It's funny how God will lay a little thing on your heart, a whisper, perhaps and if you are careful to listen, you may just get to watch Him in action as, right before your eyes, He will take that little thing and expand it into something more. This could be an idea that He is growing or a ministry even but as it happened in my case, it was a personal command.
Last week, probably about 10 days ago now, I was sitting in a Tuesday evening Beth Moore Bible study. I don't even remember what it was that Beth was saying on the video, but something sparked me to write at the top of my page "Is God calling me to a season of aloneness with Him?" How could I have know how my life would change from seeking out the answer to that one question. And now that I feel that I have gotten my answer (I will expand on that in a minute), I am looking back, reflecting and wondering, what if I had not listenend? What if I had not been attentive to His whisper? How much time and imtimacy with Him would I have forfeited while He was seeking out other ways to get my attention??
Well, imagine my surprise when a large part of Beth's lesson that night was about our time alone with the Lord and our intimacy with Him out of that time! I really felt like that was confirmation that He was indeed calling me into a season of aloneness with Him. And ever since then, several things have come my way to continue to point me into this time with Him.
So what does a season of aloneness with God really look like? Does it really mean to be alone? Well, first off, He has called me to clean all of the commitments off my schedule, except for one. I feel like He has been saying that my focus is to be on Him and ONLY on Him. Our family has had several trying weeks this winter and honestly, I think that a part of the reason that I am so busy is for the distraction that it provides. But once He started to call me into this season of aloneness, the devil just jumped on it and has given me a desire to be totally alone. Yes, I desire isolation right now, but since God never calls us into isolation, I know that it is not from Him. That is one reason why I am keeping the one commitment - to prevent myself from being isolated. He has also been laying on my heart the theme of idols. He is revealing to me that my friendships with my closest girlfriends are an idol in my life and that those relationships are coming between me and Him. I feel like yesterday He literally said to me, "When you need advice, you come to me. When you're lonely, you come to me. When you have something that you need to talk about, you come to me. When you're having a bad day and you feel like it's all falling apart, you come to me. Don't you go to your girlfriends. Yes, you call them and you absolutley ask them to pray for you, but don't you share your details with them and you are not to go to them seeking comfort, council or reassurance. You come to me to meet ALL of your needs AND I WILL BE YOUR SUFFICIENCY!!"
As if that wasn't powerful enough, this morning He spoke to me again. I happened to be looking up a verse in Mark. The page was full of paragraphs in black type except for one sentence that was in red and because of that, it caught my eye. It was Mark 6:31 which says "Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile." WOW! I even felt like He was saying it with my name in front of it, "Shannon, let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest for awhile." I felt like He was saying, "I know your needs Sweetheart, so come over here to be alone with me and I will meet ALL of your needs and you can rest awhile." In the midst of my trials, He is offering to draw me deeper into His arms, meet every need that I have AND give me rest!! How could I NOT go? How could anything else even seem attractive in comparison to that?
So, what season is God calling you into? What has He been whispering to you? Have you been listening? Are you willing to go?
I pray dear friends that He would bless you richly in your time with Him!!
