We live in a fast-paced, do-it-yourself, put on your big girl pants kind of world. We rush, and we hustle, and we hurry, and we search for meaning as we run from one thing to the next. As humans, we crave connection, to know that we’re not alone and that someone out there cares for us. In our “bigger is better” world, it seems that as Christians, we’ve begun seeking a bigger and better God. One that reaches down from the heavens and points the way to happiness, one that performs miracles at our beck and call, and thunders down words of wisdom from our fog machine filled sanctuaries. Amid the theatrics and #relatablecontent, have we lost what it means to be a Christian? Have we forgotten what a heart postured towards the Lord looks like? We search all around us for meaning and connection, we long to encounter the presence of the Lord, but in all of the searching, I fear that we’ve gotten horribly lost along the way.
So often, I find myself striving for the presence of God that I ignore the fact that He is all around me and within me. I don’t have to go anywhere. In fact, there’s nothing that I can do to enter the presence of the Lord. He has made it possible for me to have a personal relationship with him, not the other way around. I get so busy trying to perfectly align myself so that I can have a “supernatural God moment” that I fill my days with noise and chaos as I seek after the next big thing that will put me in the right spot at the right time to experience God. When I get so focused on creating the perfect space and trying to perfect myself, I forget that not only am I mercifully unable to be good enough but that I’m not the only one talking. I’m not the only one trying to connect. I’m not the only one in this relationship. God is speaking every day, but I’m so caught up in my own works that I completely ignore His whispers, His nudges, and His voice calling to my heart. I miss the holy revelations all around me. God doesn’t always speak in profound, life-shattering ways. He isn’t the thundering voice, or the rushing wind, or the shaking earth, He is the voice in the stillness. The Lord is not a God of chaos but calm.
He speaks to each of us in the way that we understand best. He is our Creator, and He knows how we long to hear and experience him. He knows how to speak the sacred language of our hearts. I am a romantic at heart, so the Lord uses the beauty of His creation to woo and commune with me. I see His majesty in the specific words that the writers of the Bible use, I see His promises in the sunrise and His faithfulness in the sunset, I hear His voice as the wind moves through the forest, I feel His power as I gallop across fields, I hear His whispers when I read books that speak to my heart, and I encounter His love when I look into the eyes of my horses.
The Lord speaks to me through cotton candy skies and warm horse noses. He brushes the heavens and says, “Beloved, I painted the sky for you. I am making it new every day just as I am creating you new every day.” And as one horse nuzzles me after another, He murmurs, “Dear one, I am the comfort and acceptance that you seek. Turn around, for I am never far away.” It is the everyday encounters with the Lord that reach down and touch my soul, and it is the ordinary whispers of nature that sigh through my heart reminding of me of His love.
The most spiritual experience I’ve had was while galloping across a field behind a thundering herd of horses as the morning sky blazed red, pink, and purple. I have never felt more connected to the Creator, Artist, Author, and Perfector of the world. His artistry speaks to the deepest parts of my soul, the parts that long for the beauty of the garden relationship to be restored, the part that sees the majesty of the world and bursts with songs of praise and hallelujahs.
Friends, let us not get so caught up in the way that we think we should experience God or the pathways that we’ve been told are the “right” way to encounter His presence, that we ignore the ways that He’s speaking to us right now. He is calling to your heart in a way that is unique to you. Will you quiet the outside noise long enough to hear Him?
Xoxo,
Katherina
Simply Katherina 