I've Stopped Running.. Now What?

Hi Guys,

My sincere apologies for not posting anything last week. It was such a busy week to say the least, deadlines to meet, coupled with a beautiful wedding to attend. The coming weeks are about to get busier. #sighhhh!  Can I just take a moment to say a MASSIVE thank you to every one that has sent me a message about the impact of my last two posts! Some of your messages have made me cry *good tears of course* LOL. Can I be honest?  All of last week I felt soooo overwhelmed because I didn’t expect such responses. In fact, I didn’t start my blog to talk about what I have been talking about. My friend and I were laughing about the direction this blog has taken because I just wanted to speak about men, love, relationships, you know, the usual girly woes but all I can say is as the Holy Spirit leads, I will follow.

So to the topic at hand. You have stopped running; you’ve surrendered now what? I remember when I decided to surrender and stop running, it was time for me to get intentional about developing a relationship with God. Let me be the first to tell you, getting to know God requires time, this journey is not for the lazy.

Here is how I went about it:

First Things First

I was desperate for Him. I had no one or nowhere to turn to but God.

Before you begin your journey towards a relationship with God, you have to be desperate and have no other alternatives. Even Jesus, when He taught His first sermon, the first thing he mentioned in the Beatitudes was that we need to come to a realisation that we NEED God. Matthew 5:3

I believe God responds when we make Him our only option and realize we NEED Him. Till then you will keep dipping in and out of a relationship with Him. Joyce Meyer once said ‘You are as close to God as YOU want to be’ I totally agree because as you embark on your journey, you will discover this to be a fact. I repeat this journey is NOT for the lazy.

Have A Desire. Set a Goal

So I had a goal, not only did I want to know more about God, I wanted to be able to hear Him speak to me and lead me through His Holy Spirit. My mum once told me of how she was combing her hair and the Holy Spirit told her there was a hair out of place. At the time I rolled my eyes and thought ‘yeah, sure, a whole God, cares about the one hair that was out of place’. I wasn’t convinced. However I now desired that type of relationship with God. I wanted the Holy Spirit to be my BEST friend.

Get Intentional

I remember getting practical. I sat and wrote down what it meant to be in a great and fulfilling relationship and I stuck it on my bedroom wall. I came up with the fact that God was going to be my MAN. For our relationship to work I had to make spending time with Him my priority.  I had to put Him first before anything or anyone else. I had to communicate with Him. I had to keep it real with Him. I had to tell Him how I felt about everything. I was once in a relationship with a guy I will call Mr Amazing. For the first 2 months of our relationship, we spoke every single day. Day and night. Despite our busy schedules we always made time to communicate, as a result we became inseparable. I decided that this was how my relationship with God would be.

Make It Happen

So I put all of the above into action. Every morning I woke up I had me and God time. At first I didn’t know how to spend time with God. I struggled. So I went online and I researched how to spend time with God. My amazing big sis/mentor Ola had sent me Heather Lindsey’s blog and I came across a post on spending time with God. Although it helped there were days where I felt like I was being religious and I got frustrated because i was trying to do it EXACTLY how Heather had recommended. What I really needed to do was find my own way of spending time with Him. Rather than trying to have the perfect formula or being like anyone else, I did what worked for me. Some mornings I listened to worship, other mornings I prayed, other mornings I just spoke in tongues, some days I read my bible or simply listened to a sermon.  I would mix and match, on some occasions do it all. I had variety. There was nothing monotonous about my relationship with my MAN. The more time I spent with God, the more I had a desire to keep seeking Him.  What started as 10mins each morning or during the day, gradually grew to hours.  There are two things I wouldn’t go with out : listening to worship and then reading my bible. I would recommend starting at John, reading a chapter a day. Find a translation you can understand, I personally love NLT. Listening to worship and reading the word of God feeds the Holy Spirit living inside of you.

The Holy Spirit. My Lover and My BOSS

If you haven’t already I would highly recommend reading ‘Good Morning Holy Spirit’ by Benny Hinn. It’s an amazing book. It helped me understand who the Holy Spirit was. I will shout this all day, everyday: THE HOLYSPIRIT makes the difference! There is no way you can have a relationship with God or live a successful Christian life without the HolySpirit. It is impossible. The Holy Spirit is not a thing, but a person. He is not your conscience but the spirit of God, living in you. You need to cultivate a relationship with Him by spending time with Him. When you spend time with Him, you will feel His presence. Speak to Him, He listens and eventually you will hear Him speaking. Time won’t allow me so maybe ill do a separate post on the Holy Spirit.  He is an invaluable asset for every Christian.  The reason why many Christians get tired in their Christian walk and easily fall into sin is because they have neglected the importance of having a close relationship with the Holy Spirit. He is a perfect gentleman so He will never impose Himself on you until you give Him the permission to take the lead.

Changes

The more time you spend with the Holy Spirit, the more changes you will begin to see. He changes your sinful desires and you will begin to see good fruits.  Read Galatians 5:16-25. For me in particular I was addicted to certain things but the more time I spent with the Holy Spirit, the more I began to notice these desires had automatically disappeared. I became a more peaceful, loving, gentle and patient person.

Heart Check

Make sure you are seeking God for the right reasons. God had to expose my hidden intentions to me. (Psalm 139:23-24 will forever be my prayer) Like I mentioned in my last post, heartbreak drove me to God. So I was seeking God because He was soothing my wounded heart but the moment my past came knocking on the door of my heart I put God aside. The Holy Spirit was hurt (yes He has feelings too) He showed me that I couldn’t seek God for what He could do for me but simply for who He is. He also let me know that I couldn’t use Him.

Consistency

The more time I spent with the Holy Spirit the more I saw Him strip me of everything that wasn’t like Him and the more He conformed me to the image of Christ. But I got complacent and inconsistent. I started to depend on my amazing quiet time from yesterday and negated the fact that I could not depend on those experiences but each day had to be a fresh encounter with God. Ill put it this way. When you are in a relationship and you speak to your man everyday, the days you don’t speak you start to feel distant and the longer you prolong your communication you begin to resent him even if he hasn’t done anything wrong. You know you should call him but you just don’t. That’s exactly how it works with God and it is dangerous grounds because it leads to backsliding and eventually falling into sin. I spoke in my last post about having dip backs since I rededicated my life to God. This was why. I began to dip back to the world and my past because I had stopped spending time with God the way I used to and I had lost a desire to do so. The things He had delivered me from I found myself craving. I was spending less time with God so I became lonely. When you find yourself getting lonely, or desiring the things you know you shouldn’t, entertaining that past you know you should really cut off and keep it moving, It’s a sign. A sign that there is distance between you and the Holy Spirit. I had to pause and restore back to factory setting. I prayed to God for a fresh desire to seek Him, and then I became intentional about seeking Him again.

Trust me you will go in circular motion, back and forth if for one second you trivialize or become too comfortable with making the time to have genuine fellowship with God. It’s a process. At first it will seem long and hard. There will be days where you feel God’s presence so strongly; some days you will feel nothing. Regardless of what or how you feel spend time with Him.

I am NOT a morning person so at first my journey to work or when i got back home was my ‘me and God' time. However God desires to be FIRST before anything else. Gradually I started to make an effort to wake up early. It was hard but I would ask the Holy Spirit to wake me up the next morning and He would.  If you miss a day like I often do, don’t worry or feel guilty. Remember it’s a relationship; it’s not every day you feel like speaking to your man but you know you should. Don’t be religious about it. Ask God for the grace to seek and love Him for who He is. I am where I am now because I fought to get to this point. The devil will use everything and anything to fight your quiet time because he understands the importance of it. Be determined that no matter what you will spend time with God.

My relationship with God is so precious to me; it is the best relationship I have ever been in. He satisfies me like no one else can, He tells me off, He wipes my tears, He laughs with me and He loves on me.  To be honest I don’t know how anyone can function without a relationship with Him. O yeah, He keeps me sane. *laughs*

So thats all for today..

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Thank you so much for reading..

Till the next post…

Covey x x