I was lying in bed last night and got to thinking and praying, and I felt my heart breaking a little bit. The past few weeks I’ve made excuse after excuse as to why I’ve only had a few minutes to read Scripture or pray (but plenty of time to do everything else) and I’ve felt the distance between myself and God growing and growing. It’s as if I thought that because I had encountered God in a very intimate way a few weeks ago, that that would keep the intimacy between me and my Father. What I failed to realize is that by failing to spend intimate, quality time with Him, I was doing anything but keeping the intimacy. It was as if I knew that there was distance between God and myself, and I knew the solution, but I just didn’t do anything about it. I had the head knowledge that this isn’t how it works, but I didn’t let it affect me. And like I said, this realization broke my heart.

After a few minutes, however, my laments turned to praise because I knew that God was patiently waiting for me with open arms. Lamentations 3:23 says it best:

Great is His faithfulness;
    His mercies begin afresh each morning.

While I was faithless, He was faithful. And His mercy was waiting for me to grasp onto it. I am not going to feel guilty or shameful for the past few weeks, I am going to hold onto mercy with both hands. As soon as I admitted, to myself really, that I had been neglecting my relationship with God and expecting to get by just fine, it was as if the deepest part of my being just cried out to God. A cry of praise, of homecoming. I turned my head from the distractions of the world and looked at my Father once again.

This post is a bit of rambling, I know. But I had to share my encounter with God and His mercy, because it shook me to my core. He is so good, friends, so good.

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Photo Credit: Jeremy Yap