Devotional Distress

Does anyone else ever get overwhelmed with the notion of personal devotions and prayer? Recently I have been making a point to have quality time with God, yet each day I feel like I have not done enough, or sometimes I feel like I did too much and feel frustrated and overloaded. Don't get me wrong, I am learning a lot and feel a greater peace and unity with my Father, yet it seems my attention is pulled in so many directions. Let me explain...

I am in a Bible Study at my church that is currently working through The Pursuit of Godliness. It is the sequel to the book The Pursuit of Holiness. I honestly liked the first book better, although I am not sure why. Perhaps holiness is more easily defined in my brain rather than the broad concept of godliness, although both seem so unattainable. Anyway, that is something that I am wrestling through. Also, I am currently reading the book Calm My Anxious Heart. This book hits home with each paragraph I read. My personality is prone to worry, to focus on the future, or the things out of my control and each chapter convicts and encourages me in a new way. Throughout the week, I spend the bulk of my quiet time working through this book. I underline, mark it up, and do the weekly challenges the book suggests. Currently I am drafting my personal purpose statement. Never have I thought about that concept yet the author Linda Dillow encourages the reader to incorporate verses and quotes to create a life mission statement, an anchor to fall back on when life seems out of control. I have decided on a few items I'd like to include in my statement, yet I don't have it fully ironed out. When I went off to college my aunt gave me a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt and although it is not a Biblically based quote, I love the words. I want to use it as a framework as I begin my early drafting. The quote reads, "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." Now like I said, the quote leaves God completely out of the picture so I am working to weave various Biblical truths into the phrase.
Something like...
"The purpose of life is to live it, to spend every moment in the moment seeking to know Him more and bring all glory to His name. To taste the positive and seemingly negative experiences of life with gratitude, humility, and a teachable spirit. To reach out with open eyes, heart, and hands desiring to put others' needs before mine. To eagerly and without fear seek to place one foot in front of the other following in my Father's guiding footsteps."
Like I said, still a work in progress....

Anyway, I am working through those two very different books as well as reading through the book of James. Throughout my life I have had good devotional spurts and then months with very little devotional time invested. Usually I find closeness with my Savior through Christian books and prayer. Now, there is nothing wrong with using books to guide you, but recently a friend encouraged me to really spend time reading the Bible. At Bible college I spent so much time in the Word that I tended to take it for granted. It has been very good, but now I feel like I am spending so much energy trying to work on so many different aspects of my life. Each avenue is convicting me and challenging me.

Not only do I think devotional time and learning more from God and about God are important, I truly enjoy the aspect of a prayer relationship with God. There is nothing as comforting as a conversation with the Creator of the Universe; the one that holds my very being in His hand and close to His heart. My seven year old sister and I were talking about prayer the other day. We were visiting my parents and she crawled into bed with me one morning. We were just talking about life and laughing when she told me that she prays every night before she goes to bed. We talked about the things that she prays for and I was so convicted by her honest and pure faith. She truly is a prayer warrior. A funny comment she made at the end of the conversation really summed up my feelings sometimes. In all seriousness she looked me in the eye and said, "Jess, sometimes I am just so tired at night but I still want to talk to God. I just close my eyes and say, 'Dear God, PRAY! Amen.' Cuz He knows the things that I usually pray about and then He can take care of them." I laughed when she said it and we talked briefly about how awesome it is that God knows our hearts, then the conversation turned. I thought about that a lot on the way back to our house. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by all the things I should be praying about and people I should be praying for. Life gets so busy and there are so many hurting people. I want my prayer time to be completely meaningful, yet I get overwhelmed. I want to pray for each of my students by name, all of my family members, my future children, my friends, my husband, the list continues...Growing up, my family had family devotions each night and we had a distinct method for praying: Monday-Missionaries, Tuesday-Teachers, Wednesday-Whoever, Whatever, Thursday-Thanksgiving, Friday-Friends and Family. Perhaps Matt and I should adopt that same system of praying together, then I might not get so overwhelmed by it all. Despite my feelings, it is nice to know that my God already knows the future and while I think it is important to carry specific needs to God, it truly is a comfort to know that he knows our hearts! Thank you for that little reminder, Juliana!!! Romans 8:26-27 says, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God."

I want my devotional time to be more passionate and relational not as "list driven." I don't want to worry about if I read enough or prayed for enough people. I want to be challenged, yet don't want to feel completely frustrated and overwhelmed. Maybe this is God breaking down my confident view of myself to see that there are MANY things that I can work on. Perhaps I need to simply chew on things longer rather than take such large bites each day. I'm just learning along the way...

What are you learning?