I am good at shutting down. I too often escape the issues of life by reading, playing games, being busy, talking with friends... Our culture offers us every opportunity to be distracted.
Today, I was thinking about intimacy with God, and it occurred to me that just as I struggle sometimes to stay connected with the people around me, so I suffer in my intimacy with God. How many times do I shut out the noise & people just to be with him?
Sometimes I feel as if I am not fully alive, and I prayed tonight that God would awaken me. Awaken me from all the things that pull me away from him, and and away from the people in my life. Teach me the give and take of being together, the peace of not performing, something deeper than a mask. I am amazed when I really look at myself in the quiet how little of me there is beneath the surface. A mentor of mine once said that the Christian life should be like an iceberg: 90% below the surface. He also pointed out that most of us live 90% in public, and have very little just between us and God, in the depths. Rather than an iceberg, I seem to float like iceberg lettuce--pale green, bobbing, not very nutritious.
While I was thinking about these things, the phrase "resurrection power" came to me. Paul wanted to know this resurrection power. I looked up the verse where Paul makes this statement: "I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead" (Philippians 3:10). I once was lost but now I'm found...I once was dead, but now I'm alive. I am alive by resurrection power. The Bible speaks of our salvation as an event and as a process. Maybe, just as I was made alive in Christ, he also keeps making me alive to his presence.
By the way, verse 10 finishes with Paul saying, "I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death." I'm going to chew on that first part of that verse for a little while. It's daunting to think about coming alive to God, and then laying my life down again...
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