All my life, I've been prepared for disillusionment in my faith. I would read books, read the Bible, pray, memorize, highlight, underline, and scribble entry after entry in frustration-packed journals.
It seemed that no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I read, or how long I prayed, disillusionment would always come. My soaring worship of God lasted only a moment, my commitment to remain steadfast lasted - if I was lucky - a week, my aspirations to get to know God better would crumble and turn to dust and I was left again with that haunting knowledge that I had failed God again.
Disenchantment.
The wonder, the excitement, the joy was gone.
What I didn't realize was that God was never gone.
That's what I realized today.
That God is never gone.
Even those months - years sometimes - when my Bible reading became a perfunctory act, meaning less and less each day, fulfilling less and less each day, become more of a drag than anything else. Even when I cried in frustration and desperation, reaching out for a God whom my imagination had sent far away, a God who I thought had turned his back...
He was there.
I just never realized it.
But today, when I felt the impassive reading, the skimming over words without really taking them in, the uninspired prayer, I became afraid.
I found that I didn't want disillusionment anymore. I wanted to still grasp and hold the joy I've been feeling, to revel in the steady knowledge that God was holding my hand, to capture the excitement of reading His word where the verses would speak to me like they never had before. I didn't want to let it go.
I didn't want to let it go.
But I could feel it slipping through my fingers and I felt helpless to stop it and desperate to keep it.
I prayed with Psalm 47, but the words had no meaning and my prayer had no power, no inspiration. I cried out to God. I didn't want to just grasp the marvel for a moment and then see it slip through and shatter on the ground. I didn't want another set of months full of apathy. I didn't want to have Him turn again into the God who doesn't care. The God who doesn't hold my hand.
And then, He turned my attention to a verse I had underlined on the other page.
Be still and know that I am God...
I tried to grasp it, I tried to struggle against the disillusionment that was creeping in and then I realized that it was that simple.
He is GOD.
And I realized that the years of disillusionment had been of my own making. They had come because I had failed to fight for what was important. I had allowed joy and peace and...God to slip through my fingers because I had been too lazy to fight for them. To unimpassioned to grasp and hold on until they gave me blessing, like Jacob did at the ford of Jabok. I had let it go before it had time to ripen. And in doing that, I had lost out on the fruit it gave.
What a fool I was.
But a fool no longer.
This time, I'm going to let go. I'm not going to just brush the fruit with my lips and then throw it away. I'm not going to be content with a mere slip of a blessing. I want the whole fruit. The whole blessing. I want to know Christ and the power of His Resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11) I want to press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me (Philippians 3:12b). (What an honor it is to know that He took a hold of me for a reason!) And I am going to fight to keep what I had already attained and I am going to attain more. I'm not going to give up. And with that resolution comes peace. Because with God at my side I know that I can fight and I know that I can win.
Determined to fight, I prayed another Psalm. Psalm 50. This time I prayed it out loud. And as I read the verses, paying attention to what they said, I felt almost as if God Himself was reading the words to me. I could hear His voice in the words, His vow in the promises, His power in the judgments - and I knew that He was there.
He is God.
He is alive.
And He is with me.
And the fear fled and the disenchantment faded and I felt strong and whole and loved again.
Before God, darkness flees.
Fear is darkness.
And disillusionment is a part of fear.
'Till next time,
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