The Virtual God

Ahh I just completed my move back to Boise. It was a trial as I could not get a moving van out of Twin Falls for 5 days! But the 'eagle has landed'. It gave me some time to take my kids to the mountains. It also gave me 5 days away from internet, DVR, cable TV, cell phones, text messages, iPods, sattalite radio, books and magazines. Unwired. Made me consider the human aptitude for creating the virtual god. I feel compelled to check my email almost every day. But do I check God's inbox? He has faithfully provided at least one message for me every days since I started with Him for the last 24 years. I am not one who see's devotions as God's guilt trip relationship. He's not like that. It's about being in love with Him. Yeah discipline, structure, and order can be good, but it can be empty. Imagine telling your wife it is time for her 9:00pm kiss? God does not require a cold robot heart but one of flesh. We all need a natural authentic intimacy.

One thing I learned at last year at Vineyard fellowship was to look for God's daily revelation. If I don't look I miss it. It is there for every person in any situation, I know this to be true. Drudgereport, Foxnews, cannot provide it. Yes, I like the Laodocean Church am guilty of leaving my first love. I raise my hand in shame. I can lead a devotion group faithfully every Tuesday for a year and rely on the Spirit to empower me, I can work on a major national outreach program for the Kingdom, and I can model His love in my relationships with my wife, children, and friends. Yet be internally bankrupt,

as my lifestyle has been cashing checks my heart has not yet deposited.

Like many, when I am with God, I am good, do good, feel good. But when I am away there is a vacuum, healthy hobbies, interests and pursuits do not fill it. Unhealthy sinful behaviors only seem to make the chasm deeper and my solitude more desperate. But when the world is as it is and not as I would have it, He finds time to get me to stop, put down my hammer, and breathe. His Spirit softly reminds me of my youth when we danced on the crust of the earth together. Where our perfect love kept me from consuming fears. When miracles were not events, just what I expected from an all powerful Yahweh. How I was His and He was mine. Spiritual romance. Passion. I have learned that the surrendered life is the only one worth living. I a have learned through loss and an pain to accept the things I cannot change to change the things I can and look to God to help me know the difference. I have learned to "be" and not to "do" as a way of putting off my pains and losses. Relationships are no longer the terror they once were as I learn to know myself and be true. However, there is one relationship I need to improve; that is the one with my Father in Heaven, ('Howard' as Henry Winkler called him in 'Heroes'.), Today I will draw closer to Him by simply making myself available even if I have to "log off" to log on.