This is my season of over-busy, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, of relentless disruptions.

They yank me here, there, everywhere but where I most need to be. They come from outside myself, they come from within…

Last year I chose a theme word: “Closer,” voicing my desire, and intent, to draw nearer and nearer my Beloved, Lover of my Soul. As that year went on, it was happening, the greater closeness.

That word gave me such good guidance I decided to use it again this year.

Besides, I had unfinished business with it. I’d made it an acronym whose letters would remind me of things needful to gain and maintain that closeness, and L was about as far as I got—in my posts, at least.

So this year continued “C-L-O-S-E-R.”

At first, anyway.

But something horrible has happened (although only the God-hungry will consider it horrible):

Drift.

Like a boat cut from its anchor, floating all over the water, instead of tethered to the Rock where it belongs.

How did this happen? I ask, and seek, and soon I see: unpredictable interruptions repeatedly grabbing my dangling tow line and yanking my boat this way, then that, all crazy!

So I think up a Yankee-work-ethic remedy, counteracting tactics, and employ them…

Alas, it’s all fleshly doings, which more often than not become distractions themselves by pulling me out of established routines—as much disruption emanating from myself as from anything or anyone around me!

So. Back to start. And do not collect $200.

Start for me is “Call,” the “C” in my acronym C-L-O-S-E-R. And I even need to “call on” God to provide the words to call out.

I found them in my own post from just a year ago. Such help! Better than any printed documents or books, because online I can hover my cursor over references, and call after call in psalmist wording rises into view.

How many did I voice, just this morning? Lots! How long did I spend calling out to Him through them? Long!

Yes, I could have been talking at God with “my prayers,” and doing “my daily Bible reading,” but, honestly, I have been doing those things all along. And drifting. Still drifting, whether the water lies calm or its waves roll hard.

But didn’t Jesus say it? “Apart from me you can do… nothing”! My flailing around might look like something in all its exhausting effort. But in Kingdom economy, the scale registers it weightless.

And oh, the calm, at last, like that of a weaned child with its mother (Psalm 131:2)! I have what I need, and I am satisfied that He will steer my boat if it really has to go someplace new and different, and otherwise will keep it anchored in His refuge, close to Him. But I need to keep calling on Him to do it. Because the world, and my own flesh, and yes, that old enemy of the soul, all have their sneaky ways of undoing the rope of connection. They’re strong. Often stronger than my best intentions and efforts. But His strength is greater, greater than all.

Maybe you also need to go back to the beginning, to the source of all good that happens in us, back to Step One, “Call!” So, republished below is the post that helped me (enhanced since its original posting). Two posts in one today.

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Closer without the C is…? (How Not to Lose Out)

“To form a habit of conversing with God continually, and referring all we do to Him, we must first apply to Him with some diligence…”

-Brother Lawrence, in The Practice of the Presence of God

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CLOSER: The ”One Word” I chose as my year’s goal, to draw and stay closer to God my Savior, Christ my Lord.

C-L-O-S-E-R: The letters as an acronym, or acrostic, each letter standing for a guide word, a help to drawing near.

 

Call: Good guide word for C to stand for.

And lately glimpsing C-L-O-S-E-R without its first letter, I saw what comes of leaving out the “call.”

 

C-L-O-S-E-R without the C is… LOSER. And that’s what I will be! Losing so much blessing.

Call.

Call to Him.

Call out to Him.

Or quietly call on Him in gentle, trusting approach.

But call. on. Him.

We all need to.

Because we all need His power to work in us.

We are weak. And we need to know we’re weak, need to admit it humbly before Him.

Blessed are the poverty-stricken in spirit.

Blessed are the destitute of soul, the beggars of God’s grace.

We do not know how to draw near.

We do not even know how to pray.

Sometimes we don’t even know how to begin by calling.

But His Spirit helps us in this weakness, too. His word helps us voice our heart, gives us His words to put in our mouths. So we can pray a call totally according to His word, His will, His Spirit — thus, a confidant call!

How to call upon the LORD?

Look at all the calls He gives us! (Below: Not an exhaustive list!) We can use any of these scriptures as openings to prayer, or interspersed within it, as we feel need, even as we feel our souls recede and start to stray. We need His power to help us keep clinging close as well as initially to draw near.

Notice how different some of the cries are and what they call for, how they express such varied needs, at various times of the day, or night.

(Hover your cursor and the scripture passage will appear in the NKJV. To read it in a different version, click on the reference and it will appear in its context at BlueLetterBible.org. Scroll to the top of the page there and click “Change version,” and then your choice. Or use your favorite Bible, opened to Psalms.)

Psalm 4:1

Ps 5:1-3

Ps 6:1-4

Ps 12:1

Ps 16:1-2

Ps 17:1,6

Ps 25:1-2,4,5

Ps 26:1-2

Ps 28:1-2

Ps 31:1-3

Ps 38:1,4,15-16,21-22

Ps 39:4,7,12

Ps 43:1,3

Ps 51:1-2

Ps 54:1-2

Ps 55:1-2

Ps 57:1-2

Ps 61:1-2

Ps 62:1 (A silent, waiting call)

Ps  63:1-2

Ps  64:1

Ps 69:1-3,16-18

Ps 70:1

Ps 71:1-5

Ps 80:1,17-19

Ps 86:1,6-7

Ps 88:1-2

Ps 102:1-2 (See Ps 102:17-20)

Ps 116:1-2

Psalm 119 is loaded with calls, scattered throughout.

Ps 120:1-2

Ps 121:1-2

Ps 123:1-3

Ps 130:1-2

Ps 141:1-4

Ps 142:1-2

Ps 143:1

(Feel free to copy the list for your own use.)

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Linked to

Still Saturday

(With apologies! I forgot S S posts were to be few in words! But since the above so helped me settle into soul stillness, may it do likewise anyway for someone else.)