Longings of my soul

I want to be saint like in all I say and do.

It is the life that has no time for trifling that counts.
~ Amy Carmichael

I was reminded of that quote at about 10pm today. I realized that all I had been doing the entire day was trifling away all my time. I decided to listen to a Father John podcast so that I would be doing something to push me towards God. He talked about the time he spent with this homeless man. He talked about not just giving money to charities but actually getting to know the "least of these". Now that I think about it there was a blog I read earlier today that was talking about how jesus doesn't just want us to say to him, "yeah, I don't have the time for that, but I'll write that check to the needy in a few minutes." She talked about how we are so distracted that we don't know the fullness of God's presence. In other words God spent some time stirring up the desires of my heart.

I want to go overseas and take care of orphans. That is my deepest longing because through that I feel that is my ultimate calling in this life. I started to ask God, " Why fill me with such longings if I can't do anything right now. I want to serve you now but I just don't know how." I thought of how I want to live a life of complete devotion to God. I want to give him total abandonment but I just get distracted sooo easily. I sat down and prayed for maybe a minute or two. It went something like this,

" Saint Therese pray for me, ask jesus to teach me how to live each day for him now, ask him to help me become humble. Lord Jesus, please help me not to get distracted, give me focus. I need you but I don't know how to really know you. I don't even know how to read the bible right. How to make it meaningful. Lord Help me! I need more."

I went down stairs with an uneasiness in my soul. I was hungry I wanted more, more of Jesus. I started to clean up a little and then I could almost see the lightbulb go off. Each time I clean and my mom doesn't have to I'm serving. If I serve my family I am serving God. I could almost hear God say, "If you can't serve your own family how can you serve strangers." I always tell myself that I just want to be married so I can be with Jason all the time and by showing him constant love he would see God's love for him through me (and vise versa). It didn't occur to me that the same thing applies to my family. I cleaned all the dishes because I was determined to have a servant's heart (no matter how tired I was).

Serving others is good but, I'm afraid I'm looking at my actions too much. I think of mary and martha and how the one ran around cleaning and couldn't just sit down and be with Jesus. I'm afraid I'm too much like that. I need to get to know Jesus personally again. The problem is somewhere down the line I forgot how. So I just called Jason up and asked him if our new year's resolution could be to read through the bible together. I think there will be some times it will feel like a chore, but once I make it through the bible will start to make more sense and it will come to life for me. I told Jason how I can't do it alone. If we do it together we will help each other stick to it. I want to become like the saints and be completely in love with my lord, but I have to get to know him in order to love like that.

Pray for me,
Kristi Johnson