There are times when I feel really close to God, I hear him and I feel so connected to him. There are other times I feel so far away, and I hate it when I cant hear God.
I was discussing this with a friend, and they asked me why I think this might happen. I said that I think when I put in the time for God (praying, reading his word,meditation…) I feel closer to him. This is quite logical I guess, but i didnt realise just how significant it was until my friend recomended that I read a book called ‘Celebration of Discipline’ written by Richard Foster. It is a very good book, and I recomend it to anyone look to deepen their relationship with God.
This book is teaching me the importance of putting in the time to deepen my relationship with God, to get past the superficiality and the material and to explore a deeper spiritual relationship with God.
Through reading the first few pages of this book I realised several things, the great importance of discipline, to notget caught up so much with the busyness of life and to focus my mind on what is important to God.
These are things that I have been trying to do for the past few months, specifically with my Church. I wanted to be more commited and serve God and others. So I prayed about it and asked God to reveal to me how I should do this.I started to tithe my time, by being commited to attending Church atleast once a week, attendingmy house group/bible study and I took up a duty within the Church. Through reading this bookI have realised the spiritual significance of these things.
One of the questions I often asked was why do I sometimes feel close to God and other times I dont, Richard Foster answers this by saying it is a gift that God gives to us by his grace, we cannot earn it or achieve it ourselves, we can ask God to give us this gift and through developing disciplines like meditation we can deepen our closeness with him.
I had my interview for the learning assistant job on Monday. It was such a good experience. What really warmed my heart, was a little boy who said hello to me when I was walking past the school before my interview. I said hello and he asked if I could find his ball, I said I would have a look, I couldn’t find it, he said that’s Ok and gave me a great big smile. I spoke to the teacher supervising the kids, she said they have found his ball, but he keeps losing it, I smiled and asked which entrance I needed to use for the interview. She told me and wished me luck.
This might not sound very significant, but it felt it to me:) That little boy made me smile and reminded me once again just how much I love working with children. Because of this I also went into the interview with a smile.
I think it is so important to find what you are good at, or in Christian terms your gift, the gift that God has given you. I think mine is with children. I think it could also with people in general, but I relate so well with children. I enjoy their company and they seem to enjoy mine.
When I was at school, I had some really great teachers and some really bad ones. Teachers can impact you so much, especially when you are a child because you are more vulnerable. I know that the bad teachers in my childhood affected my confidence greatly. I realised the other week that there are still soul-ties (soul-ties I will write about this soon) between me and these teachers, strings that are still pulling at me, saying yeah but you are not good enough and you will never make that grade. I was advised that I needed to forgive them, and ask for forgiveness myself for still believing them at times. I confessed my sin and asked God to forgive me and them.
God loves us, he created us, when we knock ourselves we are sinning against God. It is like we are saying I know better than you God. I am really working hard on this, not allowing myself to put myself down and not allowing others to do so either.
Sorry that was a bit of a side track, I was talking about teaching. To get back to the point, I think it is so important that we discover who we are, who God made us to be and live out his purpose for our lives, for others benefit, so that we become closer to God and most importantly for his Glory.
I wonder why it is that so many people go into teaching that are clearly not right for it and can do so much damage to children. I really want to be a part of teaching, to make a positive difference, to encourage them, teach them and help them in their learning.
