Driving into work with music playing, as always, and I started praying again (I do this fairly regularly – but not as much as I should do it must be said!) and really felt a gentle nudge about my personal relationship with God.
If you recall from my previous entries here – the big thing about me coming back to God was the realisation that I needed an intimate, on-to-one, faith and not just a corporate experience.
The past few weeks have been chaos, me and Mrs H are still worn out and barely seem to have enough energy to climb out of the sofa and walk up the stairs to bed at night… and during this I’ve let my personal time with God falter and get pushed out of the way. “I’m too tired”, “Got no energy” or the classic “If I close my eyes to pray I’ll be snoring in 30 seconds” seem to have become a ridiculous part of my lingo these days and I’m actually noticing the effects this is having – I’m finding myself slipping into “old-ways” of thinking about people or situations and even mentally responding in a way I used to do, and that had changed in drastic ways.
As with any relationship of any kind be it working, friendship, business, parental or intimate – my faith requires a commitment from myself and an effort in maintaining it.
It’s not easy as the intangible can easily be pushed out to make way for the tangible and it can often be too late before we realise how detrimental that can be. Thankfully I’ve been given a nudge to make me realise what I’ve been doing so now I can rectify it!
The other thing that struck me during this revealing time is that I miss Worship. “But wait”, I hear you say, “Don’t you have a time of worship on a Sunday” – well, yes we do but I’d classify most of it as Praise and although I really do enjoy it and love the songs we sing and the atmosphere etc, and even though I do meet with God during it, I miss the more intimate style of worship in many ways.
It’s kinda difficult to explain fully what I mean – but when we visited Trent Vineyard the other week, the worship there felt more intimate, even though there were a similar number of people present. The songs that were sung, the way it was led and the way that there was time left for the songs to soak in and for people to receive during the worship felt soooo refreshing.
Don’t get me wrong – I *love* KingsGate and love the worship there…. but if you compare a Hillsongs CD (which is pretty much how the worship at our Church operates) to a Vineyard UK CD (such as Holy or Hungry) you can feel a difference in where it leads you. It’s all about God but both have an equal place and a balance is what I need.
I guess I need to find time – no, MAKE time!! – to worship at home, pray and study Gods word and get that intimate worship as part of my life… but I also can see that visits to my parents are going to be, in part, about giving and receiving that more intimate style of corporate worship.
Life is sooooo chaotic right now – we just don’t seem to be stopping or slowing down. The other week was the British Grand Prix (still buzzing from that – although I really must get around to watching the race on the TV to catch up on the bits we missed) and we still haven’t have time to recover from that, especially as last weekend was just as busy in some ways… and yet more is to come.