By Ann Karl Slusarz

I used to be extremely consistent in my devotional life.  I remember getting up at 5:30 in the morning as a middle school student to spend time in the Bible.  I also participated in discipleship programs that required weekly Bible memorization and evangelism, where you had to report on your quiet times and that you shared the Gospel with one person a week.  Though these programs can sometimes have their place, I remember experiencing a lot of guilt if I didn’t live up to the requirements.  But I also became pretty good at making sure I did fulfill the requirements.

And then after leaving home, I experienced a profoundly dark time.  In the midst of it, God felt distant.  I had never tried harder to hear his voice or spent more time seeking him.  I had also never spent more time in tears because of the silence I received from him.  I felt abandoned and betrayed.  As I recovered from this season, I came to understand that I had developed a legalistic way of interacting with God, and this impacted my devotional life.  As I moved from legalism to freedom, I practiced the disciplines less because I was no longer motivated by guilt or pride, but I never dismissed them as legalistic tendencies in favor of a way of relating to God that emphasized passively receiving his grace.  This idea never sat well with me.  I always believed that spiritual disciplines, namely – biblical reading and meditation, worship, prayer, and listening – were the way to intimacy with the Father.

Nevertheless, in the intervening years, I’ve been inconsistent in these disciplines, being diligent for months at a time and then neglecting them for months.  I’ve noticed that the periods of the most profound and beautiful intimacy usually accompany the periods of the most intense suffering.  But sometimes when life is going well, I seem to fall back into inconsistency.

I’ve often wondered why I struggle with consistency when life is going well.  One major reason is fear of not being met by God or fear of being disappointed by him.  We’ve all experienced disappointment from people and when we feel God’s silence, we may feel that he doesn’t care about us.  To be honest, it’s not a perfect system where you always get what you’re looking for.  It may prompt us to say, “I tried that once and I didn’t get the results I wanted, so I gave up.”  Another reason I struggle with devotional pursuits when life is going well is that, though suffering seems to increase intimacy with God, I fear suffering.  I’m afraid if I grow close to God, he will ask for impossible things from me.  The third reason, if I’m honest, is that there’s also a lack of desire, and the times when I allow busyness and the cares of this life to consume my days.

These issues are deep, and especially the first two have required healing prayer, which has been extremely helpful because I have never walked away feeling that God failed to speak to me in that context.  When I participate in prayer with others, both on the giving and the receiving end, I realize that God does know me and hear my prayers.  Because of being met by him in healing prayer, I have come to better understand his character and the truth that he is for me, even if I am experiencing a dry time for a reason I don’t understand.  I have also realized through prayer that he doesn’t ask for things without giving me the strength to endure.  So, I have gained truth about God’s character through prayer that I can then take with me and apply when I am experiencing dryness in my devotional life.  I can meditate on these revelations of God’s character and further embed them in my mind.  There is an element of persevering and trusting in who God says he is.

I’ve never been satisfied with inconsistency.  When I’m not spending regular time with God, I feel like I’m missing something, like I neglected the most important thing of my day.  My days without time with the Lord are marked by disquiet and a lack of peace.  But it’s not only about what I’m lacking.  It’s also about what I’m seeking.  What am I seeking when I’m not prioritizing time with God?  I want to be someone who seeks God, not the things of this world.  I want to be a person who knows what it means to dwell in the shelter of the Lord and to find rest in the shadow of the Almighty, as it says in Psalm 91.

So that brings us to the present.  My son Peter was born in November, and I was eager to use my extra time at home during maternity leave to address this issue of inconsistency.  I converted to a part time work schedule in April, and by that time, I had only been partially successful in my effort.

Just before I returned to work, I learned about a small group in northern Virginia offered by Coracle designed to help people encounter God and grow in Christ through the practice of Sacred Rhythms, also known as spiritual disciplines, but it sounds better to me somehow.  It uses Ruth Haley Barton’s DVD curriculum.

The commitment was only two nights a month for six months, spread out intentionally – to allow people enough time to truly incorporate solitude and silence, bible meditation, prayer and listening, and Sabbath into their lives.  At the end of the course, we are supposed to create a “rule of life,” which, according to Christian tradition, is a “pattern of attitudes, behaviors, and practices that are routine and are intended to produce space for God’s transforming work to take place.”

We have a single purpose in coming together:  to learn and practice these rhythms.  It’s not necessarily a place to engage in personal sharing.  But this focus and the individual members’ desire to know God more intimately are some of the reasons the group is effective at helping people encounter God.  All in all, this group felt tailor made for me.

Since discouragement over not connecting with God – even when I am making time – has been a theme for me, being a part of a group where I can discuss struggles with the practice of the rhythms has proven helpful.  Being in a community that is walking this road together provides an opportunity to voice my difficulties and doubts and receive meaningful feedback.  For example, I have received encouragement to redirect my focus toward resting in God rather than on trying to extract a word from him.  It’s helpful to talk about my experience with other people as opposed to getting discouraged or giving up when my devotional time doesn’t yield what I hope it will.

I’d like to say a word about rhythms themselves.  It’s significant for me that this group focuses on rhythms instead of disciplines.  Rhythms and disciplines are essentially the same thing, but “rhythms” connotes freedom in a way I don’t think “disciplines” captures.  Whereas “disciplines” for me evokes feelings of religious duty, “rhythms” focuses on establishing a pattern of living in communion with God.  I hope for the regularity and beauty of spiritual rhythms that contribute to deepening my relationship with the Lord.

But, while it was important for me to get away from the idea of duty in my relationship with God, the reality is that practicing rhythms still takes work.  According to Ruth Haley Barton, “living into what we want in any area of our life requires some sort of intentional approach.  The desire for a way of life that creates space for God’s transforming work is no different.”  I’m realizing it takes work to make time to just sit with the Lord.  I need to work to clear my schedule to make time to rest in God’s presence.  I need to consciously say no to a million urgent or easy things.  I need to work in order to rest.  Hence, the “rule of life,” which I mentioned before.  The group has given me a vision of what abiding in Christ can really look like through practicing rhythms and specifically through this idea of a rule of life.  It is distinct from disciplines, which can foster legalism for me, but it is an intentional effort to arrange my life for what I want most.

Charles Spurgeon highlights that abiding with God requires more of us than just sporadic effort.  There is a difference between someone who runs to God on occasion, perhaps only when they need help, and someone who resides in God’s presence.  In reference to Psalm 91, which I alluded to earlier, “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High; will rest in the shadow of the Almighty,” Spurgeon says, “Every child of God looks towards the inner sanctuary, yet all do not dwell in the most holy place; they run to it at times, and enjoy occasional approaches, but they do not habitually reside in the mysterious presence.”

I’d like habitual residence in the mysterious presence to be my reality someday, and for now I’m trying to take a few halting steps forward.  As Paul says in Philippians 3, “ Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  […] Forgetting what is behind and straining – notice the work implied here – toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

As I strive to daily seek God through practicing spiritual rhythms and frequently fail, I’m grateful that I’m only trying to do that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  He has already paved the way to continuous communion with God.

(For more information about this and other Coracle offerings in northern Virginia, click here.)