I love being able to do these blog posts through SBU. It has been a new experience and I’ve become better friends with some people because of it. The last two weeks, though, I have been struggling with finding a specific topic to talk about. I’ve been wanting to focus on God and his ways and love for us and write a fantastic article about it. But I could not. I would try to work on one for a half an hour or so and decide I needed a break to try and think about something else and come back to it later. I searched Pinterest for some tips. It was not working. And I was a little upset by it.

God, I want to write about you. Why aren't any of these drafts coming together? It should not be this difficult!

Then this morning while reading my bible and talking to God, he clued me into what he was doing. I had not been reading my bible like I needed to. I learned so much sitting for about 15 minutes in my bible than I had in the last week. My focus had not been in my Bible.

Then as I began to talk to God about it more I realized that I had not been telling him about the stuff going on in my life this past week either. This really freaked me out. My focus was not on my relationship with God. Then where was my focus?

God, what is going on with me?

God laid out my last couple of weeks before me. I had been hanging out with family, hanging out with old and new friends, making new friends, hanging out with my roommate, working, doing homework, and going to classes. The times that I had read or listened to passages in the bible were extremely sparse compared to everything else. Even so when I did do this, my heart was thinking oh I should read today just to read today. Not really caring if I learned anything or not. Which also explains why I did not think I had been being fed spiritually. I was not trying to eat anything filling.

God, you need to be #1.

So it was super obvious that the number one spot in my heart had changed. God has not been occupying that spot. This terrifies my soul. My focus has been friends and belonging. I have been searching around for these things; Searching in circumstances and situations. I was repeating a process I had tried before during the fist year and a half of high school. I was making my friends the center of my being. Then when morals became tested in our group my heart broke when God made it extremely evident that God’s Word was not the center of our lives. (People’s opinions and the desire to belong had crept into our core). This testing resulted in over a month of loneliness, confusion, and a lot of crying out to God for some kind of restoration.

It was a slow and painful process but God did teach and take care of me.

So I cannot continue to live like I have the past couple of weeks. A change is definitely needed. I need to read my bible because I want to be close to my savior. I need to start expecting to be wrecked, reminded, or challenged in some way every time I open up the Word. I do not want to fall back into the same trap. I want to try to continue to move forward.

So having said all of this…

What is your focus? Where are you spending the most time? What is your #1? And what are you going to do to move forward?