The Pursuit – Part 2

I titled the page in my journal “A New Dawn”. Underneath the title were my goals for the next year, a practice that I follow most years.

It was 1 January 2009, over 3 years ago.

The first goal read: “of transformation, being renewed in my mind”, a few lines down it read, “of spending quality time with God and His Word everyday!”

Simple, huh? Transformation – what a word. Little did I know what was about to happen.

For the second time in my life, on the first day of 2009, God stepped in and told me, “It’s time!”

I had been wandering again, consumed by work and getting increasingly disenfranchised with what I was doing. Slogging away, achieving little for myself, and not having any perspective on the Kingdom. The Kingdom wasn’t really on my radar.

Four days earlier I had written this quote from John Eldredge, one of my favourite authors:

“Walking with God leads to receiving His intimate counsel, and counselling leads to deep restoration.”

Looking back now, what I started doing on that New Year’s Day, was exactly that – I started “walking with God”, everyday. I’m very proud of the fact that everyday since then I have sat down and read The Bible and prayed. Sure, some days both my prayer and Bible reading haven’t been long or every good, but I’ve done it. There have been days when I’ve been up at 4.30am reading the Word because I have a 630am plane to catch.

I think God likes that commitment, He sees I’m having a go. I haven’t become religious about it, well maybe some days, but I’m doing it because I want to. He sees our hearts, He sees our desires, He sees if we’re being religious or doing it out of a desire to “walk with Him”.

As a result, I can relate to Eldredge’s quote above – I feel I get daily counsel and I want more of it so I keep going back every day. I sense the Spirit near me most days, He wants me to connect, He wants me to come have a chat so He can counsel me some more.

In my next post I’ll share a little about my Bible reading routine.

What’s your experience of reading the Word regularly and feeling the Spirit’s presence?