In the daily choice to either pursue intimacy with Christ or to be productive in accomplishing and handling everyday-life matters, I often choose the latter. My productivity is something I can control—how much of my “To-Do List” for the day I can complete—and in ministry, where my success cannot be measured by what grade I get, how many hours I worked, or how much money I earned, my task-oriented mentality feeds off control and pursuit of a sense of productivity.
I do not know Christ in an intimate way. God showed me at the end of May that in my relationship with Him, I had a lot of other people involved. An illustration: Most of the time when I read my Bible, I read it for what I can learn or for what I can teach. It is either a mental exercise or an activity carried out to serve someone else. Neither exercising the mind nor serving someone else are wrong. But God’s word is meant for my soul. It is revelation. God wants to reveal Himself to me. He wants me to know Him. My mindset was working for Him out of love…not knowing Him, scuba-diving deeper in love.
I wrote in my journal May 31, "Rebecca, know God just to know God." And then, "As I know you just to know you. A relationship is not determined by other people and a relationship is not for other people. It is for you and for me."
I am being drawn back to that point. I have been lacking in joy and fulfillment recently and both of those come from the Lord. I have had a hard time concentrating in time with God. I get distracted. My mind is constantly grasping at other things, thinking that if I can just accomplish one more thing in my time, then I would be happy and feel fulfilled. It's all a "striving after the wind" as Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes (ESV). I run and with much eagerness strive for the wind, rather than striving for Christ, and I am sucked into empty cycles with the illusion that I am working hard for something worthwhile.
"Abiding" with Jesus is NOT something the flesh can exercise! It is a supernatural pursuit that harvests supernatural fruit, fruit that we cannot control the production of. The production is not our job, while it is God who makes fruit grow (1 Corinthians 3:6). The only thing we can control is the time we invest in abiding. How much seed of His truth we scatter in our mind. How much time we spend with the Holy Spirit so that He may till the soil and prune the fruit already growing. Each of these steps is dependent on God; this is a fight and can be an exhausting process itself as we live in a world independent of Him in every way.
I see this fight in addition to God's pruning in my life. I've been listening to Joyce Meyer sermons about the battlefield of the mind and the spiritual warfare that comes with our thoughts. I also recently finished a book called, "Victory Over Darkness" by Neil Anderson, and it was about spiritual warfare and being assured of our identity in Christ. With this said, God has given me tools and highlighted truths in His word to fight against the principalities of the enemy. When I feel insecure, afraid, oppressed, I ask myself why I am feeling that way, find the root, and cut it off with God's truth. But the roots does not want to go away quickly for me, having to fight back with the same truths and use the herbicide of faith as prevention of return.
However, one must not focus on the fight and pruning alone. The fight itself brings hopelessness if we are not fixed on the prize before us (1 Corinthians 10:24), rejoicing in the victory that Christ has won and the power in his name over EVERY spirit and principality (1 Corinthians 15:57, Colossians 2:9-15), and giving God the praise for how good He is always (Psalm 107:1), independent of circumstance. This requires knowing our God. Growing evermore in faith in trust as we know Him and see that He is faithful and He is trustworthy.
I need to pursue intimacy over busyness. Desire fruitfulness over productivity. One is a chasing after the wind. The other is taking hold of what lies ahead. Let us begin. Amen.