I was listening to Nicole Conner’s sermon on Grow on itunes and i have to say City life’s speakers are really intellectual in delivering their sermons, maybe its because of the subject at hand but i am deeply impressed, God bless them! Nicole spoke about a stage of our christian walk when we will be stucked and helpless;after knowing Christ and growing for a period of time, due to life’s circumstances our spiritual lives can be stagnant and God seemed far away. A time when we re-think the fundamentals of our understanding of God, its not that we are lacking in faith like that of new believers, but a stage when we examined the authenticity of our faith. It can be a period of dryness, a period of darkness, possibly close to the edge of depression. A choice to move forward without knowing the answers, or to give up and walk away.Check it out on itunes.
I am thinking what it means to hear from God, what it means to be following God’s will. I was packing church materials that accompanied me a decade ago when i was in Singapore, i looked at the notes and the planning that i made on notebooks, i found myself asking the same question,”really?how far have i come?” Instinctively i comforted myself by saying that the fact that i am still serving God after ten years of my life, as a committed leader of His church, i must have done pretty good for many have forsaken the path. Sadly, the truth is that deep inside i suspect i have not grown much, i reached the stage mentioned above for a long time, far too long for myself to remember when it first happened. Though i am more certain of my convictions than i was ten years ago, i do not feel myself closer to God than i was before. It worries me because i am faced with life’s choices, when i am placed in situations where there are high prices that i have to pay should i fail to make the right choices. Seriously? Is this the lamentations of a virgin who ran out of oil? Thomas Merton’s prayer seems to summarize things up well.
“MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” - Thomas Merton
