The Necessity of Solitude with God

As things are moving forward with Legacy Ministries, God continues to remind me of the importance of getting alone with Him. That is why we are opening a prayer room for people to come in to get in the Lord's presence away from the busyness of everyday life. Starting April 1, we will be open at the Equipping Center for regular business hours of Monday - Friday from 9AM - 4PM. People can drop in anytime to the "secret place" in the prayer room and to our lending library to check out books.

There are many reasons why getting alone with God is so vitally important:

1. I never want my work for God to substitute for my intimate time with God.
2. I need to seek God's perspective on everything to lesson the stress my perspective (and others') brings.
3. How can I expect to hear from God if I don't take time to stop and listen?
4. I don't know want to go in my own direction. I may have some "good" ideas, but they are in vain if they are not God's ideas.
5. I don't know how to pray until I get alone with God and let Him pray through me.
6. My soul gets aligned to my spirit where the Holy Spirit resides instead of being so pulled by my flesh that is sometimes distracted by the cares of the world.
7. Just being in quiet in His presence without always praying my "list" is sometimes just what I need to be refreshed!
8. I need to be "poured in to" so I can go back out and "pour out His love" to those He sends me who need it.
9. Those things that distract me tend to disappear in His light!

The list goes on and on! I like the commentary that Brian Hardin said on the March 22 podcast of the Daily Audio Bible. (Go to www.dailyaudiobible.com to find out about this great resource!) He was talking about how many times we read in the gospels about Jesus pulling away from the crowd and getting alone to orient Himself to the Father. He went on to say,

"Is that component missing? Could that be why things seem so chaotic? Could that be why it’s a madhouse out there every day? Have we oriented ourselves to God? Because in doing so, we realign ourselves with the way things really are. And if we are living with the understanding of how things really are, then a lot of the circumstances that blow up around us and invite us to distraction each day, they don’t even matter. They don’t really even have any consequence. We’re just sort of addicted to crises management sometimes. Some of these things can just be let go; they just don’t matter."

GOOD STUFF!! I challenge you to look for ways to get alone with God this week...better yet, today! Let me know how it changes you! :)

Times of Refreshing!

I don't know about you, but just the title of this post makes me want to be refreshed! It was recently brought to my attention where that saying is in the Bible. Let's look at it:

"Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord..." Acts 3:19

This says that times of refreshing comes from the presence of the Lord. Back up though...that happens after repentance. Only God can point something out in our lives that we are doing wrong and not leave us with a feeling of guilt and shame. In fact, when He does it and we follow through with genuine repentance, we leave with a feeling of refreshing!

Another verse says that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. (Romans 2:4) When God gives us that "nudge" and lets us know what we say or do (or don't do) is not right, we should feel sorrow--not just any kind of sorrow, but the kind that leads us to repentance. Some people are just sorry they got caught. That doesn't lead you anywhere except in a perpetual cycle of making the same stupid decisions.

The choice is ours. When God points those things out that we need to stop doing, we can either:
A. Repent and experience times of refreshing right now
OR
B. Remain stubborn and suffer the consequences now and forever.

"But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed." Romans 2:5

I urge you; pick A!