Food for the Soul (brutal honesty)

I am sitting here dreading this post. I am not only 4 days late on it but I have to be brutally honest.

My last "Food for the Soul" post was one in which I committed to doing a better job in the area of spiritual discipline. This week was AWFUL on so many levels. First being that I failed to do better. Of course that led to everything else being awful.

I opened my Bible, some. I prayed, a little. However when I did read and pray my heart, soul and mind were not in it. I don't journal often. In fact my journaling usually takes place when I am struggling. So inevitably this week led to me sitting down and writing some of my thoughts.

I love the clarity that comes when you can see your thoughts on paper. I was writing a sentence about my failure to choose my relationship with God over the other "stuff". I then wrote the following: "I CHOSE". It hit me. I chose to not make the wise and right decision. I chose to ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I chose to give in to the temptations of the flesh. (No, I wasn't doing anything that was innately bad, it just should not have been the priority in those moments.)

I also came to realize that I fell into two traps. The first is that after a time of spiritual highs and a time of truly hearing God and experiencing Him, I let my guard down. You see I listened for Him to speak, I heard Him clearly, and I obeyed. But that one act of obedience (albeit HUGE) did not mean that I was done listening and hearing and obeying. Yet, that is how I treated it.

The second trap was that I allowed my ministry to become my spiritual discipline. I know that those who have been or are in ministry can understand this concept. It is all too easy to use the excuse that since I am developing and working on curriculum and meetings that are God-centered that I have somehow enhanced my relationship with God. This is a lie straight from the devil himself. There is no truth to this. In fact it should be out of my relationship with God that I develop and work on curriculum and meetings. I can't listen, hear and obey God when I am the one "in charge".

So here I am. Not at all happy about how I handled this last week in terms of my relationship with God, which then seeped into every other relationship. I was negative, critical, angry, etc... with everything and everyone. (I am so very sorry if any of you experienced this from me.)

So what? So what happens next? So what do I do to change this problem? So what? I guess you will have to wait until Friday. ('Cause I'm still working that out for myself!)