Uproot
Journey to Intimacy with God
Back in April I went on a secular media fast because I just really wanted to get closer to God. I usually just get off of social media for about a couple of days every 6 - 8 weeks because I can just get too consumed by it sometimes and getting off keeps me sane and helps me to refocus on more important things. I’ve been doing this for about 2 years now but I never considered it a “fast”, it was just something that I did for myself when I felt like I was consuming an unhealthy amount of social media. However, the pandemic changed things for me. I knew that now more than ever, I wanted and needed to get closer to God. I had far less excuses and far more time to be in his presence but to be very honest with you, I didn’t feel like it. My natural inclination was to find things to fill my time. I filled it with netflix and new hobbies and talking with friends and social media and sleep...so much good sleep lawd! Sure my devotional time in the morning was a bit longer but, it just didn’t hit the way I knew it was supposed to.
I’d been having a lot of deep existential thoughts as I was coming to the end of my college career and I just felt like something needed to change. I just saw the same cycles of loneliness, people pleasing, and insecurity bubbling up in me and I was like nah, not today Satan, I need to figure this out. God forbid I come out of college just to be dealing with the same struggles that I had when I got here. I figured if there was a good time to lean into God it was in the middle of Quarantine when all my plans were canceled and I literally couldn’t be close to anyone but God. (this was a bit problematic because God became my last resort when he should have been my first option but We’ll circle back to that. I began to get curious about who I could be if I was really completely sold out for Christ. I almost didn’t believe it was possible. I mean, I wasn’t a heathen, I just kind of figured I was as saved and spirit filled as I was going to be. I’d been in Church all my life, if me and God weren’t besties by now, then that might just not be in the cards for us. But something about that idea just didn’t sit right with me. During that time I was having a lot of strange dreams. I kept feeling convicted, like God was trying to tell me something but he was speaking a different language. I kept praying that God would show me what I should do in this strange time but I had no idea he’d respond by telling me who I should be.
My prayer points were
How should I spend the next few months to glorify God
Where should I live long term
How can I best maximize my gifts in service of the kingdom
What things deep in my heart do I need to address and give to you Lord
I wrote these prayers in my journal and then logged off and out of all my social media and TV streaming accounts. Almost as soon as I started the fast God changed the direction of it. I began to hear him speaking to me like never before. I think I’d repositioned my heart to really be in a place of vulnerability because to be quite honest I was just tired of being tired. Anxiety is exhausting. Depression is exhausting. My goodness, loneliness and people pleasing literally take so much out of you. So I was ready for a change. But I believe that more than just me being ready, it was God that said it was time. It was time for him to take me into a new level of faith and intimacy with him, not just for my sake but for the sake of other people around me. He was going to do it one way or another, I’m just glad I leaned into his timing.
On April 1st I wrote:
“I just finished praying and God is impressing it on my heart so heavily that this is not a time for messing around. God’s people are in desperate need of him right now more than ever and they have not been equipped with the tools to seek him for themselves. Therefore, it is our duty to be ministers of the gospel. We need to share his divine abundance with his people. God’s heart aches for his children but, he has already met their needs through us [his church]. Thank you Jesus. This is now a personal fast for clarity and purpose in my walk with God. This is also an intercessory fast for God’s people who are suffering under this pandemic. It is for God to move in his divine power and love, cover his children in protection from Corona and fear, and raise up his Church as a standard.”
However the more I prayed for others, the more God began to reveal about me.
The more I pressed in, the more God began to uproot every thing that he didn’t plant in me. The anchor passage for the fast started with Ephesians 4 (because of pastor Mike Todd’s sermon “Who’s the Minister Here” ) but it soon spread to the whole book. My good brother Paul really did what he needed to do when he wrote that letter. The more I studied that passage, the more I began to see God and my calling more clearly. There were no other distractions in my day to take my thoughts away from the word of God, I was listening to sermons, and watching podcasts and hearing music that was all Godly so it all reinforced what God was speaking to me through his word. It was like I was reading the bible for the first time, discovering the Gospel all over again. It was as if I’d always had my phone on low brightness in a dimly lit room and all of a sudden someone turned the brightness all the way up and turned off the lights. I was consuming more light but it appeared even brighter because I saw it in such stark contrast to all the darkness surrounding me. The more the light of God was illuminated in my life, the more I was able to clearly see the darkness inside of me. It's like that verse that says the word of God is a light unto my path and a lamp unto my feet. I suddenly realized that the lamp wasn’t just necessary to get through the darkness of the world, the light first had to lead me out of the darkness that was already within the depths of my heart.
Practically I think the most important part of the fast was not just taking out secular things but really intentionally replacing them with godly things so…
I read my bible… a lot and picked a couple sections of the bible to meditate on (Ephesians, Psalm 139, Romans 8, Job)
I watched a lot of Christian YouTube content and sermons
I read Christian books and listen to Christian podcasts (this period is where most of the content in the Spirit Food section of my website came from)
I kept a daily journal where I wrote down my feelings about myself and my faith as if God would read it later or as if I was giving someone advice
I started going on prayer walks where I would just worship and talk to God for about an hour a day
I also told the people closest to me what I was doing when they asked me to look at something on social media or watch a show just to keep myself accountable
There was so much that I did to just completely immerse myself in God and I didn’t necessarily have these plans going in. I just really knew how I wanted to seek God and he led me to implement the practical steps. I’m so grateful for the guidance of the holy spirit because there were no rules or even guidelines on exactly how I “had” to fast to get closer to God. It was honestly just the fact that I got the opportunity to experience God more without all the distractions. Getting more of Him made me want more of him. As I consistently starved what by flesh desired, I began to crave the things of the spirit.
At some point I came to the realization that in the past I got close to God not because I felt like he was all I needed, but because he was the only one there. Instead of wanting God for God, in some ways I wanted him because I couldn’t get the relationships, attention, satisfaction that I really wanted from people and things. I was so infatuated with the creation that I had no room for the creator. This realization truly wrecked me because even in that level of selfish pride God still showed up for me. He still chose to give me his pure, beautiful, unimaginable love when all I had to give him was a tainted and fractured imitation. It reminds me of the verse that says our righteousness is like filthy rags before God. He gave me everything I never even knew to ask for and yet I was still unwilling and unable to trust such a trustworthy God with the depths of my brokenness.
I realized that it had never been about God being unable to look at me. I was saved so he saw me through the blood of Jesus. It had been about me being unable to look at myself. How could I present myself fully to my God when I couldn’t see the full extent of my shame and depravity. How could I see myself clearly when I couldn’t see God clearly. If I really knew him how I said I knew him and loved him how I said I love him, I wouldn’t be able to resist seeing the world (including myself) through the filter of that love. I’d be able to love God's creation (including myself) so much that I wouldn’t feel the need to burden that creation with all the demands that can only be filled by a holy and righteous God.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that at some level, the fast brought me so close to God that I finally realized how far away I still was. I realized that the time of the fast was designed for the time beyond the fast. That's why it was life changing. I never really knew what it meant for someone to be radically transformed after one encounter with Christ. I knew that it was possible but I’d never really seen it in myself or anyone I knew. I think for women like me, who are born and raised in the church, the full manifestation of our faith tends to look a bit different than those who weren’t because although our hearts may be on the same level of decay, we know all the “right” things to do so we are more easily deceived or unaware of the condition of our heart. At least that was the case for me.
I was saved for a long time but during the process of this fast I finally got free. There were a lot of emotions but it was not the emotional response that allowed me to know I had an encounter with Jesus, it was what happened after I dried my eyes and got off of my knees. It was a depth of knowledge and belief, a closeness to God that didn’t just feel good to me, it was good for me. I literally sensed mental weights that I had unknowingly been carrying on my shoulders all my life had come off me. I didn’t realize how deeply I’d been struggling with shame and insecurity until God set me free. The weird thing was, the thoughts didn’t necessarily disappear. There was no magic to it. Nothing in my life actually changed except for my perspective. I was just now so much more clearly able to distinguish the truth from the lies. I was able to look at my insecurities about my acne, my lack of close friends, my concern about what people were thinking about me, my anxiety which came from a place of deep loneliness and shame for what they were. They lost the power to define me. For the first time I was able to see these emotions objectively without allowing them to control me and determine my reactions. I was able to see them clear enough to hand them over to God without clinging to the familiarity of my brokenness. And then I had joy because I simply got the chance to rest in the arms of my friend while He fought those battles that I was too weary to engage in.
This was my process of uprooting and the wild thing is that even though I feel like a completely different person than the woman who started 2020, I’ve never felt more like myself. When I sought leaned into faith through this fast, he allowed me to experience his presence in a way that radically shifted how I saw God, then myself, and then others. He turned on the lights and began to uproot all the lies that had entangled my heart for so long. I just want to let you know it’s possible, that’s the goal of this post. It might not look like a month long media fast for you but when you take time to retreat and sincerely seek the face of God, he will make himself known to you and it is in that place where the light shines so brightly darkness has no home, it is there we find wholeness in Christ. I like to call that place The Light Point.