The 40 Day Journey - A Look Back

It has been 9 days since the last day of my 40 Day Journey. On Ash Wednesday, I committed to spending 1 hour every day listening to God. Not filling the hour with my voice, but listening for His. And He did not disappoint.

I also blogged about that hour each day (with the exception of day 18...). The process for blogging was that "working out" what He had said earlier in the day. It was more of a dialogue, a Q and A. He used those moments to allow those seeds to take root.  I reread a few of the posts and was reminded of the very personal way He revealed His heart to mine.

In order to accomplish this goal many things had to be given up, one of them being sleep. I love sleeping. I need sleep. I don't function fully without 8 hours of it daily. During those 40 days I think I averaged 5 hours a night.  Some of you would do anything for 5 hours, I know. But this girl needs more!

I was really looking forward to completing this journey and then getting some of those things back I missed. I finally started getting 8 hours of sleep at night, I watched 4 movies last week, I spent hours on Facebook, I did all our laundry in one day, I made muffins. And not one thing satisfied. The spot that had been fed by the Lord remained empty. I had "tasted and seen" that the Lord was good. Everything else that I tried to fill the emptiness inside was like a piece of plastic wrapped processed cheese. Completely not fulfilling. Disappointing. Leaving me hungry.

Now how to figure out how live beyond The Journey. My verse this year is Jeremiah 33:3,

"Call to Me and I will answer you, and tell you great and might things, which you do not know."

So I will continue to call to Him and wait for His answer. There is that word again that comes up often in my life. Wait. How can we hear His voice if we just call to Him but then quickly go to the work of trying to get the answer ourselves? Wait.

As my favorite Psalm says, "Wait for the Lord; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord." (Psalm 27:14)

So I guess this Journey is not over. This is not the end. Maybe it was the beginning...