On Monday, April 16th the new Sacred Adventures: A Travel Journal For Your Soul will be available in the shop! We have spent the past year designing this creative resource for you and we are excited to finally be releasing it into the world! At Art of Adventure, we believe our souls were created to travel with God into the unknown, to take tiny risks, and to explore the depths of His heart within the beautiful expanse of our everyday lives.
In this 3-part series, I will be introducing three rhythms that awaken us to our adventure with God. These also represent the three different sections you will find within our new journal.
Today’s post is on the rhythm of savoring.
Do you ever feel guilty for not spending enough time with God?
In the Christian culture we have labeled this time specifically as quiet time. We are taught to read our bibles and pray, preferably in the early morning hours. As if God somehow prefers the mornings. It goes without saying that this time should also be fruitful- leaving us feeling nourished and satisfied with rich truth. We should never walk away from these momentous times without a practical application of some sort for our day or specific situation.
Ah, quiet times…
I know we mean well, but the term quiet time seems to do us a disservice. It has a tendency to reduce intimacy with Jesus to a single, self-guided act we engage in once a day, usually by sheer discipline.
This is where I’ve felt God, through the years, inviting us into a way of life, a rhythm, that is much more mysterious and spacious…the rhythm of savoring.
Don’t get me wrong, I still feel guilty for the many missed or mediocre mornings of prayer and scripture, but now I come to my senses much quicker. I hear His gentle invitation to see life with Him not as an assignment I need to complete, but a Spirit-led adventure.
Whenever I remember to step into the rhythm of savoring, the heavy burden of guilt I usually feel mounting by mid-afternoon for “not spending enough time with God” rolls off my back.
Without this heavy load, the pressure to pursue Him through the expected spiritual formulas, I feel freed up to encounter Him in the unexpected ways throughout my day.
Almost instantly, I’m flooded with desire for God and I am found ready and waiting for His surprises, His words, and His presence to renew me wherever I am.
Savoring God teaches me to dwell on Him, to enjoy and appreciate Him for who He is, not what He can do for me. My mind shifts from a task-driven mode of merely gathering facts about Him for my own practical purposes, to a relationship-driven mode of communing with Him in love and friendship.
As we learn the rhythm of savoring, we discover following Jesus is indeed an untamed adventure, never a formula with distinct steps or certain outcomes. If you and I get comfortable with quiet times being our main point of connection with God, then I fear we will never come fully alive to our adventure.
Savoring- letting our lives steep in God’s reality, around and within us, for hours on end- silences the lie, “you haven’t spent enough time with God.”
Whether or not, we have quiet time with Him before dawn, means nothing because our hearts have learned to slow down and give Him all of our time.
We acquire ears to hear His heart beating through the walls of our home and the streets of our neighborhood. Through the rhythm of savoring the path beneath us becomes sacred ground that we can’t ignore.
We are overwhelmed with how many of His secrets are wrapped up in the crevices of our whispered prayers and longings.
We stumble upon His Spirit quietly waiting for us to stop trying to make spiritual growth a linear act and instead surrender to the twists and turns, stop and go, ups and downs, that characterize the season He has us in.
As I’ve been teaching my kids during our afternoon tea times to delicately sip instead of ferociously guzzle, perhaps we could all be encouraged today to take in this life with God by sipping… slowing… savoring, rather than trying to guzzle it in one swallow.
Below, are a few samples of some of the verses, quotes, questions, and prompts you’ll find throughout the savor section of the new travel journal:
You are my place of quiet retreat; I wait for your Word to renew me. Psalm 119: 114
“Most of the things we need to be fully alive never come in busyness, they grow in rest.” Mark Buchanan
“What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” A.W. Tozer
How are you in a hurry these days? Consider the slowness of God.
Take time to savor today- to ponder His words and treasure His secrets in your heart.
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