Shifting Slowly

It seems that I only find time to do this in the quiet. I find time to let my thoughts settle, decide to write and actually do it. The quiet only comes though early in the morning or very late at night. The busy of the day takes over and my mind is trapped in a state of go, go, go.

This morning as I was in the Word and studying Proverbs it hit me, enough is enough, it is time to share your wisdom, your knowledge. These are the words I said to myself. And these are the words I believe many others before me who have shared their knowledge on God and the purpose of life said before they finally said enough is enough. I’m grateful for these folks because that may have been the only time social media actually played a positive role in my life.

I may have mentioned once or many times before that I grew up religiously. I grew up in a home where religion played a huge role, even though both my parents were not on the same page with it. It did not really play a burden though that one parent was the one that followed a religion and the other didn’t. The other parent that did not just went along with the parent that did and we, the children, went along with the parent that did as well. I have fond and strong memories growing up this way.

However, in my older years, towards my teens, rebellion and questions and doubt settled in. So I did what any teenager would do and I took my life in my own hands and I played a double role. I was the good daughter that showed up for church and then I was the rebellious daughter that showed up for my own selfish things and in between those lines is where doubt settled in.

I teeter tottered between both roles until my early 20’s when I finally left religion behind and any and everything thing I thought belonged only to religion, most commonly known as God.

For years I thought I could not at all worship God because I was not part of a religion. I put the two together in an exclusive relationship without knowing that He belonged to all and religion was just an identity. That identifying with religion is not identifying with God. That the two are not interchangeable.

I am in my mid-forties now and it’s taken me over 35 years to finally identify with God as a standalone and not confuse it with the rules and holds and policies religion poses. God’s Word is where it’s at, not in the church pews.

It is now that I realize that you can identify with a religion but that doesn’t mean you’re spiritual. I can identify as a bird nowadays but that doesn’t mean I’m jumping off my balcony and spreading my wings to fly.

The church was created for community. To find those among you that will encourage you and keep you up and vice versa. The church is a reminder of who God is and what He asks of us and most importantly, the church was created as a place of worship, as His home to find Him there. But I’ve learned God is also in your heart, in the sunrise and the sunset, on the beach when the waves crash on your feet, in the laughter of my child, in the mourning of my father and his memories, in the wind that brushes up against my back on a hot summer day. God is in and around us all.

There are 3 words I’m using here that are stand alone things and do not need to be put together to feel God’s love; God, church and religion. It’s sad that many believe that to have God you must have church and religion. But if you read the Word, if you focus on what it says, something extraordinary begins to happen. Wisdom and knowledge start to flourish, your mind and heart renew and faith builds. These things are not things found solely in a Sunday sermon. They are not tangible. You can not hold them. They are grown from the inside and given to us by an invisible source that only faith can understand.

I can go on and on and tell you my version of God but the truth is the only way transformation happens and the only way to make sense of it all and to find purpose and to find your faith is by doing your own reading. The tools are out there and I have found that every single answer to every single question and doubt I’ve had and sometimes still have because life gets confusing still, is found in the Word.

God is actually closer than we all think and identifying with Him, identifying with Christ and what he’s done for us and understanding what a healthy fear of God is is life changing and transforming and can only be understood by the individual that chooses to go down this path. The path of reading the Bible, doing the research, reading the commentaries, listening to sermons, reading different bible translations, praying for understanding and wisdom and lastly, letting go and letting God. Letting Him in to the most private rooms of your life and trusting that He has your best interest. That the purpose of the Lord is good and His word never changes. What He says stands and has always stood and will always stand.