HOW GOD HAS BEEN CHANGING MY LIFE

Five months ago my life changed. After Pastoring for thirty three years, and twenty three years at my beloved church, I stepped down and have taken a pause in my life. I can truly say that it has saved my life. I had worked six days a week for all of this time and worked often even on my day off. I felt overloaded, overwhelmed, overworked. I was regularly depressed, grumpy, and lonely. Deep inside I felt that God did not love me, I was worried all the time, frequently discouraged, most of the time I felt like a complete failure, I was utterly disappointed with my self and my life, I was completely out of touch with my inner life and emotions, had constant feelings of impending doom, felt like I needed to perform in order to be loved by God and others, feared rejection, had developed a way of relating to Christ that was devoted, structured, disciplined, but not close and intimate with Him. I needed a "pause" in my own life in order to get on with the rest of my life and know the satisfaction, the sweetness, and the freedom of living in a deeply centered and reflective way before the presence of God. I needed to rediscover the Father's love in order to be freed to live a life of love and in love.

Now after five months I am happy to say that my old life is over, dead, and gone. There is no turning back. I am feeling closer to God than I have ever been. I am happier, calmer, and experiencing freedom from the tyranny of performance and others expectations. I will never live that way again or be that person again. I want to live in love, peace, freedom, and joy for now on. I want to live to magnify the Lord in my body whether i live or die (Philippians 1:21). I want to truly love God and others. I want to be free to BE who God made me to be as Bill Robison. I want to live a quiet, reflective, centered life. I want to do what the Father is doing and not my own agenda or for my own self enhancement.

That is why I wrote awhile back about taking "pauses' in your daily life in order to commune and fellowship with God. This is what has helped to change my life and to save my life. To "pause is to stop or cease from some activity in order to "start' spending some time with the Lord.

I was not calling all of you to quite your jobs and hang out in the forest all day or become monks; but I was challenging us all to take serious inventory in our lives. I was calling you to be courageous and honest enough to determine how much time we spend being busy and how much time we spend in communion with the Lord. I wanted to create in you like God did in me a "holy dissatisfaction" with anything less than a deep, rich, growing relationship with Jesus Christ. What does your life look like? Is Christ truly the treasure, joy, and satisfaction of your life? Does Jesus move you or are you bored with Him? Do you find yourself growing deeper and deeper in your love for Him and others? Do you have an insatiable hunger and thirst for god and the things of God? Do you love to read and pray the Bible? Do you care for others? Do you hate sin and love holiness? Does pleasing God matter to you?

My experience as a pastor has been that most Christians spend little time alone, little time in silence, little time in the Word of God, and as a result, little time with God. In short, we spend a disproportionate amount of time in the things of little or no value instead of the things of eternal value, the nurture and care of our souls. Think about this, that is the person we afflict upon our work, our spouses, our children, our church, and others around us!

The fruit of over busy lives is sin, stress, fear, anxiety, little inner peace and tranquility, distance from God, anger, bitterness, relational conflict, loneliness, emptiness, shallowness, selfishness, depression, sorrow, reacting instead of being proactive, lack of intentionality in what we do, thoughtlessness, foolishness, compulsiveness, wasted time and wasted lives.

The whole goal of taking a pause in your life is that you would love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and that you would love your neighbor as yourself. As my friend Ed Piorick says, "the end game is love." For love to come out of your life, the Father's love has to come into your life. Love has to master you inside in order to minister through you outside. The only way love is going to come into your life is when you drink from the well, the river, the source of love and get around the fire of love that produces heat and light.

So I challenged you to bring some balance into your lives and balance activity by embracing and integrating into your life silence, solitude, and contemplation or meditation. We are a doing people but I have learned that "being" is what produces "doing". We are called human beings not human doings. Doing does not produce being; instead, being produces doing.

I mentioned that the Muslims have five "pauses' in their day in order to worship and remember their God. Allah. The Jews regularly set aside times of the day in order to worship Jehovah. Jesus would take "pauses" from His busy and demanding life in order to be with the Father. After His resurrection, Jesus disciples continued to pray at certain hours of the day. The Roman Catholic Benedictine monastic tradition has many "pauses' in their day(Eight) called "the Daily Office". So, taking pauses in the day has been a regular practice throughout history. Pauses like silence, solitude, and meditation are means of grace that we can use in order to draw close to God and become lovers whether for five minutes or five hours.

So, for the next three weeks I would like to share how you can practically integrate silence, solitude, and meditation into your life. I pray that it would become a welcome "pause" in your day and that like me, it would begin changing and transforming you into a more loving person than ever before. Would you join me on this wonderful journey?

Enjoying the new journey,
Pastor Bill