Growing Closer to God..

I read a new friend's blog tonight and it really spoke to me.  She recently finished a 40-day fast and talked about how she really felt the closeness of God through it.  I have thought about doing a 40-day fast a few times over the last year or so - but have always let "busyness" keep me from doing it.  I think that I too am ready to go on a fast to not only grow closer to God, but to take back spiritual ground that the devil has stolen from MY FAMILY over the years.  And what better time than heading into the holidays! 

I remember when I delivered the Columbus Dispatch newspaper (for about 1 & 1/2 years), I used to get up through the week at 2:30am to go down to the warehouse and fold and bag the papers so that I could walk the route and be finished and back home to shower, change, and be at work by 7am.  I would walk for those few hours in the early morning and pray, asking God for a closer walk with Him.  I had been a Christian almost all of my life, yet I didn't feel very close to God.  I just knew that there had to be something "better".

Sometimes I would walk and just listen to my GoBible (it's like an MP3 player but with the entire Bible on it instead of music).  Eventually I gave up that paper route because I felt God was dealing with me about working on Sundays.  I thought about trying to find a sub or a "partner" that would do Sundays for me, but I made almost half of my paycheck on Sundays because that paper was so big and there were almost twice as many people that got the Sunday paper than the weekday paper.  Financially, it wasn't worth it - so I gave it up entirely.  That was a little over 2 years ago, and I have to say, I have grown closer to the Lord in these last 2 years than I ever would have thought possible. 

Gosh, now that I'm thinking about it, I've also spent these last 2+ years living with a roommate so that I could go to school for my massage license (I wanted to be able to pay cash for my classes as I went so that I wouldn't have any school loans to pay back).  I've been able to do that, and now I've graduated from Massage School, and am ready to move back out on my own! 

But now I'm ready to go to another "level" in God.  Pray for me as I pray and seek God's direction for my life.  I can truly say with all of the honesty in my heart that I want to be in the center of God's will more than I want ANYTHING else in my life.