I’ve taken a long break from writing on this journal I infrequently keep because something wasn’t right in my life. The last time I posted something was November 18th and since then I have written numerous other posts but never felt I was to post them. During this time away, I’ve gone back to the basics of my faith. This sounds much easier then it actually was for me. I have spoken numerous times of how my own hubris gets in the way of what God wants to do in my life and this time was no different.
When I felt God calling me “back to the basics” (which I will talk more about later), I found myself resistant, thinking that “I’m no new Christian, I’ve paid my dues, I want God to teach me about the big stuff the really heavy stuff, that way I will look good when I post on some Internet journal site.” The more I resisted to His persistent calling me back to the simple things, the stronger I felt that I was being called to revisit my foundation in God. The more I resisted, the longer I went without really hearing from Him.
Now I am no saint and I do not hear from God every day but multiple times per week, I get my manna, and it is usually very clear that whatever message I’ve received is from God. The more I resisted God asking me to sit with Him as we look inside me at the very core of my relationship with Him, the longer I went without hearing God. Days became weeks and weeks, months. After nearly two months of nothing, I decided it had been long enough and I relented to God and just sat before Him.
I believe that like any relationship, the way you communicate (the rhythm of the conversation) is learned through experience with the other party. When you haven’t seen an old friend in a long time, there is sometimes an awkward reacquainting period. I experienced this with my quiet time with God, it was never awkward but I certainly did not have the patience to just sit before God, especially when He had very clearly told me He wants to look in me and “work” on my foundation. After a few days of mainly me talking and getting into a consistent routine of talking to Him, I began to feel I was spinning my wheels again. I had bought into what God wanted to do, but never really committed myself to the patient task of sitting before Him, still, and letting Him speak to me.
One morning I had just finished my quiet time with Him, shut my prayer journal and began to get ready for the day when I felt this incredibly real call to just wait and listen. I paused and then yielded. I re-opened my journal, grabbed my pen and waited. The next 15 minutes or so (to be honest, I lost track of time) were pure love. God began to open Himself to me like I had never really felt before. In these precious moments, I heard Him clearly talk to me, tell me things I haven’t heard in years. What I really gleaned above all of what He told me was the unmistakable feeling of His presence. God was real in that moment.
That is a powerful statement that I take for granted. God is in me, His Holy Spirit lives within me and when I allow myself to be still and listen to what is in me, He will truly be real. That seems like such common sense but when you experience God in that moment and His presence is stronger than if He were beside you, you will understand what it means for God to be real.
I think what I am trying to say in this whole entry is simple: I am proud and there is no room for me and my pride in what God wants to do in and through me. When I yield or when I give way to God, He has promised He will be real.

Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—