After the Fast:
My previous post was outlining a plan I had agreed to, with God, to take a moment with Him. I'm not sure exactly how I expected to be able to articulate what he was going to do in and through me during this time, but I knew it was important that I share what I was setting out to do.
As it turns out, this 40 days with God adventure was an incredibly personal and deep revival for me. Not exactly something I'd put out there for every Tom, Dick and Harry to read.
That being said, there were many concepts and principles He brought me that I believe I should share with whoever chooses to read what I write, so here is a nugget for your patience:
In order to Create Sustainable Change you must Cultivate New Habits.
To cultivate the habits I wished to form, I learned, I was going to need to be more flexible. "Blessed are the Flexible," another thing my pastor says, meaning we must adapt to changes and roll with the punches flying our way, and God will bless the pursuit of a thing.
A chink in my chain was made evident to me within the first week of my fast, whenever I discovered the inconsistency of my children's nap patterns and how little time for studying His word I had unintentionally allotted myself. I was forced to reconsider my plan and ended up waking an hour before my children in the morning to ensure my daily time alone with God. I had begun to try to create a new habit, but lack of consistency botched that attempt pretty quickly.
After a month, I was forced to stretch my flexibility muscles again as I began to work in a daycare, where I then needed to wake another hour earlier than before to achieve my personal goal of that hour alone to read and study.
Fast forward to now, eight months later, and I'm seeing the fruit of my labor. I no longer work for the daycare, but I am seeing to it that I retain the good habit I successfully formed during my stint back into the workforce.
Currently I am one week into another 40 Day Fast, this time from Facebook. I found myself checking my phone constantly and getting irritated at people for wanting to talk to me physically because I was so caught up in the lives of people I'm only aware of in their digital profiles; I felt strongly that there must be something inherently wrong with this, so here I am.
On that train of thought, I must say, this has been a very peaceful week!
-Hoping you have personal time with God as well,
Delanie
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