Confession time

Wow! Did I have a rude awakening this weekend. I don’t want consistent contact with God throughout the day as much as I thought I did. Let me tell you about it. May my confession encourage you in the arena of LISTENING to God.

It began last week when my son told me of a speaker at his church that challenged them to do a 60-60. Every awakening 60 minutes for 60 days, experiment with meeting with God on the hour. If need be, set a wrist watch alarm for an hourly ring. On the hour ask yourself, “Is this what Christ would want me to be doing?” Or, some other quick connection with the Father.

I don’t have a watch with an alarm, so I tried the experiment without alarm. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Day after day, I forgot – even during this time that I’m studying “LISTEN, especially to God. So I confessed my failure to my son and launched on a new plan.

My cell phone has capacity to set the alarm six times throughout the day. I did. For every two hours. The result? The alarm would sound and my shocking response was, “Don’t bother me. I’m busy.” Can you imagine my chagrin, my sorrow, at having such a selfcentered reaction.
I thought I was desirious of a simultaneity with God (Thomas Kelly’s word for a constant growing awareness of God’s presence.) Here I was, too busy (in retirement even) to acknowledge God’s presence every two hours!

My prayer became and is, “Father, thank you for your grace, mercy and love that accepts me just like I am. I’m sorry for the ‘don’t bother me’ attitude. That seems so foreign to my conscious mind. What is going on? What is being revealed? Selfcenteredness? Self-sufficiency? Inflexable obsession with the present? I want to LISTEN to you – yes, even on the hour every two hours. When the alarm sounds, my prayer will be ‘teach me Father. What is my blockage?’”

I’ll hopefully be able to relate to you in tomorrow’s post what I learn today. Would you join me in some version of 60-60? If so, let me know at rburwick@mindspring.com. Let’s experiment together.