{"id":59,"date":"2011-02-28T13:23:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T13:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lrtministry.org\/not-a-place-to-dwell-or-running-from-god-my-way\/"},"modified":"2011-02-28T13:23:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T13:23:00","slug":"not-a-place-to-dwell-or-running-from-god-my-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/not-a-place-to-dwell-or-running-from-god-my-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a Place to Dwell or Running from God My Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To be honest, I don&#8217;t really know what to call the place I am in right now. It not the dark side of the soul, nor is it a place of deep, intimate relationship with God. I am not in a crisis of faith or belief. I am trying to listen, but don&#8217;t always hear or it seems all I hear is silence. It may also be that I hear but choose not to listen. <\/p>\n<p>For me, right now, I don&#8217;t think is is any of the above reasons. No, what I believe is the issue is that I have chosen to run from God. I&#8217;m not talking a Jonah moment where God said do this and Jonah ran the opposite direction. No, my running from God looks more like a guy caught up in the things of life, to &#8220;busy&#8221; to do the things God wants him to do. Not all things, just the things that make my mind swiril. I find myself engaging in mindless activities  instead of engaging in the ponderings that God has set before me. <\/p>\n<p>By mindless activities I don&#8217;t mean spending time with family and friends. This is a good use of time. But did I really need to watch that TV show or movie, when I had carved out time to do my pondering? Did I need to check emails and see what is happening in the world during the time I had set aside for reading and tweeting? Did I have to let my mind wander and daydream about spring and new projects around the house when I had set aside time to work on my doctoral studies? You see its not about being to busy, I have carved out the time I need, but I then fill those times with activites that don&#8217;t need to happen when they do. I have time carved out for emails and such. I set aside time to watch my TV shows on Hulu or TV.com. There are times when I can daydream, but I need to keep that in check. <\/p>\n<p>Just like Jonah, I am guilty of running from God. It is not a physical running, rather it is an intellectual running. It really doesn&#8217;t matter how you are running for the result is the same. Something that God wants me to do is not getting accomplished. Maybe I need to spend a couple of days in the belly of a fish (though I would rather not) to cry out to God, quit running, and to return to the what it is God wants me to accomplish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To be honest, I don&#8217;t really know what to call the place I am in right now. It not the dark side of the soul, nor is it a place of deep, intimate relationship with God. I am not in a crisis of faith or belief. I am trying to listen, but don&#8217;t always hear &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/not-a-place-to-dwell-or-running-from-god-my-way\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Not a Place to Dwell or Running from God My Way&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts","category-spiritual-formation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xZq6-X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}