Prayer can heal.The dialogue between your soul and God is essential.
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Prayer can heal.The dialogue between your soul and God is essential.
There is an account in the Book of Mormon where Nephi explains why Isaiah is so hard for people to understand – specifically his people in the New World. When Nephi and his family left Jerusalem they also left behind much of the culture, and they did so on purpose. So much of Isaiah’s prophecies are centered around the culture of that day – the people, the politics, the problems.
The Bible speaks of many people willingly leaving a culture, sometimes physically, others just mentally. Abraham left Ur behind because of its idolatry and human sacrifices. Moses escaped Egypt (and was called back to it a very different man). Saul left behind a life he was fully committed to and knew in his heart was right, until that day that Christ spoke to him on the road to Damascus and he became Paul.
There will come a time when all of us, when we are ready for that step, will need to leave behind our own Jerusalem, our comfort, our way of life that no longer serves us as we try to immerse ourselves deeper into our spiritual practices. Every culture – family, community, state, nation, race – carries something that we may need to sacrifice, something we may need let go in order to progress to develop a deeper relationship with God and with ourselves.
We may need to stand alone. Friends and family may not understand at first. They may never understand but the risk is worth it. We are worth it. YOU are worth it.
Devotional exercise: let’s sit in stillness and honestly evaluate our habits that may derive from a culture we were raised in. Is there one thing we can leave behind? Are we ready to leave our own Jerusalem to find that New World that God has waiting for us?
I am.
Part of the beauty of creating intimacy with God is arriving at a point where we take responsibility for ourselves: our actions, our mistakes, our happiness, our relationship with God and with others. This is a quote from theweek.com (reprinted from the New Yorker) from a woman who’s husband told her he wanted a divorce. (You can read the entire essay here.)
“I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to “the End of Suffering.” I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.”
As you read the entire essay you identify with her open admission that there were good days AND bad days and just how she got through those bad days.
When we commit to any course of action or change we will always be hit with the, “Okay, what now? How do I get through this pain/boredom/laziness/anger/rage?” I like how she described this “non-negotiable” understanding with herself. As a writer who wants to be a successful writer I can relate with the non-negotiable part of a contract I’ve already made with myself, and it’s the non-negotiable part, the remembering that I’ve already made a decision about sitting down and writing every day. Exiling the voices in our heads is not complicated, it just takes commitment, a remembering of a decision we made to do so back when the idea was much more exciting and doable than on a day that is really, really difficult.
We can find happiness, find an intimacy with God, find a way through a pain that seems like it will last forever but is really only temporary. It is putting one foot in front of the other day after day, week after week even after the fanfare of our contract has dwindled.
Devotional exercise: write 3 things/experiences/relationships/people that you are currently holding responsible for your unhappiness. How will you take ownership of these? Commit today to exile those voices and move forward to be happy in your own skin.
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