Ok, you busted me! I've been slack! I haven't been posting a devotional a day. Would you care to know why? Well, apart from life taking place around me, and me being slack with my time, there is no excuse. Though there is a reason.
But first, a quick journey back in time:
About 4 years ago, God gave me an image of Him standing before a large territory that I was to venture into, and behind His back He held a key. Upon His brow there was deep concern and a sorrow He could not hide. When I wondered what the sorrow was for, it came clear to me that, on giving me the key He held, He ran the risk of losing me.
4 years on, and now I see what He means.
Last week I spent 5 days turning off all distractions and seeking Him for a time, with the hope of having my heart restored. He brought me to a place where He revealed that I had swept my heart and its emotions, lost dreams, disappointments and so on under the carpet. He then went on to reveal to me that I thrive on intimacy, and that the internet had become a place in my world where I could find a false intimacy.
One definition of intimacy I found is "...a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group."
Prior to the above image God gave me, I had prayed for a long time for a place I could write and share my experience with God and the personal revelations He gives me. At the time, every door in my life closed, and the only one that opened was the internet.
That was perfect, actually. Finally, I had a place to write, and write I did. But, to make a long story short, four years on I've found that the intimate relationship I shared with God has suffered. I still love Him, but I don't hear from Him as I used to. The Holy Spirit searches the deep things of God and makes it know to us, but I wasn't hearing what He had to say as clearly and as much as I used to because I was spending more and more time online, on sites such as Myspace, Facebook, etc and so on, seeking "a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group" online, that shared at least one common interest, and becoming more and more familiar with them (or the interests, such as poetry) than I was with God.
A relationship is a two-way conversation. A one ended one will not survive...whether that is with another human, or with God. And because I've been slack in nurturing my "conversations" with God - therefore causing the gap to grow between us, I've lost heart in that which He has given me passion for, and my writing has suffered for it.
While my passion for writing is returning, it is returning solely because my passion for God and the intimacy between us is becoming more and more important to me than anything else, once more... You could say I'm trading in one lover for another... only, it's more of a case that I'm returning to my True Love, and no longer being unfaithful to Him.