RESISTING THE WIGGLES

Isaiah 30:12-33:9; Galatians 5:1-12; Psalm 63:1-11; Proverbs 23:22

“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it….’ So the Lord must wait for you to come to him so he can show you his love and compassion. For the Lord is a faithful God. Blessed are those who wait for his help.”

“But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others - a little yeast spreads quickly through the whole batch of dough! I am trusting the Lord to bring you back….”

“O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.”

“Listen to your father, who gave you life, and don’t despise your mother’s experience when she is old.”

It was tough getting up this morning. After weeks of summer temperatures, there was a slight chill in the air last night, and we slept with the windows open. Turned out, my wife was considerably warmer than the morning air coming through the window, and I really had no motivation to leave. On mornings like this, it’s particularly difficult to believe anyone would intentionally reject the ability to simply be with the one they love in quietness and confidence. But we do. After what we judge to be enough time has passed, we get antsy to do something, to move, to get about the business of life. So we break fellowship and move out once again into the cold to fend for ourselves.

My wife calls this “the wiggles,” and by 7AM most mornings – including Saturdays! – she has a serious case of them. I’d probably be content to lay around holding her and dozing for several more hours given the choice, but alas, it is never to be. Once she’s up, she’s up. She cannot lay still. In our world, it’s gotten to be kind of a joke neither one of us takes seriously. We know we don’t actually need to lie there letting the morning expire. Besides, there is much beauty and charm to the early hours we’d miss if we did not get out of bed.

However, I also get the spiritual “wiggles” from time to time. I leave the presence of my heavenly Father before He is through equipping me for the day. I check out early. And it matters. By the end of those days, I usually feel like I took a knife to a gunfight. Running on empty, I may even find myself turning mean-spirited and cynical by 2 or 3 PM. When that happens, like Paul’s “poisoned yeast,” I can end up turning everyone around me sour and listless.

We all know folks who, although usually well intentioned at the start, obviously exit the presence of Christ too early in the day. They begin well, full of enthusiasm, and just run out of gas as the day’s worries and schedule begin to encroach upon their sense of security and confidence. Some of these folks don’t bother to even start their day with prayer. We aren’t concerned with them today; they are always on their own. Today is about those would-be saints who simply cannot muster the spiritual strength to be at 5 or 7PM who they started out to be at 7AM. Today is about the saints, like all of us, who sometimes find themselves spiritually depleted after just a few hours.

Here is where the illogic of God can challenge us the most. If we are to be the people the Lord created us to be, we must make whatever time is necessary to fully recharge our spiritual batteries on a daily basis. Whatever we think the price is for that few minutes (or hours, in some cases) of meditation and grace, the dividends are greater. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is as essential or as immediate as intentionally dedicating part of each of our days back to the Holy Spirit who gave them to us in the first place. In the rush of our over crowded days, it often feels like God just has to wait. We think we cannot possibly take time for Him right then. Time’s awastin’, and we fool ourselves into believing we have to tough some things out on our own. However, particularly in hindsight, we usually realize to our chagrin that our feelings were really just pride – and a dangerous lack of faith – talking.

Not many of us would intentionally deprive ourselves of life, but when we make a relationship with Christ a thing we do only at our convenience, it amounts to much the same thing. Jesus was clear that He is the way, the truth and the life. When we fail to allow Him time to give us what He is, we necessarily limit ourselves to something less than the life He planned for us. We may as well try fitting a square peg in a round hole. Life apart from Jesus is, at best, always an exhausting, uphill struggle. We need to stop fighting the spiritual currents that would bring us back to Him and allow ourselves the time to go where the Living Water would take us.