ENERGY | March 23 - 29

As a child, energy bubbled effortlessly with joy, and as an adult with a career in sport, I carefully trained energy for the demands of competition. More recently though, an illness wiped out my life. An energy crisis brought on by inflammation and metabolic dysfunction in every cell of my body, resulting in organ systems spiralling out of control. Every action of sustaining life – breathing, eating, thinking, sleeping, moving – challenged by energy deprivation.

We eventually all face limits to our energy. Whether we are training for ultra-marathons, facing debilitating illness, or just trying to manage life, we all eventually hit the wall of ‘not enough’. Limitations exist between our dreams and capacity, expectations and capacity, and sometimes between daily life and capacity.

In the darkest place I have ever been, with my life demolished by a virus, life felt cursed. These limitations were too much, too hard, too impossible, too uncertain, too endless, too exhausting. Coming to know the Jesus who is ‘Enough’ wasn’t an instantaneous miracle, but a continuing transformation, undergirded by the decision to trust Jesus in the midst of every single hard decision of what to do and what not to do, to manage my energy for survival and recovery.

As a push hard, get-it-done, energy addict and adrenaline junkie, transformation came in a multitude of ways. Through Scripture, God reveals to me how He cares about the metabolic needs of our bodies. (See our scripture this week, and how when Elijah was exhausted and depressed, sleep was the first priority and then God sent angels TWICE with food and water for him.) Through occupational therapy, I learn God’s design for our body’s use of energy in its various categories - physical, cognitive, social, emotional, environmental and spiritual. Through counselling, God offers emotional healing as I discover that my unhealthy utilization of energy results from childhood responses to trauma. Through prayer, I encounter the Enough-ness of Jesus as He daily guides me with Holy Spirit wisdom in my choices, offering peace and serenity as I accept with gratitude, the reality of this day’s energy, and infusing courage to make necessary changes for the future.

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READ

Slowly read through the passages offered. How do they relate to the reflection? What is Spirit revealing through them?

1 Kings 19:3-9

REFLECT

Invite the Holy Spirit into your reflections and welcome the voice of Jesus to help you answer these questions.

1.  How have I been living as if there is not enough energy?

2.  What unhealthy attachments do I have to the limitations being revealed?

Acknowledge and process this with Jesus and ask him to help you release that attachment.

RESPOND

Using the guided prompts, take time to respond in confession. In repentance how can you turn towards God and others?

Choose a new way.

Jesus, I confess that I have been trying to operate out of my own resource of energy and choose instead to live in dependence on your provision.

I resist the lie that limitations are curses and choose instead to receive them as means of grace to bring me closer to you.

RECEIVE

Take time to listen to the voice of Jesus and receive his mercy and grace. Help open my eyes to see how you are providing ways for me to care for the energy in my body?

Thank you, Jesus, for your provision.

FAST

As a way of living into your repentance and resisting the idea of scarcity of energy, this week consider fasting from your go-to chemical stimulant (coffee, energy drink, etc.) and practice instead the Serenity Prayer every day this week,

God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference. Amen.