Recalibrate

I recently read a book by the name of 'Wild at Heart' and this line has been haunting me ever since:

"I want to hurl myself into a creative work worthy of God."

Beautiful right? But maybe you're wondering why it's "haunting" me. The word haunting usually has negative connotations, I get that. But that sentence gripped me in a way that was both deeply encouraging and deeply scary. I have been feeling these jitters over the past few years and have had many encouraging words spoken over me by wonderful men and women of God. Powerful words like: "Warrior" and "dynamite", and phrases like: "What you are doing right now is simply a test for something much bigger and much greater." And I feel it too. I don't believe these jitters are just my own pride telling me I'm super awesome or something. In fact, I feel so aware of my inability and my weakness. Yet, I feel a hunger and a thirst for adventure and spiritual warfare that I can't quite explain. I've started grasping onto lyrics in songs like:

"You make me brave. You call me out beyond the shore into the waves." (Amanda Cooke, Bethel Music)

and,

"You call me out upon the water, the great unknown, where feet may fail. There I find you in the mystery, in oceans deep my faith will stand." (Hillsong United)

I would sing them over and over again and weep with feelings of intense longing and perfect joy. Something is calling me beyond the shore into the deep. I believe that's where God wants me, amidst the crash and spray, relying on his perfect protection. When I drive around the peninsula on grey days I am always enamored by the choppy seas. They hypnotize me. Something about the storm is grabbing me.

It's finding a creative work worthy of God that I am so tested by. The more and more I get to know my God, the more and more I realise how completely unworthy and completely fragile I am. The deeper I dig into the spiritual, the more aware I become of my flesh.

Lately, I have become so aware of the ugly habits I have learnt when seeking comfort from sadness or insecurity or even just boredom. I have also become grossly aware of the ways in which Satan sneaks little lies (masked as truth) in here and there to stop me in my tracks and keep me from advancing in what God has called me to. He knows just how to make me lazy and passive.

So, you're wondering why the title of this post is 'Recalibrate'? I've set for myself the mammoth task of trying to expel any sign of addiction from my life and learn to rely completely on God. I believe it is only from this place that He can then use me for the great work He has planned. This all started when I caught myself walking into the house on Sunday afternoon, after an emotionally taxing weekend at church camp, and making a beeline for the chocolate drawer. I realised in that moment that though I think I am so reliant on God, I in fact reach for many other things for comfort on an hourly basis. And these things don't fill me up for very long. I am never quite so satisfied with these things as I am when I am immersed in the presence of God. Yet, I reach for them first. Their presence is sometimes more tangible and easy to get at the drop of a hat a suppose.

The following few points are going to seem very basic and practical in comparison to everything I have written above. But I find it incredibly interesting that the simplest of things, when used in abusive measures or for the wrong reasons, can actually do more harm than good. Tomorrow I start applying the following:

Quitting sugar - I plan to do Sarah Wilson's 8-week 'I Quite Sugar' programme. I'm HECTICALLY addicted to sugar. I did the programme last year and it was amazingly freeing, but somewhere between Christmas, birthday parties and the winter slump, I did a full-circle back to my naughty ways. Wilson's line from the intro to her book rang so true with me: "We have a deep-rooted resistance to quitting sugar. We grow up with an emotional and physical attachment to it. Just the idea of not being able to turn to it when we're feeling happy or want to celebrate, or when we're feeling low or tired, terrifies us." This is so true for me. But I want my natural reaction not to be to turn to chocolate for comfort, but for God to be my 'pick-me-up'.

Quitting procrastination - This one's tough! Mind-numbing is often the order of the day when I'm feeling tired or over-stimulated from a busy day. I find it so much easier to turn to the TV or browsing social media on my phone and excuse it as "Well, you've had a busy day," than it is to nurture my creative abilities, amp up my knowledge with a good book or spend some time writing and making plans.

Exercising more - I'm usually quite good at getting my exercise in, during the week. But I like to call it "lazy exercise". I'll take my dog for a walk around the block and call it exercise, or choose the 15min "relaxation" yoga class on YouTube instead of the intense 45 min one. I guess my fear is becoming obsessive about it like I was back in my college days, which was incredibly damaging for me, but I do want to be fit and strong and honour the amazing body God has blessed me with. Testing and exercising it is a wonderful act of worship.

The above doesn't seem like much "fun" on the outset. It seems like I'm being a bit hard on myself maybe and it's easy to wonder if God wants us to have any fun at all. But I believe He wants us to have more fun than we can even fathom or imagine. I just know that I haven't gotten it from any of the places I've searched for it before, because I've been searching in the wrong places. God loves matter - He created food for us to eat and enjoy and He loves us to socialise (in reference to social media) and He also loves it when we find rest and relaxation. The problem I think is when we rely to heavily on these things. And the more we rely on them, the more we rely on them.

I read this great excerpt from C.S. Lewis' 'Mere Christianity' this morning:
"'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.'"