ApprehendingGrace.com

If left to my own devices, I’m a late sleeper. Even when I go to bed early, I can sleep late. I am also a heavy sleeper. I frequently don’t hear the alarm clock no matter how loud it’s set. And since every other day of the week I have a reason for being up early, I have always treasured Saturday morning as the day I get to sleep a little later. Not as late as I’d like, mind you, but until a respectable 9am or so.

About a year ago, God began to wake me up early on Saturday mornings. I admit it…for quite a long time, I resented this. Saturday morning is my only morning to sleep late, I like to sleep late, I’m still tired, but I’m lying here in bed awake. What’s with that? No matter how late I go to bed on Friday night, I’m awake early on Saturday morning. If I don’t get out of bed, I just lay there staring into space. I rarely fall back asleep.

Eventually I remembered that when things aren’t as they normally are, when things seem out of place, always look for the hand of God. Since I had spent my life sleeping in on Saturday mornings and now that seemed an impossibility, I realized that it was God who was waking me up.

And Saturday  mornings have become such a special time with God. I don’t do anything significantly differently from what I do most mornings, but on Saturdays (because I’m awake and getting an earlier start), there is less pressure from the things that have to be done later in the day. The house is quieter, the spirit more peaceful. God seems more accessible.

Now the truth is there’s nothing different about the house on Saturdays than on Wednesdays or Fridays and God isn’t any more accessible on Saturday than He is on Wednesdays or Fridays. The truth is that I’m different. I’m more relaxed and looking forward to hearing from God on these early Saturday mornings than on other days. Because I’m up earlier than I need to be, I can enjoy Him without other distractions. And our time together is longer than other days of the week. I worship Him longer, I read more, I listen more, I write more.

The very cool thing is that this was all God’s idea. He initiated it. I’m so thankful that we serve a God who initiates a relationship with us. As A.W. Tozer writes in The Pursuit of God, God is always previous. He always reaches out to us first. He goes before us in everything we do, arriving where we are before we get there. He is always previous.

So God and I have an appointment that He helps me to keep every Saturday morning. Actually, we have an appointment every morning, but Saturday’s appointment is more like a date.

I bet God would like to have a date with you, too. I’m praying that He would begin to awaken readers of this blog early one day next week. Just so you and He can spend more time together.

Let me know how it goes.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 1:45 pm and is filed under devotions, Hearing God, Intimacy with God. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.