This month our Facets of Faith team has the great pleasure to share with you the thoughts of one of our sisters in Christ, Dawn Stewart.  She writes and speaks from a place of authenticity so lacking today. Her vulnerability shows others how to be real, open, and vulnerable so Jesus can be the soothing balm of our souls.  Sit back, settle in, and prepare to let God use one of His precious daughters to shine light in the darkness of our hearts when we need them fueled with hope.  (Haven’t we all been there before?) *smile *

I have a really bad habit when it comes to caring for my vehicle.  I don’t do a great job paying attention to my fuel gauge.  Over the years, I have put myself in some very stressful situations because of this bad habit.  Like those crazy, hurried mornings when I have gotten the kids in the car just in time to make it to school only to realize I don’t know if I have enough gas to get them there.

I end up driving with my eyes constantly returning to the gas gauge, stomach in knots, and my thoughts beating me up for not being more responsible.   The guilt that my kids might be late because of my lack of intentionality eats at me. I can’t even enjoy my time with them in the car because I am so hyper-focused on the guilt I’m feeling. It’s stressful.  It’s emotionally and mentally chaotic. And, it’s absolutely unnecessary.  I have everything I need at my disposal to ensure I don’t end up in this situation.  I have the money for gas.  I have gas stations at nearly every corner.  I know how to put gas in my car.  I don’t even mind putting gas in my car.  I just don’t pay attention to the very thing that tells me when I need to take action.

My spiritual journey can get a lot like this as well.  I absolutely have a spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical gas tank.  And when I start to run out of gas in any one of those areas, life gets really stressful, emotionally and mentally chaotic, and I end up spending a great deal of my energy focusing on the problems in my life instead of the good that is all around me.  Guilt runs rampant in my heart and consumes my time and energy.  It is just like the car ride, but on a much broader scale.  If I am not aware that my tanks are getting empty, and don’t take the necessary action to fill up, I end up feeling and behaving in ways that are unhealthy for me, for my family, and for those around me.

Each tank requires its own unique fuel and reveals its emptiness in its own way. My physical gas tank begins to get empty when I am not caring for my physical being with proper fuel – food, exercise, and healthy amounts of sleep and rest.  I become tired and weary, hyper-sensitive, and not very fun to be around.

My emotional tank becomes empty when I am not properly fueling my emotional being with times of fun mixed in with the responsibility of life.  I become too serious, easily irritated, frustrated, emotionally clingy and difficult to be around.

My mental tank becomes low when I am not fueling myself with healthy thoughts, positive self-talk, and encouragement. I catch myself having negative thoughts towards myself and others, and those thoughts quickly manifest themselves in negative attitudes and behaviors.

Of all the tanks I need to be paying attention to, my spiritual tank is by far the most important.  For 35 years of my life, I paid no attention to this area of my life.  It was dry as a bone.  I was so consumed with trying on my own strength to keep the other areas of my life fueled and so wrecked with stress because I could never seem to keep up with my own physical, emotional, and mental needs.  Eventually I just gave up and over time became extremely unhealthy in every area of life.  I felt hopeless. I became desperate for change, desperate for help – and it turns out that what I really needed was to begin filling the spiritual tank within me.  I had no idea it was even there.

My first real prayer was one of total desperation.  I couldn’t keep up with life anymore and recognized a need for God’s intervention.  And so I asked Him for help.  I could almost feel the water pour into the dry areas of my soul.  It was like rain falling in an area that has been wrecked with drought.  The more I sought the Lord’s intervention, the more I could feel my soul come to life.  I didn’t even know I was so parched with thirst!  Prayer was the fuel that brought hope into my life again!

I had such little understanding of prayer, but I knew that something in my life was changing.  Over time, I discovered that prayer is the lifeblood of my spiritual journey.  It is so much more than just words coming out of my mouth to a distant God.  True prayer is the very means of communication with an ever-present, living God!  It is a relationship building, soul drenching, heart healing interaction with the very One who created me!  I don’t need to have specific words to form the right prayer, to sound holy enough, or to make sure every need is delivered correctly to Him.  He doesn’t want my performance.  He wants my heart.

Prayer is a way that I hand my heart to the Lord.  It is a way that I come before God and spend time with Him.  It’s a way to both talk to and hear from the Father.  And it fuels my hope daily.  Prayer is the fuel for my spiritual tank.  And it is at my disposal 24-7. I don’t need to go to church to pray.  I don’t need to go anywhere.  I can talk to the Father right where I am, wherever I am.  And as I do that, He fuels my life with hope.  And from that hope – that confident expectation that God is and will always be present and working in my life – I am able to effectively fuel every other tank I have.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that my emotional, mental, and physical tanks are filled with the overflow that comes from my spiritual tank.  I make right choices for my physical self, my emotional self, and my mental self when I am in right relationship with the Father.  When my heart and mind are focused on His Kingdom first (see Matthew 6) the rest of my life comes into proper order.  It’s amazing to me.

I wish I did everything perfectly, but alas – I do not.  There are still some days that I don’t fuel my spiritual tank, and I feel the dryness start to creep back in.  I feel the irritation start to form in my mind again, and I watch my attitudes and behaviors become less than fun to be around.  I am grateful God always makes a way for me to see the gauge on my spiritual tank is getting empty and provides me with time and opportunity to fill it.

Recently, I started noticing my attitude toward my husband and our marriage slowly becoming more and more negative.  I was having a difficult time seeing him as the man God was forming and was paying attention (almost compulsively) to his character flaws. The joy in my heart was starting to wane and bitterness was creeping in.

At first, as is typical, I started thinking the problem was in our marriage and that my husband was becoming less and less interested in connecting with me and our marriage. The more I focused on thoughts like this, the more anxious and worried I began to become. At one point things were starting to feel so bleak inside I found myself wondering if my husband even liked me anymore.

One morning, I was discussing this with a friend and we decided to turn to the Lord in prayer. What ended up happening was that God started showing me I had stopped praying for my husband and our marriage.  And the reason that was impacting me so negatively was I had begun to place my hope in my husband instead of in my God.

As wonderful of a man as my husband is, he was never designed to be the source of my hope.  He is many things, but my hope is to be in the Lord! I am so grateful to have connected with God’s Word in community with a Sister in Christ. As a result of that time, I was able to confess and repent of my error in focus.  God put me back on the right train of thinking. Nothing else had changed. Now my thought life around my husband and our marriage is once again fueled with gratitude, love, appreciation, hope, and excitement for the future. My husband was never lacking in desire for me; I had started lacking in my desire for the Lord.  And He allowed me to feel the discomfort of my spiritual tank becoming empty, and provided me an opportunity to get it filled back up!

I see now how my entire life really is fueled by the One who created me in the first place.  My most important job is to connect to Him daily.  To sit with Him, give Him my heart, and spend time in His presence.  When I do that with consistency, I can rest assured that the other areas of my life will be cared for as well.

And, who knows, I might even get better at watching the fuel gauge on my car!

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