Focus

So for a few weeks I kind of felt a little stuck.. ..I am 7 months through my year out and it has been going amazingly!! I have been loving every minute..I have spent some beautiful hours talking to God, listening, worshiping and reading. But I kind of got to a point where it felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, which is weird I know!! But I just couldn’t do it, I would try to worship and would get distracted, sit down to pray and my mind would wonder off before I even started (I know everyones mind wonder at points but this was worse than normal)

 I even went to Mobilise during this time which was a big conference for students and 20’s and I was sure this would be able to kick me back in to gear!! The talks were good and the worship was amazing…but for me as I ‘worshiped’ I felt that I was just singing…there was no depth to it! I was there I was hearing what was said..I was understanding it and agreeing with it. But would I say that I really met with God during those 4 days…I’m not so sure! I felt stuck…distance…and no matter how hard I tried I found that I just couldn’t get close to God! 

I remember a few times I would have my eyes closed during the event and all I could see was white….it felt as if I was the only person in the room, it was as if everyone else had vanished and it was just me and the empty whiteness. At the time I didn’t understand it, the first thought that came in to my head, was oh brilliant not only can I not engage the way I want to but now I I don’t even feel like Im surround by other people who ARE meeting with God in amazing ways!

At the time I had no idea how I got to this place!! I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do it anymore, its was as if I had given up…I think the longer it went on for the more I felt disheartened and I guess I kind of gave up a little. What was wrong with me, where was God, what had I done wrong?!  I know this sounds terrible but I actually reached a point where I felt I couldn’t prayer anymore…when I did pray it felt fake…

And then one day I was in the kitchen at home with Adam Seth and Hannah (I think we were making cakes) and as usually they were so excited that they were picking up all the ingredients and asking to mix and break the eggs and lick the spoon…all before I was ready to start and had explained what we were going to do…it was at the point where Hannah asked…” what’s that word you always say”  and as she said it, I remember the word I had started using with them over the last few weeks in order to get the attention and to help get the whatever we were doing done, the amount of times I had said focus in the previous few weeks was ridiculous and it was only in that moment when Hannah asked what the word was…did everything fall in to place and start making sense!!

Within minutes of her asking the question so many different things from the last few week ran through my head, its as if the one word…FOCUS….answered so many questions, it fitted in to so many different events and thoughts from the last few weeks. And I had been using the word over and over again and it wasn’t until a 4 year old pointed it out that I took notice of the word, that word that really…I had been telling myself!!! But just hadn’t realised!!!

And during that moment of realisation, it was as if God took a big sigh of relief and was like…Finally…she’s got it!! Like that moment when you are trying to explain something to someone and they are just not understanding and then all of a sudden it clicks!! 

I finally realised that for a few weeks I had lost focus…I had forgotten what this year was about…who the year was for!! I’m not doing this year for me.. I had planned to give the year to God, yet it was as if I had taken the reigns back again. I had started to think that I could do things myself, I had got so wrapped up in life, in writing lists and just getting things done, that I had forgotten, why I was doing them…I had lost sight of God in the whole thing! My focus had moved away from God and had just gone on to getting things done….

For the next week or two focus became a key word…during a prayer meeting James talked about how for the various visions and things that the church has at the moment, we need to remained focused on God.  One Sunday morning the talk was so simply yet so relevant and important it was  for me at the time…its was exactly what I needed to hear!! Nathan spoke about the wonders of God, he reminded us of how big God is and how small I am!

Also during that same week the the lyrics from Whitney Houston’s song  ‘I look to you’ kept going round in my head!  Relevant

I look to you,
I look to you
After all my strength is gone
In you I can be strong

Things had got so busy, and I was involved in so many different areas of the church, that I was just living day by day working through lists just to get things done and I was failing to keep God at the center of it all…He was the reason I was doing it, I wasn’t doing all these things so I could be praised by people…I was doing it for God!!

As soon as I put my focus back on to God everything got easier again, I could pray and not get so distracted, I could worship and really mean it. I let things be less about me and what I could do and more about God and what he can do!!!