God has been at work in my life for the last several months in ways that I'm not even fully aware of to the full extent. It's been good, but it's been hard.
In many ways I felt as I tried to accomplish things that I was merely scraping the bottom of the barrel to try and do anything effectively. Whatever I did, it was not the best or fullest that it could be. And so in light of that, I decided that it was better to just not do some things. And so I ceased doing a lot that was good, but not best. My excuse was lack of time, but the reality went far deeper than that.
If you've been one of the few to check up on this blog from time to time, you know that this blog is one of the things that fell to the bottom of my priorities. I'm sorry that it did. But in not writing over this time frame I think that I'll have better thoughts looking back than if I had written while in the midst of it all.
I had the privilege to go to a conference about two months ago, and while there I was struck with the reality of where my life was at. And because of that, a lot has since changed! God is good! While at the conference I heard Dr. John Piper speak, and in his sermon he said something like this: "What's at the bottom of your joy?" Basically, what is it in life that gives you your fullest joy? And then he said; "Do you make much of God by having Him under all to the extent that He makes much of you?" And I didn't really get what he meant by that second statement at first. But what Dr. Piper was asking is; is God and your relationship with Him what everything else sprouts from? Is HE the bottom of your joy?
I had to stop and think about that. I knew the answer, but I had to let it sink in. God has always been a huge part of my life. But for a few months that's all that He was. Just a huge part. Not the foundation of every part of my existence. Not the bottom of my joy. In the busyness and scattered-ness of my life God had become just a thing that I declared with my lips, not THE relationship that caused everything else to be as it should.
What I realized next is that this is incredibly easy to fall into. The idea that if God is a big thing in our lives that is enough. The truth is that if God is not at the bottom, the foundation, then He isn't the Lord of my life at all. No matter how much I proclaim it to be true with my sin encrusted lips.
Since those realizations I have done all that I can to make sure that God is at the bottom. That He is the source of my fullest joy in life. That everything I do is growing from Him being my foundation. The Bottom. But it isn't an instantaneous thing. Instead it is something that God forms, crafts, and develops within us. Just like the forming of any other relationship in life, it takes time. Day by day.
So as Dr. Piper asked me (effectively); I ask you: "What's at the bottom of your joy?"
