Intimacy With God

This week we had the privilege of hearing from Shay Robbins who is a director of one of the Kanakuk Kamps. I loved listening to him because he is so passionate about the topic he spoke on, which was intimacy with God. We started by talking about seeking God, because if we are going to have intimacy with Him we need to seek Him. After that, we talked about how God speaks to us and the avenues He uses to do so. That was really convicting because it became clear why I haven’t heard from God a lot. It is because I haven’t been taking time to do things like really study His word or seek out Godly people to pour into me. If I want God to speak to me, I have to be willing to listen and make sure that  my heart is in a state where I can hear Him.  That leads right into the next thing Shay talked about, which is spiritual disciplines. The six that he talked about are:

1.     Study

2.     Solitude

3.     Meditation

4.     Fasting

5.     Prayer

6.     Simplicity

It was pretty convicting to see these and realize how poor of a job I am doing at practicing them. However, it was encouraging to hear how these things didn’t come easy for Shay either at first. For example, I am really bad at waking up early to have a quiet time. When my alarm goes off, the last thing I want to do is get out of bed. When Shay first started having his quiet time in the morning, he struggled with the same thing. In fact, it took him six months of pure discipline before waking up early became a passion. Now he says there are days where he can’t wait to wake up and spend time with God. It is nice to know that I am not the only one who struggles at that discipline. Sometimes it seems that everything comes easy for older wiser people, but Shay had six months of not wanting to wake up early before it became easy. It is also encouraging that if we are disciplines and really focus on getting better at something, it will become easier.

 Hearing that right before Christmas break was great timing because during breaks is when it is the hardest to manage those spiritual disciplines.

That ends my first semester at Link Year. Thanks for those of you who have been following this blog throughout the year. I really appreciate it!