Great Distances

I felt it tonight. You know that feeling? When you are experiencing worship, and lyrics you've heard before take on new meaning. You get it. You decide to seek God in worship, and when He meets you...wow!

A couple posts ago I talked about prayer. As I think about concepts related to my faith and walk with God (prayer, worship, faith, etc.) sometimes I feel a Great Distance. A distance between me and a God so Holy, so beyond my capacity to understand that it feels like a separation. There's the distance I feel between us, and there's the distance between where I am now in my walk/knowledge and where I want to be.

As I said before, 2008 was huge for me in my knowledge and experience of worship. The distance grew smaller. Now, as I feel myself honing in on prayer and faith, I sense a great opportunity to make great strides again to close the gap I feel.

And I keep describing this sense of distance as something I am feeling, not something that exists. I'm not accepting it as fact. I was thinking tonight about how the concept we have of Jesus returning one day....it implies that he left. That he's not here now. That builds up this sense of a gap/distance between us. But we know that he is here, now, living in us. Present with us when we sleep and when we rise. The sense of distance is created by me ignoring him. By my lack of faith in not believing that if I speak to him he will answer. By not spending time with him.

My best friend, Brian, was my closest mate in college. My best man in my wedding. There's a connection at the heart-level that will never go away, regardless of time or distance. And yet, I don't feel very close to him right now because I'm in CO and he's in CA, and we have busy lives and only speak on the phone about once a month.

Tonight, during the mid-week service, my prayer went something like this:
"God, I want to know you. I want to worship and serve you. I want to feel connected to you. But I'm aware of a lack of motivation or desire or something to act on these desires. Help me to want to seek you. Help me to remember to pray. Help me to know what to pray. Help me to believe that my prayer actually matters to you and can affect my life and others."

In closing, I was really struck by the words in "At the Cross":

O Lord, you've searched me
You know my ways
Even when I fail you
I know you love me

Your Holy presence
Surrounding me
In every season
I know you love me

Lord, give me the faith to really believe that you love me, even as a filthy sinner who forgets to (or chooses not to) seek you.