I slept for a short while, and then the nightmares started back up. They've been coming more frequently and gotten rougher lately, but last night is the worst it's been in years. Around 4 AM I actually woke up swinging, which is something that hasn't happened since the first year of my release from prison. I lay there praying and giving thanks that I had not struck my wife. I finally drifted off to sleep, but rest didn't happen. The bad dreams continued.
Exhausted and struggling to force myself from bed this morning, I moaned and complained to myself about the lack of rest. For a brief moment, I slipped into my old way of thinking. The thought popped into my mind that the horrible night of terror and restlessness occurred because I had skipped my evening time, that God had punished me for rejecting to spend that time with Him. Something within me rose up and said don't slip into self-pity, and don't allow your tiredness to make you vulnerable to such lies. I rejected the thought in the name of Jesus, and then something wonderful happened.
Peace came. I got the basis for what I am writing now. The Spirit reminded me of two things. God loves me deeply and completely. Also, God is not a petulant and vindictive jerk who responds to a slight, or a perceived slight, by getting even. There was no, I'll show him what happens for skipping his evening time. No. It wasn't the first time I stayed in with my wife, and it won't be the last. The off feeling I had most of the previous evening was likely a precursor to the rough night, a warning that I wasn't doing well. And while it may have been perhaps lessened by spending that time with God before sleeping, the distress was not punishment for failing to do so.
There is a huge difference gaining blessing and benefit that helps in times of trouble from spending time with God and having times of trouble as punishment. We don't earn God's protection and peace any more than we earn His love or our redemption. He is not so needy that He will give us blessing in exchange for a little of our precious time and withhold it if we don't spend X amount of time with Him. He doesn't want a little of our time anyway. He wants all of us, totally and completely. He wants me to be as much His when I am with Leah as when I am alone with Him.
Sometimes when we walk outside the will of God He chastens and corrects us. It happens, and it happens because He loves us and doesn't want us to continue down a path that will lead to destruction in our lives. Sometimes when we slip back into self we do things that have negative consequences. They are not punishments but the natural results of cause and effect. These are real situations, but it doesn't mean that every time something negative happens we are either being chastened or getting what we deserve. There is such a thing as evil, and there is an enemy that resists the will and blessing of God in our lives.
If the first thing I do every morning is say I love you to my wife and the last thing I do every night is to tell her again, she might get a little concerned about what's going on if I skipped doing that. Am I sick? Did I stop loving her? But God knows our heart in a way that another human being can't, in a way that even we can't. He doesn't have to question meaning or motive or situation when we do something out of our normal routine. He knows the why of it better than even we do. He knows exactly how much we love Him when we are on our knees proclaiming it, when we are saying a quick prayer in bed rather than a longer prayer in our evening chair and when we are totally absorbed in something else. Our words will never convince Him of love that isn't real and not saying them will never make Him doubt the truth of the love in our heart. He knows.
It is normal as we seek to improve our relationship with God and our spiritual condition to begin doing things that help with that. It is normal that as we grow more and more in our love for God we will spend time with Him. These things can become regularly scheduled events because we tend to do the things that we do every day on a sort of natural schedule. But there is no rule to it. We are not earning God's favor by adding Him to our schedule. Grace does not demand adhering to a rule, especially a rule we put in place ourselves. There is no doubt or question that the more time we regularly spend with Daddy the better our relationship with Him will be. It is also a wonderful and proven way to stay on track and in the will of God to start and end the day focusing on Him.
But if we muss one aspect of a daily routine with our Daddy let us not believe the lies of the enemy trying to hinder and hurt our relationship by saying that whatever bad happened later was Daddy slapping us. No. If we miss time with Him, His response is only to lovingly say He missed us too, take us in His arms and love on us. Also, for the record, I truly believe there are times that God fully agrees with chucking the schedule and the routine. He made the sun go backwards once, and that's pretty radically against the norm. I believe there are times when He agrees that we need to spend some time that we would normally spend with Him with our spouse or our parents or our children or a friend or maybe even with a stranger.
Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on
June 12, 2016.
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