A few months ago I had a bit of an Epiphany if you will, I realized how great God is and started running after Him full force, and it seemed like nothing could stop it I just kept getting bombarded with His love and discovering Him in new ways, and I told people that God had me on a fast track of some sort, something I believe was true, but I don’t want to talk about that I want to talk about what happened after this, I went to my grandparents before I went to Ghana, and in that week it seemed a sense of doom settled over me and while I was still basking in the glory and beauty of what I had been experiencing, I stopped seeking Him and felt like I was at a place where God was just going to keep happening to me. Without realizing it I had just spun out of Gods fast track, and while I was in Ghana I still did not realize it or even until I this past Friday, when I was talking to Pastor Cobb and he told me it seemed like I had been making progress and drawing really close to God before I left but that since I got back it seemed like I had last some of the ground I had gained, he told me I needed to regain that ground and keep gaining after that. As we talked he mentioned a sermon he had preached in August where he told a story about a guy who got saved and went to a church and after going for a while asked the pastor, “when are we going to do the stuff?” after some confusion on the part of the pastor the man said “you know the stuff you’ve been talking about the stuff Jesus and the Disciples did” and the pastor replied “Oh, we don’t do the stuff we just talk about it” pastor Cobb used this as a catalyst to get us to start “doing the stuff” I was really excited by this sermon and it kind of was like in my fast track God stepped on the gas a little bit more. Pastor cob told me that I should maybe start revisiting the things that had been catalysts in my growth, I needed to “reawaken” the spirit within me, so I did, and through all this I started, realizing how we have a mentality about when we reach a spiritual high that it is not to last we will and should come back down, when I thought about this I was reminded of a video I watched as part of a study I did on the Book Crazy Love by Francis Chan in which he talks about a girl on a worship team where he speaks who each week seems to be experiencing God in a whole new way and it was always so fresh to her, he wondered how she did that so one day he asked her and she replied “when I have an amazing time with God and experience Him in a new fresh way I don’t come back the next week and ask Him to do it again, I never ask for God to repeat an experience,” she said” I ask Him, God show yourself to me in a totally fresh and new way, reveal a new aspect of yourself to me today. And when I thought about this I realized that our whole Idea of “coming down” from a spiritual high is wrong. When we experience God in a new way and reach a new level of intimacy with Him maybe we won’t stay in that moment forever or the sensations won’t last but our awareness of that reality should not end, we should constantly be seeking to see God in new ways, and to draw closer to Him, instead of looking at him as an emotional high we get on Sunday or at the latest conference we attended and then lose a week or day later. We are told in Thessalonians 5; 17 to “pray continually”, and when we do that we can become so close to God that we can’t help but see Him in everything, and opportunities to talk about Him and His great love are not something we need to search for they present themselves, it is then our job to have the courage to take those opportunities, and share our joy. When we think about living life in constant prayer and seeking to experience God in new ways everyday it can be hard to know how to do that, so here are some of the things I have learned that help me. Look around, when you are outside, no matter where you are, in Psalm 19 we are told “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” So look at the trees, the sky, grass, God is everywhere, look at your friends, look at yourself, you are surrounded by beautiful people, you are a beautiful person. Just the fact that you exist, shows God’s glory! Look at the paint on your walls if it’s blue what does that remind you of water, the sky. Look at your house, I mean any building, if you live in America chances are when you have to go to the bathroom, you have a room you can go to and be alone, there are places where people go on the beach if they have to poop, or if they have to pee, I was at a celebration in Ghana where there were 1500 people around and a girl standing in front of me squatted and peed right there, so be thankful you get to go to a room or stall by yourself. Think about music, there are 12 notes that bind everything together, those twelve notes are used to convey feelings of joy, sorrow, peace, and turmoil, there are hundreds of genre’s of music and they all use the same 12 notes, all to tell different stories, God made those 12 notes. You can see God in everything around you, the birds, dogs, cats, He is there, Psalm 19 goes on to say “There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” When you read, or write, those words they declare God’s glory, as you see these things thank God, pray. If you look for God everywhere, you will find Him and if every time you look for Him you pray, if every time you find Him, you pray, guess what, as long as you are always looking for Him, you are always praying. When you wake up in the morning, pray ask God to reveal Himself to you in new ways, you will never run out of new ways to look at Him, he is endless, Just think about that, God never ends. So seek Him always, pray continually, and live life pushing deeper into Him, every time you reach a new spiritual high, a new depth with God, not only cling to it, but push deeper, press in you will never get to the center much less the other side. So Push and ask for more, he will always be there revealing Himself to you. If there are times you feel distant push harder, never assume God is just going to happen to you, He woos you, but to keep getting more you have to push, read your bible, pray, talk with other Christians, just push for more God. Ethan
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