Do you remember times when you walked closely with God, when you felt the weightlessness and peace of being entrusted to him? Do you remember feeling that deep contentment and joy as God filled your heart and when you felt enveloped in his love? Where are you now? Do you feel that you have strayed from this place of trust and intimacy with God? How did this happen? We inevitably lose touch with God when we begin to replace God with other things, for example, when we begin to replace the validation that God’s love gives us with various activities and things by which we can validate ourselves. This is pictured here in Jeremiah 2:13: “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” The first step to coming back to intimacy with God is to allow yourself to feel the deep emptiness of what is absent in your life. Let your heart learn to long for God again. God gives himself to those who long for him. When you desire God, you bring yourself into alignment with God’s desire for you. You don’t have to ‘do’ anything to get close to God. You just have to seek him. Seeking God means allowing yourself to long for him. That is simply all that is required. Let your heart cry out for God. Ask God to reach down and lift you up. Ask, and keep asking and with every cry you will find yourself closer to him.
To the extent that you have strayed from God, ask God to make you feel the emptiness of his absence.
Read Jeremiah 2
