Back to the SPECKS: For two years I accumulated verses and got more and more excited about the things I was learning about God. I felt like I was actually starting to develop a relationship with Him. I was starting to see Him answer prayers in specific ways. I was seeing trials come into my life and not freaking out about them. That Summer our washer died and my husband tried to go find a job to buy us a new one but no one was hiring a pastor who couldn't work on Sundays. Then he asked me to consider working at JC Penny as a photographer, just seasonal to get enough for a dryer. It was agreed that I would only work until after the holidays. I went in and once again God provided and I got hired on the spot! That Christmas Season I was working 40 hours a week. It was crazy, then I got the flu. The really bad H1N1. One morning I was headed into work and it being a seasonal job I knew I couldn't call off but I was sick. Sick as a dog. I cried, I had my husband pray with me. I went down and weakly pulled out my notebook and needing strength I opened it to the "My God is my Strength" page. I read about 4 verses down when I realized not only does God give us strength but He IS my strength and (no, I'm not charismatic) but I literally felt strength come into me. I went to work all day on that strength. I did that for 3 days. It was amazing and I became a believer in the Bible and what it can do for you! I began to tell people what God had done and tried to get them to see the greatness of My God!
A few more weeks into it I suddenly realized that I should be praying, not this every moment as I catch a moment thing but actually praying! So remembering something that Bro. Bill Swain from a traveling group had come and told the teenagers. He taught on prayer and how he prays. He takes his hand and prays with the thumb remembering those closest to him. He prays with the pointer finger for those in authority for him. He prays for the tall finger for those furtherst away, aka missionaries. He prays for those spiritually and physically weak using his weakest finger the ring finger and he prays for himself using the pinkie finger remember that he should be the littlest! I did this for a few weeks and then I remembered something I had learned in dorm devos, ACTS. I was praying for things, circumstances, people but I was only asking God things, I wasn't getting to know Him! I started praying using ACTS. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and finishing with Supplication. The book I was working on was great for Adoration. Every day I would pick a new attribute of God, read the verses on it and Praise God for who He was and specifically how I had seen that attribute in Him made real in my life!
Bro. Rick Flanders came to a church near us and we went to hear him preach. He preached on Isaiah 40, getting the presence of God in your life. He talked about making a highway for God to have easy access in your life. He talked about that passage about making a highway you have to make the high places low, the low places high, the crooked places straight, and the rough places smooth. He parrelled those to our lives and how the high places were places of pride that needed to be brought low. The low places were places of sin in our life that must be filled in with good things and gotten ride of the sin. The crooked places were the relationships we had that were not quite right and the rough places were places of character flaws that God has to smooth away.
After that sermon, my "fessing time" became real and I would ask God to reveal things in this way and boy did He but it didn't hurt near as much as I always thought it would and actually I felt so much better for having it gotten right!
All this combined with prayer and Bible reading I was gleaning so much from my daily time with God! It was alive, it IS fun, it is quick even though it may be over an hour. It is a time I can't think of going without!
This past year I have been doing something slightly different . . . S.P.E.C.K.S. and let me tell you. I come every day to my Bible expecting to be talked to from God and I have yet to go a day that that has not happened! I love reading my Bible. I wake up excited to get to it! I LOVE reading my Bible. I HATE when I wake up late and it takes me longer to get to my Bible reading! My time with God truly is the best part of my day! If you are not reading your Bible, start today. If your prayer time is not what it should be, confess it to God - it won't hurt that much, and go on and start! You won't regret it!
Next time I explain S.P.E.C.K.S. Thanks for sticking with my this long. After the next post, they shouldn't be that long!
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