Do I need God Daily?

I’ve heard my mom, aunt, and grandmother, and many other wise elders say, “Keep God first in all you do.” I even quoted that to myself and others before. But do we truly understand the seriousness of that statement?

It wasn’t until recently, I realized how desperately I need to talk to Jesus daily for sanity. And I’m not talking about just any sanity, I’m talking about my spiritual sanity. I wish more of us understood how weak our flesh truly is. How fragile our flesh truly is. How critical it truly is for our hearts, minds, and souls to be protected daily.

I remember hearing my mother tell me many times, the bible is like medicine. We need our doses daily.

I’ve come to realize, I can’t just go days without talking to God and expect to still feel close to Him.

Yes, God is all around and lives in our hearts but understand this, people flee from where they are not wanted or where they feel abandoned.

If we do not tend to God and talk to Him daily, it’s very hard to feel connected to Him.

Think about this, when someone says, “I love you,” but their actions show otherwise, it’s hard for us to believe they love us right?

 If we tell someone, “You’re always welcome in my home if you need a place to stay”  but then when they come over, we treat them as if they aren’t wanted and fail to tend to them, how can we say we don’t mind them living with us?

 It’s just like that when we tell God we want Him to live in our hearts.

If we want Jesus to dwell in us, we must tend to Him. We must feed Him, we must show hospitality to Him and demonstrate that His presence is welcome in our homes (in our hearts.) If we fail to spend time with God, if we fail to pray to Him, and if we fail to mediate on Him, are we showing we want Him? Are we demonstrating we want Him to live in us?

I’ve found that even if I go two days without praying to God, I feel off. Everything about me just feels off. My mentality feels off. My discernment feels off. My wisdom feels flat, my light feels dimmed, and my spirit feels restless. I do not feel peace and I start to become comfortable with sin.

When I’m disconnected from God, things that normally would feel wrong, I start to reason with and make excuses for. I start to think things like, “Well, I am human, and God knows I’m human and I’m not perfect.”

Wrongdoings that I know are not right in God’s eye, I start to look for understanding in, and then I start to make compromises to please others and my flesh.

 When I’m disconnected from God, simultaneously my focus shifts from pleasing God to pleasing man. My desire to serve God unconsciously switches to serving the world.

 Being disconnected from God truly leads to a dangerous path.

 Every time I skip a day of spending time with God, it becomes easier and easier to skip more days, and before I know it, it’s been days, sometimes even weeks that I haven’t spent at Jesus’s feet.

I can always feel when I need to go back to Jesus because like I said, everything just feels off.

 I feel like a body with no soul. I start to lose sight of my purpose and my calling, I start to become comfortable with blending in the world rather than standing out for Jesus. I start to partner with the world’s ways rather than God’s ways, and each time, I always find myself in a mess and lost.

One of the most miserable feelings in the world, is being disconnected from God. I feel purposeless and without confidence.

However, every time I finally surrender and come back to God, I literally feel like I got my breath back. When I connect to God, I feel like I’ve found myself again and found my purpose again.

 A life apart from God is no route to go. It’s a dead end and only a matter of time before you find yourself empty and searching.

It is imperative to be refueled by God daily. This means spending time with God daily.

I’m not talking about causally saying “Hey!” to God randomly throughout the day to free our conscience.

 This is not enough.

I’m talking about devoting sincere prayer time to God and studying Him daily. God’s word is spiritual food that we need to survive.

I’m someone that has struggled with setting aside alone time with God on a daily basis– which is why I can testify how weak and lost I start to feel when I go days without spending time with Him. It’s like starving myself.

It may seem like skipping a day spending time with God is harmless, but some of the worst decisions happen all within a day.

Intimacy with God should be looked as a necessity. The same way we need water and food, we need God daily or it’s not long until we find ourselves fatigue and just going through the motions.

God gives sanity. God gives peace. God gives discernment between right and wrong.

It’s easier to make the right choices when we are connected to God. Vice Versa, it’s also easier to make the wrong choices when we are distant from God.

I can’t speak for everyone, but for me personally, I need Jesus. I need Him, I need Him, I need Him. God is where my purpose stems from, where my strength flows from and where my wisdom is granted from.

I’m not saying we have to spend five hours a day reading the Bible or saying long drawn out prayers; but what I am saying is, we should not only be spending time with God when it’s convenient for us.

We shouldn’t treat God like a person that we just get to when we can. We don’t like to be treated like that, so we shouldn’t treat the one who gave us life in that manner. He deserves more.

We should treat God like we need Him, because we do.

The same way we pursue a significant other, we should be pursuing God even harder because He’s the one that causes all things to come together.

 I know it’s not always easy giving God the time He deserves, and sometimes life does get the best of us, but please understand, there’s nothing this life, our jobs, or our relationships can give us that God can’t give us better.

When we try to do everything and figure everything out without being counseled by God, life becomes really unbearable, let God help you.

JesusChristChangedMyLife because He refuels me daily. My purpose is found in Him.

-Padriana Grace