an issue with which we struggle. This translates to our spiritual lives as well.

Trusting your future to God's provision is a rather scary thing. It's like the biggest blind date of your life. You don't know where He's going to take you, but you get to know Him along the way and inevitably fall in love. If one can get past one's fears of intimacy, commitment, and lack of control, the path can be one of satisfaction and delight. I think it's totally worth it.

So here's my challenge...for myself...for you:

Walk more. Take God's offered hand and walk with Him down a road that will lead you home. Spend more time soaking up His word. Learn His nature. Truly know Him the way He always intended us to know Him. If it means waking up 10 minutes earlier, watching one less sitcom, taking your lunch break outside with your Bible and a journal, or spending an hour on your face before Him, do it. Do whatever it takes to really know what it means to be a child of God. Learn to love Him even more.

You won't regret it.

 

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