Ahh! I need my structure!

A root canal gone horribly awry kept me from BSF on Monday night. So now I don't have my weekly lesson to go by for my morning "time with God."

*This* is exactly why I joined BSF -- so that each day I would have a structured passage to read, followed by questions to answer. No guesswork on my part. It's right there in black and white for me.

I know that on mornings like I will have this week, I could fire up my old computer and find some sort of a lesson online that I could do. The problem is that the minute the computer turns on, the brain turns off, and I know I would get stuck either checking the news (and how depressing it is these days), writing and reading e-mails (read: junking the hundreds of spams I get a day), or just generally goofing off (I love pogo.com).

So today one of my goals is to find some very quick devotionals or lessons online that I can print off and just have on-hand for those times when I don't have my BSF lesson.

@>~~>~~ New Subject ~~<~~<@

This weekend I had a realization that I hadn't really considered in a long time. I was thinking about this time in my life, how God continues to pull me closer to Him as I pray for Him to, and a quiet curiosity about what might be next in my service of the Lord. There was a time, many years ago, when I felt a "call" to enter the ministry. Now, I don't feel women should lead churches, and I never, ever even half considered that that's what that call meant for me.

I put that experience out of my mind for a long time, ignoring and avoiding it because of other things going on in my life (you can't be in the throes of a time of backsliding and face something like God tapping you on the shoulder and saying "I have something I want you to do."). I never knew then what it was He was calling me to do -- and I still don't know. I have been thinking about that moment, though, when I felt that call and professed it in front of a congregation a friend of mine was a member of.

Now that I have felt this yearning to be closer to God and serve Him completely -- and I'm actually DOING my part of that and not going, "Ok, God, use me," then sitting there twiddling my thumbs -- I have felt a very small, slow flicker of that calling deep inside. I know, though (and here, finally is the realization I reached this weekend), that there is no way I can do anything with that call, really, until I fall to my knees and totally rededicate myself to the Lord.

There is a huge difference, I think, between asking God to foster the desire in me to be closer to Him and grow a relationship with Him, and turning to Him in complete humbleness, confessing every sin by name, asking for forgiveness, and entering into a covenant with Him, vowing to turn from sin and toward him.

I'm still working on it -- as my counselor says, "baby steps."

This is something I *WANT* though...and I don't want to baby step from my old, sinful ways and baby step toward God. I want to fling down all of the past and run screaming and tearful to the Lord, laying myself and all that I am on His alter. What makes me halt, though? Is it the comfort of the old? The fear of the unknown?